Article View: misc.consumers
Article #5790Spam and scam from freedvds.com!
From: Keith Jones
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 02:38
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 02:38
41 lines
3330 bytes
3330 bytes
Spam and scam from freedvds.com! I saw some spam posted here in this newsgroup for freedvds.com and decided to check it out. Sounded too good to be true at first, but then their approach sounded plausible: participate in their advertisers' deals, get points for that, then apply your points towards a DVD. Earn enough points and get a free DVD, including free shipping. I felt I had nothing to lose except time. It turns out that is all I lost, but I have gained nothing either (except experience). Read on... The DVD I wanted required 650 points and I put that in my shopping cart, then proceded to apply for a credit card which would give me 800 points. The website instructions indicated that I would get the points in about a week. The credit card came within 2 weeks, but no points were credited to my account. Then after 3 weeks, I complained to their customer support dept. and was told I should allow AT LEAST 3 WEEKS (not the 1 they had claimed before), and then I had to either forward the bank's welcome email (which I had not received) or FAX the actual welcome letter and credit card to them. Going to Kinkos and FAXing 3 pages would cost me at least $5 (for a FREE DVD? No!). I complained that this was unreasonable since it was their screwup, not mine, but got no response. Eventually, after about 6 weeks, I finally got the confirmation email from the bank, which I had to forward on to the customer support people at freedvds.com. After some time they credited my account, but guess what? After all this time, the "price" of the DVD I wanted has now gone up. It is now 850 points, so I am just 50 points shy. The stalling, the manipulation of point values -- I say it all points to fraud that is obvious to us as consumers, but extremely hard to prove in court. And of course, if you don't actually lose any money, it may not technically constitue fraud. They will, of course, have great explanations about how all this was beyond their control and/or just bad luck, etc. Don't believe them! Tell your friends to stay away -- it's a rip-off site. -- you may email me at o_r_i_o_n_w_a at yahoo*+dot+*com
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arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!wn13feed!wn12feed!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mailShow Full Headers
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X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 106595,7fd840583096ae30,start X-Google-Attributes: gid106595,public X-Google-Thread: 107518,7fd840583096ae30,start X-Google-Attributes: gid107518,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-19 19:38:36 PST Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!wn13feed!wn12feed!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3EC995F1.53F999CD@student.unspam.moc> From: Keith Jones <spam360@student.unspam.moc> Organization: The University of whereever X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: misc.consumers,ba.consumers Subject: Spam and scam from freedvds.com! Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 43 NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.240.101.196 X-Complaints-To: abuse@attbi.com X-Trace: rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net 1053398316 12.240.101.196 (Tue, 20 May 2003 02:38:36 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 02:38:36 GMT Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 02:38:36 GMT