Education.com and my bank account #banking #thanksbofa

That feeling when you get your credit/debit card and you finally get your own bank account and can spend your own money on your own things…

…and then you realize you can’t manage your account to save your life and you run out of money before you can say “oops”.

 

That’s me.  And I’m bad at learning, so guess what?  Throughout my having a bank account, I haven’t learned how to keep anything under control.  So I’m having to stare at my $0.30-ish balance almost every week because I can’t Money.

Yay me?…

 

Then there’s education.com.  Oh my FUCKing god, no one over there even has a vision for better education (or so I’m told).  These guys deserve their own post, and if you want me to rat on them please say so.

 

So here’s my experience (and I’m going to end up ratting on them anyway):

 

Someone told me that Education.com is this horrible site that is incredibly lazy and has horrible games.  I was tasked with the task of trying out some of those games.

I found out I need to have a Plan to actually play those games.  So I made a plan, and started a free trial, after which I would need to pay 35 dollars each month to continue using the site.  Remember the 35 dollar part.

 

SO I played a few of their games.  And of course it was Pre-school up through 1st grade, so I played a lot of games with awkward animals and flat graphics.

Then I came across a game called “I Got Your Number”.

It was this game-show type Flash game, where a host (who was a dog), asked you math questions having to do with the hundreds chart (a chart with numbers from one to one hundred, ten numbers per line).  At first I thought the dog had a mustache, but then noticed that it kept flickering out of existence during some frames of the dog’s animations.  Then I realized it actually looked a lot like teeth.  Then I realized it actually was the host’s teeth, and the animators completely screwed up on the layering, and set the teeth to appear outside the dog’s mouth!  It looked awful.

 

So I played a few more games then gave up.  I responded to the challenger saying that it sucked, cancelled the trial and completely forgot about it.

Now pay attention.

 

Fast forward a week or so.  Note that I hadn’t actually heard anything from education.com, except the sad “are you leaving?” email that I got when I told it I was leaving.

 

In fact, here’s part of it:

—

Hello,

Thanks for giving Brainzy [the game] a try. We’re writing to confirm that you’ve successfully canceled your free trial and your credit card will not be charged.

—

Well, they lied, because my bank account got hit by the monthly payment from the Plan that they didn’t actually cancel.  Appearently they didn’t get the memo that when you cancel a plan, you’re not supposed to wait past the first charge to actually get to canceling it!!

 

I had less than a dollar remaining on my bank account.  Brainzy’s plan costs 35 dollars per charge.  Into debt I go!

 

And then even farther into debt I get shoved because the bank has this dumb, dumb, DUMB overdraft fee.

 

An overdraft fee is something banks have because they can’t figure out that keeping money in bank accounts is how professionals survive in the first place.

A week after going into a negative balance, the bank charges you about 20 dollars. To your bank account.  So now it’s even harder to get out of the red, and you’re left screaming at the bank clerk (I didn’t scream at the bank clerk, but I WANTED to).

 

I am lucky, however, as I have BillGuard, and have already started disputing with Education.com over the charge.

I don’t think I explained it very well to them though, as I just said “I forgot to cancel my plan.”, because I hadn’t actually checked because I thought people have decency.

 

Needless to say, I hate everything right now.