by El Plumber (admin) on October 2, 2009
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We get a LOT of visitors here at The Plumber who ran into one of those fake blogs and fake news sites that keep sprouting up all over the internet. The Google Biz Kit and Google Adworks and Google Fortune sites all appear to be variations on the Google Treasure Chest scam that was investigated and settled with the FTC earlier this year.
Hopefully you had the luck to find a site or a post or a REAL news story exposing these types of products for what they really are. False advertising, false promises, and false hope that you only need to pay $1.97 or $3.87 for a kit that lets you make money at home with Google.
However, many are taken in by these people. What should you do about it? Call and cancel? Call the police? Hire a fraud lawyer and start a class action lawsuit? While we are not consumer lawyers here at the Electron Plumber nor do we claim to be, here are our suggestions:
- Don’t feel bad! You have experienced the Internet equivalent of a mugging. You want to work at home, make some money online, other people are doing it, why not you? So you sign up, since it’s only $2 or $3 right? Then BAM, you start getting hit with recurring charges over and over on your credit card or debit card, odd charges with funny names like Search Payday or Health Biz Online for $69.87 or $78.64. then Grant Searcher for $29.95, and a couple others.
- What do you do next? Many people report that when they call to get a refund, they are told no, can’t get through, or worse yet, told they have canceled and still get charged anyway. Some can “cancel” one of the charges at that number, but cannot get a refund since technically you received the “product” that you signed up for, despite the fact you were never told it was $79.87 + $29.47 + $9.95 A MONTH in the first place. Typically the person you call will be a third party answering service. Yell at them all you want, if they are not authorized to give refunds you aren’t going to get far. You can dispute the charges but if you used a Debit Card you do not have much recourse here. They took your money, they have proof that you went to their website and entered your card number, and with most debit cards it’s much harder to dispute charges. The bank views the transaction as if you wrote the vendor a check.
- You can certainly report them to the authorities like the FTC, the ICCC, and your local Attorney Generals office, but so what? They’re trying to catch killers and rapists and money launderers and mobsters and big time scammers. They likely do not have the time or resources to go after someone who may or may not have tricked you out of $75 on your credit card number that you willingly gave them. And if they do, these guys are slippery. The names and address of the companies running these Google Money scams keep disappearing and reappearing with different names in different states every month or so. This is how they operate. They keep the amount they take from your account low, under $100 typically in the hopes that you will just give up and get on with your life rather than try to go after them. They skirt the edge of the law and so far seem to be getting away with it for the most part.
- Protect your identity! While we cannot lump every Google Biz Kit type scam into one basket, the possibility certainly exists that the information you gave to these people will not be safe and that your credit card and information might be used to steal your identity. Report your card lost or stolen and use a ID Theft monitoring service to keep an eye on all your credit accounts, at least for a few months. Check out our report on what makes Experian the Best ID Theft Protection services.
- Hire a fraud lawyer and try to start a class action lawsuit. There are lawyers who specialize in consumer fraud cases who would love to take down one of these Google Money types. They get lots in fees, the lead plaintiff gets a nice big cut, everyone else gets $5 and the Google Money scammers get bankrupt. So you really want to be the lead plaintiff here and not just another person who gets $5.
And if you do go the fraud lawsuit route, please stop back and let us know how it goes.
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by El Plumber (admin) on September 30, 2009
And as a follow up from Part One of the Google Biz Kit article here is the second half of Jack Dalton’s report of what he found inside the Google Biz Kit:
Yesterday, I promised a follow-up comment on the continuity sites themselves. I only checked up on one, the $60 site with only only a week-long preview, yet what I found baffled me. It was basically an e-book, repackaged as a website, on using Google Adsense to sell affiliate products. This book was written for beginners, taking a newbie from “what is an affiliate sale?” through “how to track profitability on a spread sheet.” If it had a weakness it was dismissing some of the more sophisticated strategies and recommending that the reader not worry about them. But this might also be a strength. The course would have to be three times as long without this policy.
So what baffled me? This is a well written course, easily on a par with courses selling for $47 to $97. It could not have been created by the same mind which came up with such a blatant scam to sell it. At first, I thought that this was a case of an affiliate run amok. But the site itself offered no affiliate opportunity. “Curiouser and curiouser!”
Doing some more research on the course URL, I found a website which is basically a message board for complaints concerning scams. Strangely enough, the page dedicated to this one had a sponsored link to the login page of the web site for which I have a trial. Mind you, this is not a link to the sales page, but to the login page, which contains no link anywhere to the offer. This guy has gotten his links mixed up and is actually paying for clicks which can never lead to a sale!
Further down the complaint page, someone had pasted a copy of their welcome e-mail, which looked just like mine, but the URLs were different. But what was telling was that the username and password to the main site was the same! Of course, I tried to log onto the alternate URL. This site had an intermediate screen asking me to give an e-mail address and set up a unique username and password. It caught me out as not being that site’s customer when it did not recognize my e-mail. Contrast this with the site I received, which lets me in via the initial information. These sites can’t have the same owners or they would both be fixed.
(Now, the astute might use this hint to find a way to access a very good course for free before the hole gets plugged in the site I received, but you didn’t hear any pass words or URLs from me! Just do the right searches and you should find a way in.)
So what do I think this scam is? Someone (Let’s call him “the Master-Scammer”) obtained a PLR product which was pretty good. He repackaged it as a “turnkey business” complete with credit card acceptance, membership sites, and continuity. Unfortunately, it was also complete with a very slimy marketing campaign. He probably sold about 10 of them to make himself a quick $20,000 without warning his customers of the fulfillment nightmare they were setting themselves up for.
Is what the customers of this “Master-Scammer” are doing illegal? Absolutely. Did they know it? Probably not. They failed to accomplish their due diligence, and some of them may even serve jail time. Lesson? Learn the laws, conduct a business you understand, and remember that the lure of “easy money” is probably too good to be true.
I have to say Jack, I’ve had a couple of theories about where all these tens of Google Kit scam sites are coming from and what you’ve said above certainly fits the bill of one of my top thoughts.
My theories are:
- What you stated above, that someone is selling a complete Get Rich Quick Selling Google Kits turnkey package and they people buying them will be in for a treat when the FTC gets around to them.
- That a couple of super affiliates are just rotating a number of different Google type offers around over and over again to try and keep the people from realizing it’s the same thing in a different package and getting keen on the scam.
- There are people on various sketchy forums like BlackHatWorld joking with their buddies about how much money they’ve taken from poor unsuspecting folks by getting them to sign up for these Google Biz Kits. Then lots of other people chime in with scripts and pre-built sites on how to make their own scam.
- Some people make a living following the money and copying all the moves of super affiliates. If you see someone spending $10000 a day advertising something for days on end on the front pages of FoxNews.com or ABC.com or other big media sites, they just copy their site as closely as possible and start advertising themselves, thinking that it must be working if they had spent so much on advertising it.
I honestly think it’s a combination of all of them, which is why there are SO MANY of these damn fake blogs and fake news sites promoting these hidden monthly charge get rich quick schemes.
Anyone have any other ideas or further proof about someone selling turnkey Google Money type sites?
by El Plumber (admin) on September 27, 2009
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We get some darn good comments here at the Electron Plumber from people sharing their research into one offer or another and if it’s worthwhile or a rip-off. And sometimes they are so good that they deserve to be seen by more than the people reading the comments on that one post.
We received this from Jack Dalton of SongConnect.net about his experience on our Google Adwork Scam post with one of the Google Biz Kit sites that tries to sign you up for 3 or more other monthly charges in the hopes that you will not cancel all of them in time. Any offer or site which would bill you monthly is called a “continuity program” in the internet marketing business.
We thought his story too good not to share:
I knew it was a scam when I saw that all the supposed links to supporting information went instead to the sign-up form. And I still signed up for it. Why? I had $9 left on a pre-paid card that’s expiring in a week. They only wanted 99 cents of this “use it or lose it fund” that I don’t want to give to the card issuer, or (worse) the government. So I thought I’d find out what the ad meant by “post several small text advertisements on websites in the Google network. These ads will showcase products that are currently part of the Google Adwords system.”
Before clicking “ok” I was given the option to uncheck a box signing up for a continuity program. Then, at the bottom of the next page was a form to sign up for another $2.95 shipping charge on top of the $.99 and incur yet another continuity program. I think that was the “$80 lighter” one. But still, I had the choice to bypass that one. Finally, they told me I had trials to 3 programs totaling $85 in continuity which had already started. One was a 7 day trial, one was a 14 day trial, and the other was a 21 day trial. Talk about a confusing array of continuity to stop! And this was true “hidden continuity,” not the optional ones I had declined.
I’ll log on to see what these contain. (After all, they’re “free.” ) But such is the beauty of a prepaid card expiring in 4 days. They will never see a dime of that continuity, even if I don’t get around to canceling! And the 99 cents? If they do ship a physical product, they will lose money on that as well! (They must get continuity payments from a high enough percentage of clients to cover the losses from such as I.)
But I will give them this much credit. They are relentless in their pursuit of the sale. And who knows? Maybe the continuity programs contain enough value that some might opt to keep them. I’ll keep you posted on that if I find my way back to this blog.
So I haven’t personally seen the Google Biz Kit – Google Adworks – Google Fortune – Google Whatever offer he’s talking about, as there are hundreds of them out there now, but it should sound very familiar to anyone who frequents this site.
Come back tomorrow for the second half of Jack’s report on what he found inside the site he signed up for. It’s really informative!
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by El Plumber (admin) on September 22, 2009
[ad] I keep running into blogs claiming that Chitika is better than Adsense, that as soon as they switched from Google Adsense to Chitika, their earnings doubled or tripled or some other such unsubstantiated claim.
What is important to note in all these claims is that as of today, September 22nd, 2009, Chitika offers referrers 10% of their referrals ad revenue for 15 months, while Adsense offers absolutely nothing, nada, zip, for referrals. What does that mean to you trying to be an educated Publisher looking for an Ad network to use on your site? Be skeptical of claims made by people who earn a referral fee. We should decide for oneself if Chitika is better or worse than Adsense by TESTING rather than taking some possibly biased webmaster’s opinion.
We’ve tried Chitika on a couple of pages on a site or two and so far have not been particularly impressed with the results, especially compared to Adsense. I can certainly see sites that have been Smart Priced by Adsense and getting in the $0.01 to $0.03 a click range doing better with Chitika, but if you are getting real Adsense clicks, I can not see Chitika beating Google in a head to head contest.
So we decided to do a little experiment. We’re taking one of our niche sites that deals in consumer products that receive traffic almost exclusively from search engines, with close to 92% of the traffic coming from search queries and the rest from direct links and returning visitors. Consumer type products is what many say Chitika is best at and seemed like a better choice than any of our other sites.
We will run one month of Chitika Premium Ads starting yesterday September 21st, two of their largest ad blocks per page, one at the top of each post right below the title bar and one at the bottom of each post, both for a full week. Then we switch to Adsense with two of their largest Text Block ads. The product on the site aren’t particularly seasonal, but the Christmas rush skews everything, so running one week of Chitika from September 21-September 27 then Adsense from September 28-October 4 then switching back again a couple of times running up to the week before Thanksgiving should be fairly equal. Same exact content, about 160 different articles pulling in around 4000 unique visitors for about 9000 page views per month. The content will continue to grow, but switching weeks will make sure it stays close to even. I don’t know enough about statistics to know if that will be a statistically significant sample, but it’s certainly better than nothing.
As I don’t think either Chitika or Adsense particularly likes anyone giving exact numbers from either of their programs, we’ll report the results in respect to each other as a ratio. For every $10 made with Chitika we earned $x with Adsense.
Yeah yeah, we could always use BOTH Chitika and Adsense side by side, but honestly there is a fine line between having a useful site with ads and one that is painfully over monetized. If Adsense is head and shoulders above Chitika or vice versa, you’d be better off maximize your exposure on the winner, right?
Stay Tuned!
by El Plumber (admin) on September 17, 2009
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With all the Google Fortune and Acai Berry and Tooth Whitening “free trial” scams being intensely advertised all over the internet, it’s hard to tell truth from fiction. I’ve seen tons of sites recently touting this “free” thing or that “free*” thing, sometimes with an * and sometimes without, depending on how close the advertiser wants to skirt the already loose rules for what constitutes “free”
Yeah, the rules on the word “free” are surprisingly squishy, given the fact that the last time the FTC really officially said anything on the term “free” was back in 1971. It mostly had to do with how one would represent Free in the context of Buy 1 get 1 Free deals and the like. They didn’t have much ordering things to be shipped, negative option offers, let along the concept of what the internet would become. Back then if you wanted something, you had to find a store that had it and buy it.
We couldn’t find any FTC documents or rules regarding the charging of exorbatant “shipping” and “handling” fees for downloadable content, and very little concerning the use of hidden negative option techniques. For the most part, this section from the FTC guidelines on Negative Options sums it up:
Negative option marketing can pose serious financial risks to consumers if appropriate disclosures are not made and consumers are billed for goods or services without their consent. The FTC staff has issued a report presenting five marketing principles for avoiding deception in negative option offers on the Internet, which poses unique issues not present in print or telephone marketing…
The five principles address:
- Disclosing material terms in an understandable manner, without making them unnecessarily long or inconsistent;
- Making the disclosures clear and conspicuous by placing them where consumers are likely to look on Web pages, by labeling disclosures (and links to them) to indicate their importance and relevance, and by using easy-to-read fonts and colors;
- Disclosing the offer’s material terms before the consumer incurs a financial obligation;
- Obtaining consumers’ affirmative consent to the offer by, for example, having them click “I Agree” and without relying on pre-checked boxes; and
- Not impeding the effective operation of promised cancellation procedures and honoring cancellation requests that comply with such procedures.
So there you have the five Commandments from the FTC regarding Negative Option Marketing. Lets paraphrase them:
- Terms must be CLEARLY spelled out.
- Terms must be placed where people will see them and marked as important.
- Terms must be disclosed BEFORE charging people.
- Consent must be GIVEN by checking a box at the least, not automatically checked.
- Cancellation procedures must be available as stated.
Any offer must follow these five procedures at the very least. Note there are no requirements on length of trial time, cost, and the like. If you want to sell a Make Money with Google ebook to people for a 24 hour trial for $1, then whack them for $500 exactly 24 hours of them signing up and offering no refunds, that is within your rights as a business in the United States. So long as everything is clearly spelled out in a manner that meets the five rules above.
The problem comes where these rules get mushy. Is the bottom of a web page somewhere people will see them? What about on the left just below the fold? Is checking a box saying “I read the terms and conditions” sufficient or should you spell out the true cost next to the box.
The answer is in another FTC document regarding Clear and Conspicuous disclosures.
Disclosures that are required to prevent deception or to provide consumers material
information about a transaction must be presented clearly and conspicuously.
Whether a disclosure meets this standard is measured by its performance that is,
how consumers actually perceive and understand the disclosure within the context of
the entire ad. The key is the overall net impression of the ad that is, whether the
claims consumers take from the ad are truthful and substantiated.
In reviewing their online ads, advertisers should adopt the perspective of a reasonable
consumer. They also should assume that consumers don’t read an entire Web site,
just as they don’t read every word on a printed page. In addition, it is important for
advertisers to draw attention to the disclosure. Making the disclosure available some-
where in the ad so that consumers who are looking for the information might find it
doesn’t meet the clear and conspicuous standard.
Translation: Would a reasonable consumer (say, your Grandmother) understand she was signing up for a recurring charge? If not, your site is breaking the rules.
The problem is, the FTC has their hands full. They have far more pressing problems than the $69.97 Google Fortune tricked out of you. As long as these guys keep moving, the FTC is unlikely to expend more than some token resources to catch a small handful of them.
This explains why you see so many of these “Free Trial Offers” for Google Biz Kits and Acai and Reveritrol and Government Grants and everything else. Pull $75 out of 20,000 wallets and you’ve just made a cool $1.5 MILLION dollars. Advertise everywhere, get 1000 signups a day for 40 days, pay half to affiliates, promise customers refunds for just long enough to keep the feds off your back, then close down, pack up shop in Nevada, start all over again in Utah or California or Nevis or Trinadad, rinse, repeat.
Want to do something about it? Your best bet is to do the following:
- Report them to the FTC, you might get lucky.
- Report them to the BBB.
- Report them to your local District Attorneys office.
- Contact your local “Hard Hitting Eyewitness News Team” and see if they want a nice financial scam story.
- Take matters into your own hands and find some Class Action Fraud Lawyers to go after them. You might get lucky here too, become lead plaintiff and get more than you lost back.
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References
- www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/02/jab.shtm
- www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/free.htm
- www.ftc.gov/os/2009/02/P064202negativeoptionreport.pdf
- www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus41.pdf
by El Plumber (admin) on September 16, 2009
Could they have made the fine print a lighter shade of gray?
What is a Google Biz Kit and can you make a Google Fortune with it? Is the New York Gazette News a reputable source? Check out our articles on the Easy Google Profit scam as well as Google Adworks for other examples of similar fake blogs and news sites trying to convince you to cough up your credit card number for what you think are small shipping and handling charges. Is it for real?
First off, there is no such newspaper as the New York Gazette News. Well, at least not anymore. There was a paper called the New York Gazette back in 1725, being basically the first newspaper printed in the state. It’s been reported as “a small two-page paper, poorly printed” containing six month old news and a few ads. The irony of using the name of such a paper is certainly not lost. It went out of print around 1744 and has not been hear from since. Until today that is! Check out the line in small light gray print right under the giant red logo that reads “This site is not affiliated with any newspaper publication.” and you have all the information you need really.
The New York Gazette News is back at it again suddenly, over 275 years later? This one I’ve been seeing over and over again in the ad block over at Fox News. Note, I do not actually read the “news” over at Fox News since it’s not actually news any more than the Huffington Post could be considered news. Note to Fox News, saying you are “Fair and Balanced” in your title does not actually make it so.
But I digress. The site in question being advertised is called The New York Gazette News and is pushing another work at home offer called Google Fortune. Oh, and don’t forget that you also have to buy something called a Google Biz Kit. Your financial success hinges on you purchasing both of these fine things or did you not know that?
Our good friend Mary Steadman is back at it here again, this time with the exact same picture of her and a three year oldish little girl, which someone must have determined to be the perfect picture for these sort of Google Biz Kit sites, as she appears on the vast majority of them. Woe to the real poor Mrs Mary Steadman who probably gets a constant barrage of hate mail from people who were caught up in what I call in my opinion, scams.
Seriously, we're 100% Trusted! Take our word for it!
So you click through and are brought to a site that says you can check availability of a LIMITED TIME OFFER by entering your name, address, phone number and email. Enter it and you are brought to a page where there are lots of banners and buttons with crap like “100% Trusted!” and “Secured!” to make you feel better. Take note that anyone can put up a pretty button filled with buzzwords like these. Like this one!
Ok, I have this site loaded on my side screen right now, which clocks in at 1680×1050 and it looks totally like I’m going to pay $1.97 for this something called a Google Fortune. No where so far have I seen anything specific about what I’m getting. In fact it even says “Total: $1.97″
Of course, if you scroll down to the very very bottom of the page, in the fine print you see this:
Terms & Disclosures
How it Works! By clicking “Rush My Order” I am agreeing to receive GoogleFortune for a 7-day bonus period for $1.97 billed to my credit Card(please allow 5 days for the shipping process and 2 days to try the product). If you enjoy GoogleFortune, simply do nothing. On the 7th day my credit card will automatically be charged $69.97 and every month, thereafter, unless I cancel by calling 1-877-361-8622 M – F, 8am-7pm PST. No Hassle, Cancel Anytime!Product is fully refundable within 30 days of purchase. Customer’s cancelling within their billing period will be fully refunded upon request. I also agree to the 14 day and 21 day bonus trials to Grant Members Site™ (1-877-495-1145) and Network Agenda™ (1-800-418-9320) for $19.95 a month and $9.95 a month thereafter, the trial will begin the day I accept these terms, should I choose not to cancel. For refunds please contact customer support at 1-877-361-8622 M – F, 8am-7pm PST, GoogleFortune only. Please note the following terms and conditions you accept when ordering from us: i. Prices are subject to change without notice. We reserve the right to correct typographical and printing errors. We have done our best to ensure that all information is accurate and up-to-date. Errors and omissions occasionally occur and are subject to correction. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We will notify you via e-mail of your refund once we have received and processed. You can expect a full refund in the same form of payment you used to make your purchase within 7 to 14 business days from calling to request the refund, depending on your financial institution. Copyright 2009 Search 4 Profit, LLC.!™ – All Rights Reserved.You must be 18 years old or older to order.
Google does not sponsor, endorse, and is no way affiliated with Search 4 Profit, LLC.™ or this promotion.
Wait a sec, so you are saying you’ll refund my $69.97 if I call within the billing period? Does that include the period you already charged me for when I had no idea you were going to start whacking my credit card? And what about those other 2 charges, one for $19.95 and one for $9.95? They are not refundable are they? And I have to hunt down those numbers on my own to cancel? Wow. Just Wow.
I Didn’t Know I was Going To Be Charged Monthly By The Google Fortune People? What Do I Do?!?
- Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
- In our opinion you should call/write your credit card company, report your card stolen, and dispute the charges. Basically you’ve just been internet mugged and getting these types of sites to stop charging your card is reported to be very difficult. Reporting the card stolen gets you a new card number immediately and disables the old one so they can’t charge you again.
- Monitor your credit accounts with a free month of Experian ID Protection monitoring. You just gave some characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. You think they’ll stop trying to take money from you just because you canceled your card number? Experian is a respected company, one of the Big Three credit reporting agencies. The ID Protection is free for 30 days and comes with a free credit report and free monitoring and a free fraud support hotline. Then it’s only $9.95 a month if you don’t cancel before the 30 days are up. I’d strongly suggest signing up for the free month, call the hotline and ask for help, then check your credit report to make sure no one has tried to change your address or open a new card using your cards details.
Luckily I Didn’t Get Taken By These Guys, But What Can I Do To Help?
What can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
- Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
- Use the “Share This” links below to Digg or Twitter or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
- Email this link to your friends.
by El Plumber (admin) on September 13, 2009
We report on many sketchy make money online programs here at the Electron Plumber in the hopes that we will save some of you from getting scammed by the many wolves out there trying to trick you into giving them your money.
And in almost every scam post, there is someone who asks in the comments “So many scams, is there anything that really works?”
First, you need to know a couple of things:
- There are real “get rich quick” schemes that actually work. BUT, every single one involves hurting someone else. You have to lie, cheat or steal from other people. The people running the Easy Google Profit scams are making money but they are doing it unethically and illegally and will eventually be called to answer for it by the FTC.
- If you want to make lots of money fast, you need to spend money. You need to to spend on advertising to make the big bucks. But you can start small! Almost every affiliate marketer now making a living online started out with a $2/day ad budget and grew from there.
- You can earn a part time type income at home on your couch with a computer with little to no investment. There are many ways to do it right, but many MORE ways to do it wrong and waste time and money. You need help and need to learn who to trust
Got that? Good. Now you’re ready. Be careful out there.
by El Plumber (admin) on August 20, 2009
Google AdWork Scam
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I started seeing ads today for Google hiring people to work at home. Every time I think these Google Money flogs and fake news sites can’t possibly get any more brazen, they just take it to a whole other level. I sincerely hope that they’re foolish enough to be in the US when the FTC finally gets around to slapping them silly, but one can only hope.
This time it’s our old friends at the losangeles-tribunes.com, but this time they’ve made it look like they’re an ABC website by putting the ABC logo right at the top of the site. Also, they’re no longer claiming that people are making money working at home using the Google Kit they’re trying to sell, no no. This time they’re actually straight out lying that Google is hiring people to work from home and providing you a link to sign up that says “Join Google AdWork (fill out one form)”
Impersonating a fake blog or news site is one thing. Pretending to be ABC News with a flat out lie about Google hiring people to work from home is a whole other level of fraud.
First off, no, there is no such thing as Google AdWork. It’s invented by a marketer to try to get you to click through their links and sign up with your credit card for the secret to getting rich with Google.
Fill out one form it asks? Huh, wonder why Google wants my credit card number so I can work for them? DON’T DO IT!
First, check the fine print on the first page of the profitcenterlearning.com site that the fake ABC news site brings you to:
*Google™ does not endorse or sponsor this site and is in no way affiliated with this offer. By submitng this form you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions
Ok, now fill out the first form (don’t give them your real data please) and the next form asks for your credit card number for a $2.95 shipping charge only. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, well past where most people would normally scroll, you get to the real deal:
By submitting this form I give my authorization to immediately charge my credit card $2.95 for access to the Business Kit for Google. I hereby request that my account be activated and authorize funds to be advanced as indicated. Monthly Service fees will commence 7 days from the date of this purchase, and will be billed monthly thereafter. After the 7 day trial you will be billed $79.90 monthly for the continued access to the Business Kit for Google. No refunds will be given for failure to use the requested and provided product. We reserve the right to transfer your billing to a third party Merchant of Record. This authority will remain in effect until revoked by me. This agreement will remain in effect each month until cancelled by me.
Nice! Now we’re paying $79.90 per month without our knowledge or consent! How’s working for Google feel now? I’m feeling $80 lighter, how about you?
To clarify, Google does have something called AdWords, which lets you advertise on Google search results and web pages (like this one) that displays Adsense ads. If you want to learn techniques about how to really make money with Google by advertising on Adwords and using Adsense, you can buy a book called Google Snatch for $77 ONCE with NO recurring fees or cancellation hassles.
I Was Fooled By The Google AdWorks Sites and Gave Them My Credit Card! What Do I Do?
- Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
- Call the number provided on the website that took you in IMMEDIATELY. Finding that number is up to you, they seem to keep changing. Have a witness listen when you call and/or record the conversation if possible. Unfortunately many people have complained that they can never get anyone to talk to when they call.
- Call/write your credit card company and dispute the charges or better yet, report the card lost or stolen. They never clearly disclosed the charges you were signing up for, so you have a strong case here.
- Monitor your credit accounts! Click here to sign up for Experian ID Protection monitoring. You just gave some shady characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. It’s free for a full month, then it’s $9.95 a month if you don’t cancel before the 30 days are up. I’d strongly suggest signing up for the free month and check your credit report to make sure no one has tried to change your address or open a new card using your cards details.
I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?
What can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
- Post a link to this article on your site or blog to warn your readers!
- Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
- Click Here to Tweet this article to you friends and followers before they run into it.
- Use the “Share This” links below to Digg or Twitter or Stumble or Reddit or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
- Email this link to your friends.
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by El Plumber (admin) on August 4, 2009
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Is working at home online the next gold rush? Well, yes and no. In this case, it’s the next gold rush for the heartless affiliate running the fake Online Jobs Journal. I like their tag line that you see about. “Trusted Sources” with Trusted in bold. I trust them because they told me so…
Boy does that Mary Steadman get around! She appears to have been doing interviews for every single fake news site on the planet. Today she’s on http://server2.mediajmp.com, which is an awfully odd URL for a newspaper huh? Wait! Now her name is suddenly Nicole Johnson, since if you search for Mary Steadman you find about 100 articles about how that name is associated with these kinds of Google Biz Kit scams.
This time she is talking about the Internet Biz Kit on the fictitious Online Jobs Journal. Needless to say YOU SHOULD NOT GIVE THESE PEOPLE YOU CREDIT CARD UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. If you already have, well, there is some advice for you at the bottom of the article here that might help a bit.
Want to know more about how these types of fake news scam sites that push work at home schemes work? Check out our article on the Easy Google Profit scam for how this all works. Basically you will be tricked into giving up your credit card number to pay “ONLY $1 SHIPPING!” for a method to work at home for Google that very likely turns out to be a dried up old eBook about making a website and putting some Adsense ads on it.
Wait, The Online Jobs Journal Is A Scam?
In our opinion, yes, it is. We’re going to go out on a limb and suggest that there is no Mary Steadman. She did not work for a generic manufacturing firm. And she did not start making $6000 a month in a few weeks by posting $25 links for Google. Well, that is unless she uses the exact same technique this site does and tricks people out of their money.
So how does it work? Go attempt to sign up for the “Google Biz Kit” on the secure.simplepaychecks.com website that every single link on the fake newspaper links to. At no time during the order process do you think you’re paying more than $1.95 to rush your kit! But scan the tiny tiny fine print down the bottom of the payment page and you’ll see this hidden in non-numeric language:
By submitting this form, I am activating the MyMoneyPlan three day trial. I also agree to the bonus trial of SearchProfitSystem for fourteen days. After the three day and fourteen day trial periods, I will be billed forty-nine dollars and eighty four cents for MyMoneyPlan and twenty eight dollars and seventy one cents for the SearchProfitSystem monthly thereafter until I choose to cancel either or both programs. I agree to the Terms and Conditions of this Web Site. Google does not sponsor or endorse, nor is it affiliated in any way with this site.
Woah, that $1.95 suddenly turns into 49.84 and 28.71 after my super long 3 day trial is up. I can’t say for certain about this site, but many people have complained about similar sites continuing to charge their cards even after they called to cancel.
NOTE: A reader pointed out that secure.simplepaychecks.com does now actually have that fine print you mentioned on the order page (it did NOT at the time this article was written). HOWEVER the disclamer is written in 8 point font below the fold on my maximized browser window on an above average screen resolution, while the card entry form and giant RUSH MY KIT button are above the scroll line. The average user won’t see it or understand what they are signing up for, which in my opinion still goes against the FTC guidelines for clear disclosure.
I Didn’t Know I was Going To Be Charged Monthly By The Google Biz Kit People? What Do I Do?!?
- Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
- In our opinion you should call/write your credit card company, report your card stolen, and dispute the charges. Basically you’ve just been internet mugged and getting these types of sites to stop charging your card is reported to be very difficult. Reporting the card stolen gets you a new card number immediately and disables the old one so they can’t charge you again.
- Monitor your credit accounts by clicking here for a free month of Experian ID Protection monitoring. You just gave some characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. You think they’ll stop trying to take money from you just because you canceled your card number? Experian is a respected company, one of the Big Three credit reporting agencies. The ID Protection is free for 30 days and comes with a free credit report and free monitoring and a free fraud support hotline. Then it’s only $9.95 a month if you don’t cancel before the 30 days are up. I’d strongly suggest signing up for the free month, call the hotline and ask for help, then check your credit report to make sure no one has tried to change your address or open a new card using your cards details.
Luckily I Didn’t Get Taken By These Guys, But What Can I Do To Help?
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What can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
- Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
- Use the “Share This” links below to Digg or Twitter or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
- Email this link to your friends.
by El Plumber (admin) on July 28, 2009
I received this comment from Chuck the other day about our article on Shoemoney’s free online marketing course that was far too long to reply to in the comments section, so I wanted to reply to it here in a post.
Shoemoney!? You gotta be kidding me right? This is the same guy who had no beef with what GoogleMoneyTree were doing! “no im not a hypocrite cause we had a lawsuit with the Google Money Tree. That was because they were using my image not because I had beef with what they were doing.” From: http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/03/26/bullshit-acai-berry-weightloss-blogs-under-fire-from-ftc/
So – he was pissed off that the stole his photo and used it without permission (fair enough), but he had no problem with the fact that GMT were scamming people? And that the affiliates promoting it used fake testimonials, fake photoshopped checks (hey as long as it was not the photo of his check, that’s okay), fake story, etc etc. And no problem with the fake Acai weightloss blogs even though everyhting on them is a lie too. Because everyone who falls for this is a “FRICKIN RETARD” (charming!) in his opinion.
He thinks the fake blogs promoting hidden rebill scams are no different than paying each “month for my gym membership and not going for 3 months…..” How does he come up with such warped BS!? “How is it different”!? Well..for starters you know in advance that there is a monthly fee for your gym membership and your gym doesn’t tell you a complete pack of lies to con you into signing up!
I mean the dude had ads plastered all over his blog for various CPA networks – the same CPA networks who promoted shady scammy rebills like the “Google Kit” offers, so he’s clearly a fan of CPA marketing. If I wanted to learn how to make money online I sure ain’t gonna take lessons from this shoemoney dude!”
Chuck, I think you’re mixing up your info here. Take a look at Shoe’s article here:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/12/26/google-money-tree-scam-hydra-affiliate-network/
He clearly calls out these types of sites as the biggest scams on the internet. He has plenty of articles stating how the negative option hidden rebill sites are scams.
Reread that article you mentioned, he didn’t say he approved of what they were doing, he just said that his disapproval was NOT why he sued them. His main complaint about the Acai berry blogs in that post is not that they’re ok or anything to do with any hidden rebills, but why is the FTC going after those blogs but not after the TV infomercials and the like. Well, then he rants about the intelligence of the average American, which isn’t right, I’ll give you that, but controversy is one very valid way to generate traffic on the internet.
For the CPA marketing ads, that’s the way the internet works in 2009. Advertisers of ALL kinds are moving away from CPC ads (cost per click) to CPA (cost per action). Take Amazon for example, the biggest CPA network on the planet. Is promoting Amazon items on your blog/site and making a commission on sales of them wrong because they are CPA? Painting all CPA ads and networks with the same brush because there are some bad apples on a few of them isn’t right either. Just because some networks have hidden rebill offers doesn’t mean they all do. Don’t worry, those networks will eventually be getting a call from the FTC.
For example, Azoogle Ads is a CPA network and is a big sponsor on Shoe’s blog. We use them here for the Experian ID Protection we recommend to people who have been taken by these scams. They also have some offers for negative rebill make money at home and weight loss sites, but every one is a page that clearly states the rebill terms right where the user enters their credit card, no hidden charges. Azoogle was sued by the FTC a few years ago for not doing this and are now VERY careful about it. Click here for a example colon cleansing offer that advertises through the Azoogle Ads network. Before you buy, it tells you exactly what you are signing up for in clear language. Does that make Azoogle bad because the offer isn’t really a good deal for consumers? Maybe, maybe not. Lots of people swear by their Shamwows and love their George Foreman grills, despite the price tag for what is essentially a $20 sponge and a $70 waffle iron tilted at an angle. Oh, don’t forget the $19.99 shipping and handling charges…
The key to making money online and being able to sleep at night in 2009 is what I like to call Ethical Affiliate marketing, which requires the same methods and techniques of site building and traffic building and promotion and PPC advertising that promoting shady offers does, just promoting honest offers and products. And for that, Shoes course has so far been extremely educational even to someone experienced and jaded like myself.
