What is a scam?

I agree 100%. And to take it further if you can get a refund it's not a scam.

Here's a scam that happened to me... Paid 10k for a business start up and they literally fled the country. That's a scam.

But, people like to use the word scam to justify lack of action. On the flip side marketers appeal to this mentality by starting off sales letters saying "Just like you I've fallen for all those scams etc... But then I stumbled upon the truth etc". In copywriting we call it creating empathy.

Yes, many different ideas.

To some it means "illegality". To some it means "failure to fulfil the statements claimed on the sales page". To me it means "deceptive intent". To some it means other, different things.

I think those are probably people who've confused "scammer" with "spammer"? People regularly do that. Don't forget that there are many members here whose first language isn't English.

By not being "as advertised"? Strictly speaking, it would be the sales page that's the "scam", in those cases, perhaps, but you can understand people calling the product itself the "scam", I think, when they've bought it on the strength of the vendor's representations? It's often subjective anyway, in such cases, so you can't realistically expect too much agreement, perhaps?

And if it doesn't provide you - objectively and factually - with the information its vendor said it would?

I think that depends on the representations that have been made about it.

It would be very pedantic, even by my standards, to object to people calling a product/service a "scam" when it was actually the sales page that was the "scam". One is perhaps entitled to look at a complete "sales process" as an entity, in such cases?

But I fully agree with your implication that some people do "cry scam" far too often.

At the same time, the "internet marketing services niche" is clearly pretty scammy, isn't it? One need only look at all the "PR 5-9 backlinks" advertised to newbies who know no better, which turn out - after payment for them - to be backlinks from PR-0 pages of websites whose own home pages happen to have a high page rank, to see that. I openly and unreservedly call that a scam - I always have done, and I'll continue to. People are not buying what they thought they were buying, and the vendor knows that.

That's what I call a "scam", really - for me it depends on "deceptive intent".

Do you disagree, Xan?

You want to know what a scam is? A scam is when your bank charges you a $39 overdraft fee for a StarBucks coffee and calls it a 'courtesy fee!'

That's a scam

If someone misrepresents things to get your money, then it's a scam, pure and simple. But a scam is not the same as a ripoff and some people tend to confuse those things. The former is legally questionable and can get you sued because it's pretty much fraud. The latter can get some people pissed off, but that's about it. Also a ripoff can often be subjective, not so much with a scam.