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A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

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Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#11

Post by condor »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #2

Ever wonder how to put yourself closer to the front of the line to hell? This is a good article to read if you're interested. I'm all for capitalism and making money, but this is just wrong. Sure you can say, well people are dumb enough! Yeah, most people are dumb, but that doesn't mean you go ripping them off.

couldn't agree more . . . just because something exists in a market doesn't mean it should. Capitalism is a system/strategy, how you apply that depends on your values (or what you value).

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#12

Post by wallflower »

wizard_2 wrote: post #8
wallflower wrote: post #4

Can't Firefox block the referrer? This seems to be up there with scamming senior citizens.

You get an escalating war that way with out actually fixing the problem. They're better off warning users on download.

Good point. I guess the only real solution may be for Mozilla to try to compete against these unethical advertisers by spending dollars on advertising from these same smaller search engines, emphasizing "Free"

> These sites get their custom through advertising. We and the major search engine providers do a reasonable job of keeping these people's adverts away from our trademarked terms and keywords but we can't be everywhere, and they can often be found on smaller search engines.

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#13

Post by jacquesm »

joeythibault wrote: post #10
jacquesm wrote: post #5

"New computer users should find our services valuable, and a time saver. If you are an advanced computer user, you probably don't need our services. " I think they missed making that more clear, suggested rewrite: "Clueless newbies we like to rip off, everybody else is a waste of our bandwidth, so go away" Euclidinvestments/Cardtransaction.com, the company behind all this is based in the UK: Saphie Number One Limited…

Actually, it's not that hard to get a merchant account considering their site is very straight forward. They list their address, the site has a secure cert and numbers to the tech support. It's all the things that companies like Auth.net ask for. That being said, my computer raises all sorts of red-flags when I go to the site. Now, I just wonder how good their customer service is, 'cause if clueless newbies fall for…

You wouldn't want someone to miss out on clicking that final submit button.

They're scammers, pure and simple, they should have no right to a merchant account. I don't even much care if it is legal or not, legal does not always mean 'right' and in this case 'legal' might be clearly 'wrong'.

VISA et al make lots of value judgments as to which customers can have merchant accounts and which don't.

So in this case they can make that judgment too. Especially the 'upsell' on the last screen off-center is the mark of the real scammer. There was a time when a company called IBill would facilitate this kind of junk, they crashed because of it (and several other good reasons besides, but that's another story, the $1 fake transactions to dillute the chargebacks had a lot to do with it too), if assholes like this can't get merchant accounts then life will be better for all of us.

Not that long ago we applied for a merchant account to sell 2nd hand CDs and we were turned down, in spite of being a perfectly legit business. These jerks being able to operate their scam seriously pisses me off.

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#14

Post by lionhearted »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #2

Ever wonder how to put yourself closer to the front of the line to hell? This is a good article to read if you're interested. I'm all for capitalism and making money, but this is just wrong. Sure you can say, well people are dumb enough! Yeah, most people are dumb, but that doesn't mean you go ripping them off.

> I'm all for capitalism and making money, but this is just wrong.

I think this a problem that people have - they (somehow) equate corruption/taking advantage of people/kickbacks with "capitalism". This is not the case - I've spent some a bit of time in more socialist and communist countries, and these things seem to happen even more there. People trying to take advantage of others happens regardless of economic or political systems.

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#15

Post by inklesspen »

amalcon wrote: post #9
blhack wrote: post #6

I wish that firefox would start charging. Something like a $100 for a 1000 seat license or something similar. Why? Because when I go to one of my bosses and say "I think we try and transition away from IE. Here, this is Firefox, it is free and it is wonderful", their reaction is "Free?!" and visions of shitty freeware from the 90s fill their heads. In order to keep us geeks happy, they could offer a source distributi…

The problem is that, as soon as they start charging, they open themselves up to liability. That's actually exactly what your bosses want: someone to take the liability.

Does Microsoft take liability for any of their software?

The Windows XP EULA states "Except for any refund elected by Microsoft, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, if the Software does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty, and, to the maximum extent allowed by applicable law, even if any remedy fails of its essential purpose."

It goes on to state that the only remedy offered is your money back. Mozilla also offers your money back, all $0 of it.

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#16

Post by nazgulnarsil »

all the moral righteousness is pretty funny/sad at the same time. they're charging for access to their call center basically. I don't really see anything wrong with that.

the beauty of capitalism is that no one (even you smart geeks) gets to decide what the price of things are. you live and die by consumer demand.

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#17

Post by conanite »

lionhearted wrote: post #14
jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #2

Ever wonder how to put yourself closer to the front of the line to hell? This is a good article to read if you're interested. I'm all for capitalism and making money, but this is just wrong. Sure you can say, well people are dumb enough! Yeah, most people are dumb, but that doesn't mean you go ripping them off.

> I'm all for capitalism and making money, but this is just wrong. I think this a problem that people have - they (somehow) equate corruption/taking advantage of people/kickbacks with "capitalism". This is not the case - I've spent some a bit of time in more socialist and communist countries, and these things seem to happen even more there. People trying to take advantage of others happens regardless of economic or p…

The law unfortunately is our best effort at drawing a clear line (i said, "best effort") between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. I'm not sure there is any hypothetical legal system that could eliminate every one of these scam businesses. And I'm not sure there's a hypothetical education system that can prepare those who would be fools, enough to put the scammers out of business.

And I would be scared of a business ethics committee deciding which companies are allowed to run. It would be worse than the App Store.

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#18

Post by turkishrevenge »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #16

all the moral righteousness is pretty funny/sad at the same time. they're charging for access to their call center basically. I don't really see anything wrong with that. the beauty of capitalism is that no one (even you smart geeks) gets to decide what the price of things are. you live and die by consumer demand.

"all the moral righteousness is pretty funny/sad at the same time. they're charging for access to their call center basically. I don't really see anything wrong with that."

Really? Despite the fact that what the site in question is doing is blatantly predatory in nature? I would be willing to wager that it heavily depends on the naivety of new (read: probably elderly) computer users in order to make money. If you're fine with this, I don't know how you could justify such a position.

"the beauty of capitalism is that no one (even you smart geeks) gets to decide what the price of things are. you live and die by consumer demand."

Except of course, in situations of monopolies, combines, and cartels (and their respective subsidiaries and holdings), which is how the capitalism you speak of works in the 21st century.

Re: A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

#20

Post by coderdude »

turkishrevenge wrote: post #18
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #16

all the moral righteousness is pretty funny/sad at the same time. they're charging for access to their call center basically. I don't really see anything wrong with that. the beauty of capitalism is that no one (even you smart geeks) gets to decide what the price of things are. you live and die by consumer demand.

"all the moral righteousness is pretty funny/sad at the same time. they're charging for access to their call center basically. I don't really see anything wrong with that." Really? Despite the fact that what the site in question is doing is blatantly predatory in nature? I would be willing to wager that it heavily depends on the naivety of new (read: probably elderly) computer users in order to make money. If you're…

My step dad bought a subscription to AVG Free for his WinXP Home machine. I would consider it blatantly predatorial to let people do that, even if they activate the one useless plugin that wasn't enabled before. People are going to spend the money.
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