I recently wrote about how Nathan was given the opportunity to sign up for some sort of  membership on Amazon in order to save shipping costs on an item he had ordered.  After I gave him permission I then showed him how to make sure he canceled the membership within the alloted time so that he would not get charged.  (See blog entry:  Keeping Good Records)

What I missed in all of this was Ryan.  Turns out, when going through my credit card bill last night, I noticed a charge for $59.95.  Apparently when Ryan was signing up for the New Year’s Resolution Run (yes, I gave him my credit card so he could do it himself), he also signed himself up for a membership.  Only he didn’t realize it.  In fact, he was adamant that he didn’t sign up for anything other than the race.  And I believe him.  These memberships sign-ups can be stealthy.

So after going over the importance of reading everything carefully, he agreed he’d be more careful.  But in order to underscore how careful he would be in the future, I told him that if we couldn’t get the charges reversed, he would be responsible for the $59.95.  I was pretty sure it was reversible, but was using this as an opportunity for this incident to mean something to him so that next time, he’d be much more careful.  As expected, he wasn’t very happy about that.

I did get the charges reversed and Ryan is relieved.   So he  just signed up online to run the Shamrock Half-Marathon.   I watched him go through the process slowly and deliberately.  I’m pretty sure there was no membership involved…