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No1Reviews.com >> Background Check Sites >> National Alert Registry Review |
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National Alert Registry Review
Membership Costs
Features:
Editor's Verdict: The National Alert Registry offers you almost instantaneous access to reports of any and all registered sex offenders living in your local vicinity. And it's free. Sort of. The website itself somehow manages to be both reassuring and alarming at the same time. The name sounds very official and the site itself feels as wholesome and American as George Washington sharing his apple pie with Big Bird whilst watching reruns of Oprah on stolen cable. But the message it conveys is disturbing - are you afraid that marauding sex perverts might be lurking somewhere in your neighbourhood, waiting to strike? Well, you should be! So, naturally, you fill in the simple form - there are only two boxes - required to conduct your "free search", because you feel it's your duty as a parent and as an American. Then you get your search results, right? Nope. Then you get another form, a more detailed form, at the bottom of which you have to enter your credit card details. Wait a second - didn't they say this was "free"? Well, yes, it is free, except for the $10 activation fee, obviously. Maybe that's not so unreasonable, you think, given the benefits. So you continue to fill out the form. But hang on, what's this - two thirds of the way down the form (just far enough down that you might not be paying full attention) is a yes/no tick box asking you whether you want to upgrade your membership for more detailed reports and information. The box is defaulted to "yes". And whilst the $10 activation fee is a one-off expense, the extra five bucks this costs is billable monthly. A lot of people will spot this, of course, and click on "no" instead, but a lot of people won't. Then, at the end of the month, when your credit card bill appears in the mailbox, you'll wonder why there's an extra five bucks going to the National Alert Registry instead of just the ten you knew about. Or maybe you won't notice the first time around, after all it's only five bucks. Maybe you won't notice until the end of the quarter when you'll be down $20 in addition to the initial $10 activation fee you paid for your free search. At which point, maybe you decide to cancel your membership. Or at least you'll try. There are customer support email and phone lines, but allegedly it's quite difficult to get a straight answer out of them. And so it goes. This is how a lot of sneaky companies on the web make their money - not by breaking the law, not by fraud in any actionable sense, just through sleight of hand. And across the country enough people don't spot it for long enough so that they make a lot of money. And all because you wanted a free sex offender report so you could look out for your family's safety. On the plus side, there is a sample report available to view, but it's not very big. Signing up also gets you a free Child ID kit, which is basically a form you fill out containing all the details the FBI will need if your child is kidnapped. Bear in mind though, that this is basically just a blank form for information - mostly stuff you could probably tell the Feds yourself - and it's only free in the sense that you have to pay the $10 activation fee to get it. Literally scaring up business by preying on people's fear of sex offenders is one thing, claiming it to be "free" and then demanding first an activation charge and then, if you're not sharp enough to spot the trick, a monthly fee is another. There are a lot of background checking sites that, whilst they charge for some services, offer details of sex offenders living in your locality for free. Many of these are listed in our top ten, so we suggest you go to them instead.
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