The ubiquitous "Teeth-Whitening Secret Discovered by a Stay-At-Home Mom!" banner ads reeled me in. The page it links to has no banner ads or direct sales, which should have been my first warning; how does an advertiser have enough capital to put up millions of banner ads without selling anything? The answer: by routing you to partner sites that A) sell an eventually overpriced product and B) entice those seeking an almost-free sample into giving up their credit card number, after which it can and will be charged without mercy.

Like a fool, I bought into it, and after receiving one of the two items for which I thought I was only paying a few dollars of discounted shipping, I got an email "responding" to my cancellation. I hadn't cancelled anything. Why would I? I hadn't ordered much of anything. I immediately checked my online banking records and found that two charges totalling around $160.00 had been extracted from my checking account. Chase Bank is working on getting the charges reversed, but I don't know whether they'll be successful. Learn from my mistake. Tell everyone you know to avoid those links, and whenever you see a seemingly good deal, ask: how are they paying for it? If you don't, the answer will probably be you.