Back in college, when Facebook was still pretty new, I met this fairly attractive girl who told me she put horseback riding as one of her interests, even though she doesn't ride.

When guys would approach her out of the blue and casually move the conversation into horseback riding, she knew that had been pre-stalking her on Facebook.

I always thought that was a rather clever social hack.

So I went through their checkout process, and up until the credit card stage there is zero indication that it's a membership site (I read everything on every page).

I've uploaded the credit card section here:

http://i.imgur.com/3di93.png

It says you'll be billed month per month on the right hand side under the VIP membership program, but I think it's pretty clear that the page is engineered to be misleading. It looks like a standard upsell, not a mandatory part of the purchase.

They're relying on people clicking the accept terms and conditions check box without realizing that it's signing them up for the membership, i.e. it's the terms and conditions of the program, not the site in general.

Terms and conditions boxes are common in the checkout process and nobody gives them a second thought. I'm not sure I would have caught this one if I went in naively.

Clearly unethical, IMO.

Don't ask for a refund, go to your bank or CC company and charge back the 6 months. That'll hit them where it hurts. Little known fact about chargebacks: the merchant pays an administration fee, typically $20 to $50. Per charge!

That is why the smarter scammers refund to everybody who complains, not refunding is plain dumb. This scam has been around for a long time, usually it's adult companies that sell you a 'free' membership with an age verification which comes with a pack of subscriptions tacked on for other stuff that you will never use.

This practice of selling unsuspecting consumers a subscription with auto-renew when they think they're doing a one time transaction needs to be stamped out.

I worked in finance (as a trader). And I left. But I loved it. Most people didn't, but I did; I found the history and the mission captivating and I was not shy about showing that passion.

I left because they fired my charismatic manager and the firm's culture grew neurotic as the scandals and random terminations piled on. I saw the over-worked, sociopathic, misanthropic archetypes. But I saw the same personalities in Silicon Valley.

The capital markets are a critical piece of our modern world. We're still figuring out how these fascinatingly complicated machines work - they act differently in different cultures, in different sentiments, and under different geopolitical constraints. When they work...it's magical. The philosophical dimension of a weighted democracy doing better what kings and emperors through antiquity failed to do is a powerfully individualist statement. And there is so much more that has to be done. There are literally not enough hours in a lifetime of lifetimes to see all the implications and interactions and human potential waiting to be unlocked.

Do I sound like a crackhead? Probably. But I love the idea of taking what is not understood, considered "random" or "exogenous", and building something to bring it from the unknown to the known. I understand the historical struggle these resource allocation machines (how I think of them) have faced and why we need people to carry the flag, even if it means being hated and misunderstood by the public.

A lot of people go into finance for the wrong reasons. I feel sorry for them. A lot of them are held there by a fear, not of losing the cash flow, but of losing the prestige or business card. These people need help, not derision. But concluding the entire industry is corrupt is like looking at JustFabulous and a handful of overworked founders and concluding Silicon Valley a blight on humanity.

P.S. I don't expect a huge salary just for working at a bank. But if I'm coming up with original ideas, I will do the calculation of what I could earn if I went out on my own, and if the bank figure doesn't line up with that figure (it didn't) it makes sense to arbitrage. This is classic entrepreneurship and there is nothing more sinister about JPMorgan having to compete with a star player launching their own fund than there is Google having to pay out to top performers who may otherwise do well launching a start-up.

I can only imagine that "pick up artists" are even lower down on the list of people that girls want to talk to than facebook stalkers are.