I think most of us have seen sites that give you a free sample of, let’s say, a weight loss product. You pay only the shipping fee and get the bottle in the mail after a week. You try it it out, see no change and are at least glad that you saved $89.

But, after about 1-2 weeks, you see some charges on your billing statement that you don’t remember authorizing. Plus, the billing company name is something like Echo, Localbilling, Bill.com, or other really generic name that doesn’t help you at all. You (try to) find their site, call them, ask them what the heck and in the best case, you get the name, address and phone of the real company that billed you through them. Sometimes they tell you that they’re just providing financial services to other companies and their corporate policy does not allow the disclosure of information about their clients, or even worse, you can’t contact them at all, as they simply won’t answer.

You find out that you’ve been billed by the company that gave you the free sample of their weight loss product. Aparently, when you ordered it, you also agreed to a contract and signed up for their monthly subscription which you didn’t cancel by calling them within 2 weeks of ordering the sample.

Can’t remember reading anything like that? Well, that’s because you didn’t. It was in a link to the agreement hidden in the footer, written in light gray size 8 text (that really happens!), which most of people can’t even find, let alone read. There are lots of honest companies that have a nice red text under the “Order” button that says you also agree to their monthly subscription and a link to the agreement/cancel instructions. But I’m not talking about those here.

When you try calling them and sending them emails, no one replies, ever. How can you cancel the monthly billing when the agreement says that to cancel it you need to call them (and the finance company that does the billing tells you that, too), but no one answers?

If they would at least honour their own contract and have someone on the phone that would hear you out, then it would fit into normal business practices, but this is outrage!

The only thing you can do (besides finding their real address and filing a lawsuit or involving the FTC, like in the case with Acai Berry Weight Loss pills) is cancel your current debit/credit card and ask the bank to issue a replacement.

If you’ve ever gone through this, you know how tiring and exhausting it is. 2 years ago, only your vigilence could help you prevent this stuff from happening, but fortunately, someone thought it would be nice to make transactions even more secure. And that someone is none other than PayPal, the largest online payments company, owned and used by eBay on their site. If you still don’t have an account, get one now!

So how can Paypal help you? Well, they have a really good virtual card generator which creates virtual check/debit MasterCard cards linked to your Paypal account and/or your bank account. Yes, it means you now have an unlimited supply of real cards which you can use anywhere and close whenever you want.

Now, armed with your Paypal account and a new virtual card (generated in a few seconds), you go to a site which offers you a free sample of their weightloss product and when asked for a credit card, you insert the numbers on the virtual card. Nothing could be more simple! You pay the shipping, get the confirmation and quickly go to your Paypal account and close that virtual card. That’s it! With this, YOU CHOOSE whether to continue a subscription or not. No more hassle!

You can also shop completely anonymously, showing any name or billing address you want (as long as you don’t intend to scam anyone, it’s not illegal). Now you can buy porn online and no one will know :-).

I always use this method to avoid getting scammed. I have a lot of subscriptions to sites and when I like one service and want to continue being a member and pay the monthly fee, I just change my credit card information to a real card or to a dedicated virtual card in my member information page on their site (most web services have this feature). I’ve had numerous sites trying to rebill me the second month, and a closed virtual card saved me all the time.

Beware though, there are some companies that charge you for a few months ahead, so a virtual card won’t help you in this case. This is rare, but it can happen.

Some banks offer a similar service on their Online Banking site (Bank of America and Fifth Third sure don’t), so if you have access to such a service, use it, if not, get a Paypal account.

I really don’t like waiting on the phone for hours to get a subscription canceled, and if you’re like me, you’ll really appreciate this service.