In yesterday's post, I mentioned a con that I was coaxed into over a week ago but didn't want to reveal much as I was awaiting a refund and didn't want to jeopardise the payment getting to me.
I've now been paid back so it's time to shoot.
I was online looking for ways to watch television channels from America as I want somewhere to watch American college football in the Autumn and did a Google search to find some answers.
'Watch live college and NFL games' was one of many titles that appeared on the page once I had hit the search button so I clicked.
The site I was on was offering a program where I could watch three thousand live channels from around the world and at a fairly decent price.
I thought it was too good to be true so took a step back. A step back for me is a walk downstairs away from the PC because I knew I would hit 'Purchase'. It's an old trick I used to do back when I played roulette or other gambling games online, the short few minutes gave me some time to consider my options - gamble or walk away.
In this case - I gambled.
I paid for the item and was then passed over to another site which would accept the payment. This is when I started wondering whether what I was doing was above board. I decided to continue and used my Paypal account because I felt it was safer than using my Maestro card.
The site taking the payment was a company called ClickBank. They took my money as well an extra few pounds which I was not informed about at the point of sale. They conveniently hid the full balance when I was paying for the program (another thing which worried me, I ended up changing my Paypal password after this just to be sure).
The program downloaded fine. I installed it and it worked great.
Not so fast.
I tuned into the Tom & Jerry channel and watched that for about 2 minutes thinking 'what country is crazy enough to have a channel dedicated to these two?' I then ventured to a channel I was more aware of: Sky News. Worked fine.
As I mentioned earlier - I bought this program to watch the sport channels from other parts of the world so I typed 'Sport' into the search box on the screen and a number of channels showed up.
Great!
I clicked on Fox Sports: buffering non-stop, ESPN: green blob right in the middle of the screen, NFL Network: unavailable.
Not Great!
I was ripped off good and proper. I then picked a random news channel from Canada and they were playing the '6pm Evening News'. It was 11am for me so this wasn't live. Quickly, I checked the Sky News channel again and tuned into the channel onto my normal cable box and the program was not in sync with my television.
Not in sync, and then some. There were two different news shows on!
I emailed a complaint to the vendor that sold me the program (not ClickBank) and they emailed me back asking me to download something which will help me. I'm not sure what a download will do to make these channels appear live but I declined. I requested a refund.
A few hours later, I got another reply from them and they told me that I had to keep trying the NFL Network as it may not be on at the time I tried clicking on it. My response was a sarcastic 'The channel is 24/7 so go back and think of another lame excuse'.
They couldn't think of anything.
I then found ClickBank's site where they operate from and found a message to their vendors saying that they should offer a special service to their customers and when faults are evident they should interact with each one individually and not with automated email responses. I also saw a part where they claimed to refund everyone no questions asked.
Phew.
I filled out the complaint form and - just to make sure I was going to get all my money back - I filed a complaint with Paypal.
Within a day, ClickBank replied to my request and tried offering technical support. I replied saying that technical support was not what I wanted.
Ten minutes after my reply, a refund was granted. I had to wait nine days, though.
The moral of this story is - if something sounds too good to be true, that's probably because it is.
If you are reading this after searching for online sports, think again. This program is a waste of time and effort. All those sites out there saying how amazing it is are the ones which will profit from the sale.
I am not saying that ClickBank are a con, I feel that a lot of people are using this company to sell abysmal online products. If you have been ripped off by any of these vendors that are run by Clickbank, go to the ClickBank site and ask for a refund.
I learnt the hard way but fought for a refund. I feel for those that didn't think they had a chance of getting back what they shelled out.
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