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Catching Up With Your Questions
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I do hope you read today's column on flood insurance.
I don't THINK many of us will soon forget last year's hurricane season and all the resulting flooding. Well, the Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1. So do you have flood insurance?
Not sure of your flood risk? Then go to this Web site, enter your home address and the National Flood Insurance Program will show you the relative flood risk to your property. You will also get a list of insurance agents in your area who sell flood insurance.
I tried this and found out my home had a moderate to low risk of flooding. However, I didn't know that 25 percent of flood-loss claims are filed in low- to moderate-risk areas.
Charge Me Once, Shame on You. Charge Me Twice, Shame on Me.
I hope you are carefully reading your credit card statements and most importantly discussing with your spouse or joint-credit card holder any charges you don't recognize. If not, you might be like the many victims Don Oldenburg talked to recently who found, in some cases for years, that they had been charged for products or services they hadn't authorized.
These consumers were victims of a sales technique called the "negative-option plan." The negative-option plan is when you are automatically charged for a product until you inform the company you don't want it.
Some of the people Oldenburg profiled may have ended up in these deals by clicking "yes" on pop-up ads on the Internet or it might have been part of a free trial- period product promotion.
Edward Johnson, president of the Greater Washington Area Better Business Bureau, told Oldenburg: "A negative-option offer that is attached to a free trial period inherently lends itself to potential problems -- like people not understanding that they signed up and the debits made to your account."
I hate negative-option buying. I learned the hard way to avoid it. I wrote about my experiences in a column last summer ("Mail-Order Book Clubs' Never-Ending Story," Aug. 11).
It never fails when I have signed up for one of these plans I inevitably forget to cancel and then get stuck paying for books, CDs or magazines I don't want.
Actually there are rules companies pushing negative-option plans have to follow. For more information on your rights go to the Federal Trade Commission's Web site.
