my name is robert meyer. i'm a professor of marketing at the wharton school of university write served on the faculty since 1990. throughout my career my search has focused on the study of consumer decision-making particularly the psychological processes that lead consumers to adopt novel goods and services. in addition to my research i spent the past 27 years teaching the practice of marketing at the graduate, undergraduate and the executive levels. i was invited to offer testimony on a post-transactional marketing methods used by firms to sell subscription memberships on third-party benefit programs online. i originally became familiar with these practices while serving as an expert in a class action suit involving a direct marketing company in 2007 and more recently while serving as an expert for the iowa attorney general's office. my overall machine is threefold. -- opinion is threefold. they do not constitute marketing as practiced by ethical businesses and is taught in major schools of management. in al

professor robert meyer, wharton school university of pennsylvania. we have done a lot of work on all of this. mr. france, let me go to you first if i might and pull that microphone up. first of all of the like to thank you four, as the senator did for your service to our country, for your bravery, turning down the $12,000. >> it was actually 13. [laughter] >> okay. you are a super hero plus. now i think we have got to defend you from some scams and we are going to. in your testimony, you made the point that when you made a purchase on the web site called -- you got automatically assigned up in a so-called membership club called value max emken value max started charging you $19.99 a month, is that correct? >> that is correct, sir. that would seem fair. starting with you mr. france, forget my question. make a statement. >> okay, sir. >> questions will follow. i do this quite frequently. [laughter] >> it is your show, sir. >> that is true. [laughter] >> first of all i would like to thank you chairman rockefeller and ranking member hutchinson for inviti