A Tour Of A "Pay to Download Firefox" Site ( A real RIPOFF)

gerv.net ^ | Not supplied | Gervase Markham

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

At Mozilla, we regularly get anguished emails from people who have paid to download Firefox, and have then discovered a) that it's actually free, and b) that it's very hard to get the company they paid to stop charging their credit card. For those who have never had the misfortune to visit one of these trap sites, I thought people might be interested in a walkthrough of the user experience.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I hope no one here has stumbled into this ....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Credit to Distrowatch for pointing to this one.....

Finally, a link to a story that many DistroWatch readers will probably consider amusing

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Will need to scroll down...

[Nateman]

I have the whole Operating System ,Firefox included , downloaded free.

[DallasDeb]

For those who cannot get the company to stop charging their credit card, cancel the card (card being issued fraudulently) and get the cc company to issue a new one with a new number. I had to do that for another online issue.

[DallasDeb]

oops . . . “issued” should be “used”.

[ThomasThomas]

Open office is free too.

[DallasDeb]

(card being issued used fraudulently)

[MarkL]

For those who cannot get the company to stop charging their credit card, cancel the card (card being used fraudulently) and get the cc company to issue a new one with a new number. I had to do that for another online issue.

I had to do this due to an ISP refusing to stop billing me for services I had canceled.

Mark

[ShadowAce]

[antiRepublicrat]

Technically it’s legal to charge for the service of getting you the software. Buyer beware.

[Still Thinking]

I had an ISP one time that would charge you by the hour if you were connected from more than one phone line at a time. So I was getting a bunch of charges stating multiple line logins when I knew it wasn't true. Well, I was extremely busy at the time, so by the time I got a hold of them to sort it out, these fraudulent charges had appeared on two monthly bills or so. So I had to wait on hold for hours to talk to a human, then to talk to someone technical enough to look into it. Now they were logging the phone numbers from which you connected and I asked what the numbers were from which the connections had been made. I was thinking maybe it was legitimate and someone else had somehow stolen my password and login and was connecting using my account.

Well, the phone numbers they had logged for "simultaneous" connection were all my home number! The tech admitted this was impossible, obviously, and then I had to wait for someone else to issue me a refund. For some reason they could only issue a refund of $100 and I was going to have to call back to get the rest that was owed me, so they did that. Then when I called back to get the rest, the person who was "helping" me acted like I was whining because I had already got a $100 REFUND, which was evidently unprecedented for this company. I told her like three times that the size of the refund had still not amounted to the amount that had been fraudulently taken from my credit card, so the size of the refund was really something that should shame their company, not something that made me a whiner if I still wanted the rest of the money they owed me. Then I ended up having to take the rest of the money as a credit against services. I wasn't happy with that because it meant that instead of getting punished for stealing from me and me getting overcompensated as an apology, they got off scot free, and my "apology" I got was eight hours on hold, conversations with idiots that thought I could make multiple calls from the same phone line, locked into using their ISP (one which I might very well want to dump), AND I get to pay in advance! I should have filed a complaint with the DA or the state AG.

[whd23]

Check if your credit card issuer offers a service such as "Shop Safe." This feature allows you to create a unique credit card number with a specified limit and expiration date for just one vendor. Then you can use this number for any credit card transaction that doesn't require the physical card (online and phone orders).

Since the number is locked to a particular vendor, that number cannot be used elsewhere which is great protection if that vendor's database is hacked.

Also, since you can set a limit and expiration date you automatically win the argument with companies that refuse to stop charging your card.

Oh, and you can manually cancel that number at any time.

[papasmurf]

"Technically it’s legal to charge for the service of getting you the software. Buyer beware."

Yes it is, and I don't see anything unethical about doing so. It's when it becomes a scam, like this is, that I object to it.

Cheap Bytes has been doing it for years. I've got a lot of their older stuff.

[GOPJ]

For those who cannot get the company to stop charging their credit card, cancel the card (card being issued fraudulently) and get the cc company to issue a new one with a new number. I had to do that for another online issue.

That's a gem ping. Thanks for sharing.

[DallasDeb]

Thanks.

[sickoflibs]

When you say a new number you mean the code on the back?

[GOPJ]

... new account number... that’s my take.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s definitely an odd concept.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s definitely an odd concept.