Scam or NOT – Don’t let them Scam You

As posted on MSN.COM

The cash incentives to trade in gas guzzlers won’t be available until late July, but fraudulent sites are popping up now.

“Cash for clunkers” was signed into law only this week, but scammers are already out in force.

The program offers owners of older vehicles up to $4,500 to trade them for brand-new vehicles.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is warning car shoppers that official-looking sites have sprung up, offering information on the program and asking for personal data or preregistration.

In fact, if the site uses the term “cash for clunkers,” it’s not official at all. The program’s name is the Car Allowance Rebate System.

“There’s only one official site for the government, and that’s NHTSA’s CARS.gov Web site,” said NHTSA press officer Eric Bolton. “Folks should go there and not rely on ‘cash for clunkers’ sites on the Internet as they are not official.”

Regulators have 30 days to set up the details and a system for distributing and collecting vouchers, making late July or early August the soonest the incentives could be available.

The bill provides $1 billion for the program through November. An estimated 250,000 vouchers will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.

The likely scenario for their use: Dealers let you know that your trade qualifies, credit the amount to your down payment, then apply for the voucher. Only new vehicles — domestic or imported, purchased or leased — qualify, and they must have sticker prices under $45,000.

Buyers do not have to register or apply for any part of the program. Dealers do.

Trade-ins must be 1984 models or newer, get no better than 18 miles per gallon, and have been registered and insured for the past year.

There’s a catch
The vouchers aren’t a panacea for buyers.

Car buyers must remember that their trades will be scrapped and have no value to the dealership above the amount of the voucher. A 10-year-old Lexus might qualify for the biggest ($4,500) voucher, but it’s almost certainly worth more than that on the open market.

Got Screwed Trying to Buy chriscoyier.com

Against all better judgment, when I got a shady-looking email offering to sell me chriscoyier.com for $200 bucks, I went through with it.

 

Now I know that email looks like total spam, but you know some of these domain registrars have no design taste whatsoever. I figured, sure, they have no taste and I am morally opposed to their whole business model, but hey at least I can get my own damn domain name back.

So I fill out their form (even coughing up my credit card number) and submit it. I get a confirmation, which made me feel a bit better.

There was text after I filled out the form that told me that my credit card would not be charged until the domain transfer has gone through. OK, sounds fine. Then a week or so goes by and I hear nothing. I check my bank records and no charge has been made to my account. Hmmm…

Then over a month goes by and still nothing, so I sort of forget about it.

Then I get a call from my mother a few weeks ago. They get some package in the mail for me, a bunch of weird coffee and a coffee maker. I completely don’t put two and two together. I figure I probably accidently checked some stupid box when sending in a credit card bill that signed me up for some protection plan and free coffee. (I get bills sent to my parents permanent address, if you are wondering how my mother factors into this). I tell her to return the package to the sender.

So I’m checking my bank records today, and I see I recently have a credit on there. It was actually that coffee company refunding my account for the coffee. Bizarre, since I never authorized any actual payment for that coffee, especially directly out of my bank account. So I’m poking around my statement in more detail, and I start to see all these weird transactions:

Fourty bucks to “EASY GRANT SUCCES00 OF 00800-4790979″… Uhm… I don’t think so.

There were several charges from this company, and a bunch of other one-offs from very bizarre companies from around the U.S.

SCH*SCHOLASTIC AT HOME 800-955-9877 ($9.95)
DRI*SMART CD CATALOG P ($45.99)

OK, at this point I realize that my credit card has been compromised. But how? I feel like I’m usually pretty safe about these things and it’s not like I lost the card, its right here in my wallet. Then I see it:

WEBNAME SOLUTION MONTREAL ($199.95)

Ahhh. There it is. Before this charge, nothing out of the ordinary. After this charge, the shitstorm begins. The bastards waited a few months, long enough for me to forget about it, and THEN charged me and likely sold my credit card information to some other bad guys.

I am not going to hyperlink directly to the company and help their search rankings in any way, but the name of the company is Webname Solution (webnamesolution.com)

So I call my bank who issued the card. A woman helped me who was extremely helpful and nice. She emailed me a dispute form, which I filled out and had notorized, which details all of the fraudulent transactions. I also canceled the card and she’s sending me out a new one. This will probably be a huge pain in the ass updating the many many online services I use that use that card, but oh well.

So what did I learn from this? Well it’s certainly the last time I ever fill out an online form that looks in the least bit shady. I am smarter than that. I also learned that I still have a fiery sense of revenge. Today, I truly feel like the person who is behind this “company” should be killed. If I knew who is was and was guaranteed to not go to jail for doing it, I’d do it myself.

 

I hate to be the one to inform you, but you will not receive the cash prize promised in the letter. This is a scam. FreeLotto.com is a legitimate lottery site run out of the UK and they have samples of the fraudulent letters being sent out under their name. A legitimate lottery will NEVER ask you to pay money or give out credit card information in order to receive your winnings.

Anyway they took 3000.00 up front stating if their lawyers could not negotiate what we had put, they would refund they money of 2500.00.

I called several times to speak to [snip] who gave me the run a round by saying they lawyers are still at the negotiating table.

What they did was lower the interest rate only. Then they said they never said they would lower the principle amount. It became a yes you did and [snip] says no I didn’t. [snip] spoke with my wife and I was the one trying to follow up on where our 3000.00 went. She never gave a strait answer. Deny Everything is what they do. They sent us their new payment documents. They were unacceptable to us. Their lawyer calls my wife and intimidated her for she felt what could she say against some crook lawyer. I have been looking for others who were taken by Home Relief Services. I did notice their website no longer exist. These are crooked people who took advantage of our situation and caused us to ultimately lose our home and now looking at bankruptcy. If I could get my money back it would help.