Slight of hand marketing – Marketing that makes you believe one thing when the reality is something different.

As I have asserted many times before, I think that the identity theft problem in America is bad, but not as bad as these identity theft companies are making it out to be. I have also asserted that the best way to fight identity theft is to monitor your credit report for unusual activity so that you can stop it dead in its tracks. If you want the best protection, you freeze your credit files so that no one can get into them. It would be a highly unusual situation that someone would give you credit without checking your credit reports first.

Most of these companies are offering $1,000,000 guarantees for any out of pocket expenses. Let’s look at it for a second. What is the real cost to someone who has their identity stolen? It is the loss of time and the loss of income from missing time at work. That is the real loss. Beyond those real losses, for you to have a large enough problem that would warrant tens of thousands of dollars in cost, the identity theft would have had to be ongoing for years. Once again, if you were monitoring your credit reports, highly unlikely that would occur.

Let’s take a look at the marketing.

Example 1

An agent for the company comes on to talk about a serious identity theft problem one client had who called in. The client of the ID theft company had his wallet stolen out of his car and someone made unauthorized charges using the credit cards. Of course, the company fixed that problem for him.

Well I would hope so! There is no liability minus a maximum of $50 for unauthorized charges on a credit card. It is a matter of picking up a phone and reporting the fraudulent charge to the credit card company.

Example 2

It is a law enforcement agent talking about his identity theft nightmare. It is significant to use a law enforcement agent because of their experience with crime. He said that for years he watched unusual things pop up on his credit report. Then he got this sinking feeling that something had happened – you think? You don’t need to pay an identity theft company money to use common sense. If you see unusual things on your credit report, investigate it! There is a high probability that something could be occurring.

He claims that his life is over. Well, not really. You can get the identity theft cleared up. It will take some work. Even if you let one of these identity theft companies handle it, you would still be investing a great amount of time.

Then the spokesman for the ID theft company comes on and says, “He join ID theft company and we fixed his problem.” Which problem would he be referring to? Is it the guy’s current problem or problems going forward? Then the commercial talks about the 1 million dollar service guarantee.

Well, if the individual had read the terms and conditions agreement, he would have found out that the million dollar service guarantee doesn’t begin until after he joins and it is for any ID theft going forward. In other words, the guarantee doesn’t apply to the current problem. It is unclear as to if they would help in any way on current problems. The sleight of hand marketing makes it look like they will just fix everything. .

The he says, if this could happen to me (because he was aware and in law enforcement), it could happen to anyone. The reality is that it is going to happen to anyone who idly sits by and watches errors pop up on a credit report and doesn’t do anything about it.

Then you really have to be careful with this particular million dollar guarantee because the guarantee might not be valid if you violate section 4 of the agreement.

“You will not recklessly disclose or publish your Social Security number or any other Personal Information to those that would reasonably be expected to improperly use or disclose that Personal Information such as by way of example in response to “phishing” scams, unsolicited emails or pop-up messages seeking disclosure of Personal Information.”

“Reasonable” to the ID theft company might not be reasonable to you. People make mistakes all of the time by giving out their information. Well that wouldn’t be reasonable to the ID Theft company which voids the guarantee. That looks like an out to me.

These identity theft companies are sensational marketers and work to scare you into believing that you have to sign up to for their service to be safe. Most of this is over marketing and not valid.

Tags: Bob Brooks, Identity Theft, sleight of hand marketing, social security number