[atourgates]

I was using Bank of America's ShopSafe system a decade ago. Remember all those "Get a free Xbox for completing these 12 free trial offers" scams?

Well, it turned out that some of them weren't necessarily scams, and there were whole forums dedicated to actually completing the offers, keeping proper documentation and claiming the prizes.

Most of the free trial offers validated your credit card for the initial free month, and then made it incredibly difficult to cancel the service. So I'd just sign up with a ShopSafe number that was valid for 1 month with a $1 limit.

Typically, instead of actually shipping you the Xbox or whatever the prize was, if you completed the offer they'd just send you a check. The year after I got out of college when I had plenty of free time, I managed to get about $1,200 thanks to those offers and ShopSafe.

It's not a feature I'd use enough to have it dictate my overall credit card choice, but I'd love it if more issuers added to their products.

[rkho]

Ahhh the good old days. I'd have spreadsheets of when to cancel trial offers. Probably earned about $20-30k in electronics and cash overall during Freshman year in college.

[OkGoDoIt]

Me and my roommates did this as well. We did it so much that one of my roommates actually got a legally threatening letter from on of the companies behind most of them (Trilegent I think it was) telling him to stop because he was abusing the system. Which was funny because they were so scammy to begin with.

[rkho]

Yikes. The worst I got was being sent to collections for a teeth whitening product that was designed to bill regardless of trial cancellation. I learned a ton about negotiating with customer service departments during this time too.