When Wizards are Misguided

It is not often that a wizard makes a poor choice. Obi-Wan Kenobi, who some called that crazy old wizard, may have appeared to make a poor choice when he fought Darth Vader only to be destroyed. However, he became immortal, and helped Luke the entire time. I bet Vader was sad that he had done that, thereby making this a great decision by a wizard.

I however, had a different experience with a wizard. The wizard in question is shown here:



He may look innocent enough, and it would appear that he had good intentions. However you will quickly understand that this wizard made a poor choice. He did however make good on this later.

In June of 2009, I placed a call to this wizard in question. He sent one of his pupils out to meet with me and discuss all of my wizarding needs. We looked at three particular places in my house where a wizard of his caliber was required, and we reached an agreed price. As part of his wizarding work, he would also leave me with an opportunity to make some of my recently spent funds back. Through an agency that the head wizard himself endorsed, MyFreeTravel, we could send in $100 worth of receipts from the grocery store of our choice each month, and we would receive a $25 Visa gift card. I agreed, and the wizarding went off without a hitch (it truely was quite a wizarding session, with the windows being fully removed in a matter of minutes).

Now we move ahead a month or so. Time to register with MyFreeTravel to get my grocery rebates. As part of the registration process, one must send in some information such as the store you will shop at, address, etc. You also send in a $9.95 registration fee, which will be reimbursed after your first month of successful participation (this was explained to me that in order for the agency to make money, they had to have people participating. If you just mail in your info and never do it, it costs them money to make the account, process your papers, but then the grocery store will not pay them if you dont shop there. Seems fair.)

So, in August of 2009, I successfully signed up, and beginning in September of 2009, we would commence shopping at out newly designated shopatorium, SuperG. As if naming your store Giant does not imply the size of the footprint alone, this store is a Super Giant. Even bigger than giant. Huge.

September of 2009 comes, and we easily spend out $100 at SuperG. All receipts were collected, mailed in, and posted to their website. Things are looking good. October continues in the same fashion, with more than $100 spent, and receipts mailed. Again, this is posted on MyFreeTravel's website. At this point, I have not received my first gift card, but it did say that it can take 6-8 weeks for your first one to arrive, then you would get them in 4-6 weeks afterwards.

Now we are well into November, still no signs of a gift card. I contact MyFreeTravel, and they inform me that they are having some processing problems, and not to worry. They will get these gift cards out soon. OK, so we continue spending at SuperG.

Now it is December, still no signs of gift cards. Also, at this point, they have not acknowledged my November receipts. This doesn't seem good. Time to contact them again. This time, I do not receive an answer via email. So we try a phone call. After waiting, literally more than an hour, I speak to someone. This person tells me that they will have to get back to me. I do not like where this is going.

One week passes, no word back. I call again, wait again, and am told that the person I spoke to is not in and I would need to call back. I began to explain how this was not acceptable, and the person just hung up. This is definitely not looking good.

It is at this point that I contact the Wizard again. Time to find out if I am the only one having trouble. From the sounds of it, there were others having trouble. A Wizarding representative tells me they will look into the matter and get back to me. So, we continue waiting.

End of December rolls around, and now we reach a new low point. The website tracking these rebates has disappeared and left behind only a text document posted on a blank website saying that they could no longer fulfill any rebates submitted after December 1 2009. This would make me think that I should at least be receiving 3 rebates, and then we could figure out what happens. I contacted the Wizard again, and received a message that they would be attempting to solve this in the near future. I also then filed a report with the Illinois Attorney General's office (this was a first for me, but the form was easy). I also filled out a claim on the BBB website. If you look them up now, they have a rating of F. Pretty hilarious.

If you did a google search this afternoon for MyFreeTravel, you will see that there are numerous folks with the same problem that I have. The Wizard was not the only one who vouched for this company, and the Wizard would not be the only one taking a hit on this one.

In February of 2010, the Wizard himself mails a letter to those involved in this scam. He apologized for what happened, said that it was his decision to work with this promotion, and one he regretted. As a result, he would offer us $500 towards a future project if we agreed to free them from any future litigation. You could also get a $50 Visa gift card, again freeing them from blame.

Hard to imagine that the Wizard could not utter some enchantment to force MyFreeTravel into handing over the loot. It is also hard to imagine how much money these people may have walked off with. Thinking of not only the $10 that the participants mailed in, but also the money that was sent to them by Windowizards to run the promotion, the money sent to them by grocery stores to include them in the choices, and the gift cards that may or may not have been purchased. It seems like a lot of money that just went missing. The AG's office has said that they are pursuing them, but that it appears as though the company is bankrupt, and had no funds to seize to distribute to those who were hosed.

In the end, we needed a new front door and storm door, so we had $500 to use towards this door. I also squeezed the Wizard a little more and got a discount on the whole order.

So the lesson, when I saw that there was a registration fee it was probably time to get the Wizard involved. The deal was not as advertised, and should have been suspicious right there. If any of you come across a similar sounding offer, I would avoid it. There have been multiple processors doing this, and all have gone belly up in the last few years, taking the money with them. Wizards make mistakes too.