got duped by obscured online fees

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pbm

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A few weeks ago I think was looking at e-mails or else the ad just popped up (I don't know which but my 'subscription' was linked to my e-mail so I assume that's how they got me.) The ad encouraged me to take a 25 question 'free' IQ test from myIQ.com. I took the test and at the end you were required to pay $1 for the results. I Paypal'd the dollar and got my results. A week later I got notified that my Paypal account was charged $29.99 for a 'subscription' to myIQ.com. I immediately notified myIQ (via e-mail because they have no phone # listed....which is shady in and of itself) that I didn't want to subscribe and only wanted the results of the IQ test I took. I received a response (which seemed to be AI generated) quickly asking what e-mail I used and other identifying info. I gave both e-mails our family uses because I wasn't sure which (or even if I was on my e-mail) when the ad popped up. At any rate there is very, very fine print stating that after the '7 day trial' you are charged $29.99 a MONTH for a 'subscription'. After 2 weeks of a runaround from my IQ I contacted Paypal and filed a 'dispute' which they denied the next day (apparently based on the 'fine print' that my tired old eyes missed.) There are numerous complaints online of this happening to other people.

While the results of my IQ test were well above average I was apparently not smart enough to have fallen for this outfits deceptive business model.

My IQ.com and it's parent company Cerebrum IQ are baiting people and hooking them for recurring fees....many people complained that they had paid a few months of $29.99 before realizing it and couldn't get their money back. Don't let it happen to you.
 
Last edited:
Too bad you got duped finding out your IQ. Don't despair, IQ is a mostly useless metric just used for statistics. How quickly a person becomes aware of changes, rebounds and adjusts to circumstances is a better measure of IQ. This is much more important to sucess and survival.

You will recover from this contretemps with your intellect intact.
 
pbm said:
A few weeks ago I think was looking at e-mails or else the ad just popped up (I don't know which but my 'subscription' was linked to my e-mail so I assume that's how they got me.) The ad encouraged me to take a 25 question 'free' IQ test from myIQ.com. I took the test and at the end you were required to pay $1 for the results. I Paypal'd the dollar and got my results. A week later I got notified that my Paypal account was charged $29.99 for a 'subscription' to myIQ.com. I immediately notified myIQ (via e-mail because they have no phone # listed....which is shady in and of itself) that I didn't want to subscribe and only wanted the results of the IQ test I took. I received a response (which seemed to be AI generated) quickly asking what e-mail I used and other identifying info. I gave both e-mails our family uses because I wasn't sure which (or even if I was on my e-mail) when the ad popped up. At any rate there is very, very fine print stating that after the '7 day trial' you are charged $29.99 a MONTH for a 'subscription'. After 2 weeks of a runaround from my IQ I contacted Paypal and filed a 'dispute' which they denied the next day (apparently based on the 'fine print' that my tired old eyes missed.) There are numerous complaints online of this happening to other people.

While the results of my IQ test were well above average I was apparently not smart enough to have fallen for this outfits deceptive business model.

My IQ.com and it's parent company Cerebrum IQ are baiting people and hooking them for recurring fees....many people complained that they had paid a few months of $29.99 before realizing it and couldn't get their money back. Don't let it happen to you.
Click to expand...
so it was never really "free" if you had to pay $1 for results.
 
Well, I'm embarrassed to say that I had a similar experience.

My Grade 11 class (way back in the days of leaded gas and early electronic ignition) was tested for IQ, and I always wondered how reliable the test was.

This past spring, there was an online IQ test I tried, just on a lark. It seemed pretty good, with pattern matching and logic puzzles and so on (as opposed to the "If You Can Identify These 10 Historical Figures/Actors/Football Players etc. You Have An IQ Of 160!" clickbait things one sees).

Anyway, it was $4.99 or whatever to get the results from a company called Blossom Up. The result was within one point of my high school result, so probably fairly reliable (or as reliable n=2 can be). Actually it was one point higher. At this rate I'll be an intellectual heavyweight in a few hundred years. 😁

Blossom Up then sent me a daily series of inspirational and uplifting emails for month.

At some point I checked my CC statement, and found I was being charged a monthly fee for my "subscription". No doubt it was all legal, and I failed to read the fine print somewhere. I cancelled ASAP.

Big rationalization: I suppose it was cheaper than getting an IQ test administered by a licenced psychologist.

Anyway, I too failed the real-life IQ test. 😁
 
pbm said:
A few weeks ago I think was looking at e-mails or else the ad just popped up (I don't know which but my 'subscription' was linked to my e-mail so I assume that's how they got me.) The ad encouraged me to take a 25 question 'free' IQ test from myIQ.com. I took the test and at the end you were required to pay $1 for the results. I Paypal'd the dollar and got my results. A week later I got notified that my Paypal account was charged $29.99 for a 'subscription' to myIQ.com. I immediately notified myIQ (via e-mail because they have no phone # listed....which is shady in and of itself) that I didn't want to subscribe and only wanted the results of the IQ test I took. I received a response (which seemed to be AI generated) quickly asking what e-mail I used and other identifying info. I gave both e-mails our family uses because I wasn't sure which (or even if I was on my e-mail) when the ad popped up. At any rate there is very, very fine print stating that after the '7 day trial' you are charged $29.99 a MONTH for a 'subscription'. After 2 weeks of a runaround from my IQ I contacted Paypal and filed a 'dispute' which they denied the next day (apparently based on the 'fine print' that my tired old eyes missed.) There are numerous complaints online of this happening to other people.

While the results of my IQ test were well above average I was apparently not smart enough to have fallen for this outfits deceptive business model.

My IQ.com and it's parent company Cerebrum IQ are baiting people and hooking them for recurring fees....many people complained that they had paid a few months of $29.99 before realizing it and couldn't get their money back. Don't let it happen to you.
Click to expand...
I don't click on anything anymore
 
pbm said:
A few weeks ago I think was looking at e-mails or else the ad just popped up (I don't know which but my 'subscription' was linked to my e-mail so I assume that's how they got me.) The ad encouraged me to take a 25 question 'free' IQ test from myIQ.com. I took the test and at the end you were required to pay $1 for the results. I Paypal'd the dollar and got my results. A week later I got notified that my Paypal account was charged $29.99 for a 'subscription' to myIQ.com. I immediately notified myIQ (via e-mail because they have no phone # listed....which is shady in and of itself) that I didn't want to subscribe and only wanted the results of the IQ test I took. I received a response (which seemed to be AI generated) quickly asking what e-mail I used and other identifying info. I gave both e-mails our family uses because I wasn't sure which (or even if I was on my e-mail) when the ad popped up. At any rate there is very, very fine print stating that after the '7 day trial' you are charged $29.99 a MONTH for a 'subscription'. After 2 weeks of a runaround from my IQ I contacted Paypal and filed a 'dispute' which they denied the next day (apparently based on the 'fine print' that my tired old eyes missed.) There are numerous complaints online of this happening to other people.

While the results of my IQ test were well above average I was apparently not smart enough to have fallen for this outfits deceptive business model.

My IQ.com and it's parent company Cerebrum IQ are baiting people and hooking them for recurring fees....many people complained that they had paid a few months of $29.99 before realizing it and couldn't get their money back. Don't let it happen to you.
Click to expand...
This offer was the IQ test!
 
Number_35 said:
My Grade 11 class (way back in the days of leaded gas and early electronic ignition) was tested for IQ, and I always wondered how reliable the test was.
Click to expand...
I’ve been tested four times thus far in life. Once in grade school, once in high school, once in college, and once as part of a job application process (I got the job!). My results were always within 3 points of each other.

For the unaware, legitimate IQ exams are 90+ minutes, heavy on math, have lots of geometry transforms, and are administered under the purview of a doctor usually (but not all the time). These little online exams are not really legitimate.
 
IveBeenRued said:
I’ve been tested four times thus far in life. Once in grade school, once in high school, once in college, and once as part of a job application process (I got the job!). My results were always within 3 points of each other.

For the unaware, legitimate IQ exams are 90+ minutes, heavy on math, have lots of geometry transforms, and are administered under the purview of a doctor usually (but not all the time). These little online exams are not really legitimate.
Click to expand...
Agreed, and that's how I remember the testing in Grade 11.

It's interesting how similar the result from the short (20 minutes or so) online test was to the properly administered test all those years ago - but that could be coincidence. It's a small sample.

I also underwent some individual testing in Grade 3, and participated in province-wide testing in Grade 8. I don't know what my test results were.

I think a lot of this was driven by Cold War fear that we North American children were lagging behind the brilliant chess-playing Soviet children.
 
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