Note: This is NOT a recommendation or non-recommendation of Google Money Kit. We are taking a look at the Google Money Toolkit offer to explain some things about negative option marketing that someone newer to the internet might miss. It is also NOT legal advice.
Free trial negative option offers work like this:
“By accepting the trial offer, you’re actually agreeing to be enrolled in a membership, subscription or service contract or paying for additional products and services if you don’t cancel within the trial period.” (from the Federal Trade Commission website)
But there are important rules the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has put out consumer information on such as:
“According to the law, companies must clearly and prominently disclose the “material” terms of their trial offers before you give your consent. Material terms may include:
- the fact that by accepting the trial offer, you’re actually agreeing to be enrolled in a membership, subscription or service contract or paying for additional products and services if you don’t cancel within the trial period;
- how much time you have to cancel before you incur charges;
- the cost or range of costs of goods or services you’ll receive if you don’t cancel during the trial period;
- how to cancel during the trial period;
- whether you’ll be charged a non-refundable membership fee if you don’t cancel within the trial period;
- whether fees will be charged automatically to the credit card you used to buy other goods or services.”
Usually the biggest grey-areas AND biggest problem areas we’ve seen are the following terms:
- “promintently disclose” and
- “material terms”
Could Google Money Kit’s Terms by more prominently disclosed?
First, GoogleMoneyToolkit does a better job of disclosing some of the additional monthly charges than sites like GoogleMoneyTree, but it sure would be nice to see the additional monthly charges on sites like Google Money Toolkit even MORE conspicuously disclosed as practiced by products such as Netflix and Rhapsody.
I should mention that nothing on our top ten recommended home businesses list comes close to the costing as much as the Google Money Toolkit costs when you include GoogleMoneyToolkit’s monthly charges, which I’ll now explain.
Hopefully you always, always, always find the terms and conditions for anything you are using your credit card or debit card for. But I know some people still don’t do this, so this should be a good educational lesson for them.
If you want the bottom line right now the total amount of monthly fees after the various trials associated with the Google Money Toolkit, here they are:
- $2.95 one-time activation fee.
- $29.95 billed monthly after your 9 day free trial to Google Money Toolkit is over (so starting on day 10). Note: It LOOKS like this is the same as what they call the “Search Engine Learning Center”, but that doesn’t seem totally clear.
- $14.95 billed monthly after your 13 day free trial to ClickBuilder (so starting on day 14).
So assuming that the “Search Engine Learning Center is the same as the “Google Money Toolkit” the monthly charges add up to $44.90/month which is $538.80/year”.
Again, this is NOT an opinion about the Google Money Toolkit product itself and GoogleMoneyToolkit is NOT on our top 10 recommended home business list. This is merely a lesson in how to look at the order processes that use negative option marketing.
A couple things Google Money ToolKit does better than many others:
- Google Money Toolkit references an article on BusinessWeek that discusses in general terms how people are making money with Google (note, it was a little hard to figure out where to click though as the phrase “Click to Read Article:” wasn’t clickable, where as “Businessweek-MSN” was clickabe).
- You have to check the box next to the link which says:
- “By completing this form, I assert that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service“ which is significantly better than other ordering processes that have that box pre-checked.
- GoogleMoneyToolKit puts the information about monthly charges, the trial period, cancellation procedures, and refund information at the TOP of the Terms of Service page. It does NOT bury it somewhere in the Terms like many other opportuntunies we see.
- GoogleMoneyToolKit shows the monthly charges NUMERICALLY (i.e. $29.95 monthly) which is a NORMAL way to show charges – it does NOT SPELL them out (i.e. twenty nine dollars and ninety five cents monthly).
Once again, even though GoogleMoneyToolKit does make the charges more obvious than many other offers we see, we STILL would prefer that they were even MORE obvious and presented in ways similar to sites like Netflix or Rhapsody.
Some things we don’t like about Google Money ToolKit’s order process:
- While some of the terms of the offer are are on the first page they are not on the top of the page and don’t appear to be “above the fold”.
- The information about the terms of the offer on the first page does not include what the monthly charges are.
- The information about the terms of the offer on the first page are located AFTER the continue button (although I haven’t tested this currently I do plan someday to do a test to determine what percentage of people click on submit buttons without scrolling down – but it would be a VERY difficult test to do correctly in a way that leads to statistically significant results and I’m not even sure if there’s any way those results could be generalized).
Other observations about Google Money Toolkit:
Some things that jumps IMMEDIATELY off the Google Money Toolkit order page are:
Google Money Toolkit makes some very silly and unrealistic promises such as:
- In 30 seconds even lazy people could be making piles of money from google.
- That you can get rich by just “watching” and “listening” to trends…ummm, I think there probably has to be some OTHER activity involved. LOL.
- The claim that you barely have to lift a finger to make more money than you ever thought possible.
Real businesses ALWAYS require at least some up-front work unless you’re blessed to have an already assembled team that can turn your ideas into action without much involvement from you. And while it is true that it can be much easier to make money online than from traditional work – that is ONLY true after you have STUDIED how to run REAL online businesses from reliable sources – and RARELY from sources that promise you that you will earn money with no work!
Related information: