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Did I get get scammed?

by phoneone
14 replies
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Five days ago I purchased a GVO account with 10,102+ optins.
I was told the list was an unused Tier 1 ONLY list a MIX of sources such as Media Buys, FB ads, PPC, Solo Ads and a large % of the traffic comes from CPA offers themselves.
I have not used the list yet but five days after purchase 628+ of the list have Blocked status, I was unsure what Blocked status meant so I contact GVO support, see below.

The BLOCKED status means , that particular email address is blocked by our system so that they do not receive any email from our system.
The reason behind this is, either we have received so many bounce back for that email address (Possibly false email address ) or the email account owner
has submitted the spam complain to us and so that we added him to suppress list (So that they don't receive any emails from us).

I purchased from a well known list builder.
They had for sale at least five GVO accounts of 10,000 and said the sale was a JV.
I don’t think the well known list builder has scammed me but I am starting to think he and I may have been scammed by his JV.

What do you think?
  • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
    6% bad addresses would be within the norm for an unconfirmed list. (Typically called "single opt-in.") The stats I hear run from 5 to 15 percent, depending on the niche and the way the offer page is written. It's usually at the higher end if there's any reason the visitor might think they can get an offered bonus without giving a valid email address.

    That's not a comment on the legitimacy of this particular transaction, mind you. Just an observation.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Cornetta
      Let me continue I meant initials L.T. and I bet I'm right... that's not it this is the same list sold over and over. Anyone selling an AR account is 9 times out of 10 a scam. Why does anyone defend it? Or say this is within some norm? List building is not that difficult. I build a 30k list in 40 days as a test to show Mike Filsaime I could do it, he will tell you if asked. Buying an AR is asking for trouble, stop the short cuts
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      John Cornetta
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
    John,

    I didn't defend anything. I said that a certain level of bad addresses was within the norms for a certain type of list. And it is.

    That said, the point about selling an AR account is completely valid. One that's already populated with addresses can only be legitimately sold under very specific circumstances.


    Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author phoneone
    Thank you everyone for the advice.
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  • Profile picture of the author visimedia
    thats a weird.. Have you asked the seller about this/
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    • Profile picture of the author John Cornetta
      I didn't mean you Paul I mean in other threads I see people defend these practices and yes I also agree that selling a populated AR is under very specific circumstances here it appears some people have made a business out of it and I think that is wrong
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      John Cornetta
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      • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
        John,

        Yeah. That's wrong.

        Anyone who thinks it's "normal" or even "generally accepted practice" to buy and sell pre-populated autoresponder accounts like they were domains or web templates is either very inexperienced or nuts.

        I've bought lists in the past, but that was as part of buying whole publications. Even then, the subscribers were told in advance (3 times) that the pub was being sold, that I was taking over the thing, and they could unsubscribe before the list ever changed hands. Then I told them once when I took it over, before sending out any actual content issues. Also reminded them at the front of each issue for the first 3 or 4.

        I doubt I'd even consider it these days. Too much fraud.


        Paul
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        • Profile picture of the author tagiscom
          Originally Posted by phoneone View Post

          Five days ago I purchased a GVO account with 10,102+ optins.
          I was told the list was an unused Tier 1 ONLY list a MIX of sources such as Media Buys, FB ads, PPC, Solo Ads and a large % of the traffic comes from CPA offers themselves.
          I have not used the list yet but five days after purchase 628+ of the list have Blocked status, I was unsure what Blocked status meant so I contact GVO support, see below.

          The BLOCKED status means , that particular email address is blocked by our system so that they do not receive any email from our system.
          The reason behind this is, either we have received so many bounce back for that email address (Possibly false email address ) or the email account owner
          has submitted the spam complain to us and so that we added him to suppress list (So that they don't receive any emails from us).

          I purchased from a well known list builder.
          They had for sale at least five GVO accounts of 10,000 and said the sale was a JV.
          I don't think the well known list builder has scammed me but I am starting to think he and I may have been scammed by his JV.

          What do you think?

          Yep, nothing new here; l have purchased several large lists running into hundreds for me, for 50 to 100k lists.

          100k might sound exciting, and images of money pouring into your Paypal account start to come up, but....


          in all likehood these lists have been thrashed!

          I spent almost $250 on one 50k list, and apart from signups no sales. Well one sale on the backend of a Clickbank product which bought in $10!

          Then l contacted someone here, when l was running a WSO and he gave me 25 sales from one list! Well we had a JV deal worked out, with his list!


          Buying lists is like junk traffic, it might take $30,000 to find the gold, but there are other less costly ways to make serious money online!


          I wish you luck!


          Shane
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    People talk about TRAFFIC, and HITS, like they are valuable and wanted. They AREN'T! Hits and traffic were originally considered good ****ONLY**** because they were "ORGANIC" If legitimate organic traffic gets to your site, a HIGH percentage are likely to do what they went there for, even if that is buy a $100K car. But the key words are LEGITIMATE and ORGANIC! They go to your site because they know where they are going to, and you were honest in your ad, etc....

    Anyway, the idea that a hit is a hit, and legitimacy doesn't matter, has led to a LOT of sites. I would estimate that it is well into the 100s of thousands, or better. And that isn't an uneducated estimate. I checked like 2 million links on DMOZ several years ago and no less than 3 companies got hits from over 40,000 old and mislabeled domain names! I looked for them only because they were "adult sites" and I didn't want any such sites in my list. I ALREADY filtered out domains in the "ADULT GROUPS". Did others do that? Well, there WERE some of the "typical" cheap paid search engine types. I didn't count THEM though.

    And Paul is right about the percentages, but that is OVER TIME. The ONLY way you will get that upfront is through a whitelist mechanism, or if they didn't clean their lists. Lists can go bad, so they SHOULD periodically clean them. If YOU found out about the blocked status, THEY could! That usually means one of three things. 1. The domain expired(EASY TO CHECK GLOBALLY). They are on a blocked email(EASY TO CHECK through several known lists). Some user based event happened(The servers often email you details, and better email programs will catch most of those).

    Of course, there ARE systems that quietly trash or ignore your emails, and black holes. You will NEVER know about THOSE. Statistically though, if the lists aren't cleaned for the simple things, you are more likely to have the other problems as well.

    One other thing. NONE of that purchased traffic will be legitimate. They didn't get on that list by wanting to see YOUR sites! So your end result won't be as good either. The best you can hope for is that they WERE organic, and are still looking at the emails.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Steve,

      I have no idea what you were trying to say as far as the reply to my comment about the percentage of addresses that are bad. You jump around between thoughts too much within a given paragraph.

      Here's the deal: Based on the situation, typically from 5% to 15% of the addresses put into a subscription form will be bad immediately. Not from blocking or from addresses being abandoned, but simply because they were fake addresses entered deliberately or the person mistyped them.

      In some circumstances that number will be lower, but those are the average ranges I hear from most providers I've spoken with about it.

      List hygiene (removing dead addresses and other problem data) is important, but that comes later.


      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author seasoned
        Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post

        Steve,

        ...
        Here's the deal: Based on the situation, typically from 5% to 15% of the addresses put into a subscription form will be bad immediately. Not from blocking or from addresses being abandoned, but simply because they were fake addresses entered deliberately or the person mistyped them.
        Fake or mistyped addresses that get to the final system will usually cause a bounce, and should be cleaned, at least when first used. If they are double optin, the first attempt to get the second optin would prove it is fake, in those cases. Others, like fakes to an account that redirects elsewhere, may NEVER be discovered by the user.

        If you ask me, if the emails were NEVER checked in such a basic fashion, it IS a scam! BTW I don't know about current email address systems, but many address list companies used to replace addresses that were bad. It might be worth asking if THIS place would.

        Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    Considering how big the list is, 600+ blocked addresses doesn't seem that big. Some people press the spam button reflexively. Others forget that they opted in. Sometimes they bounce or enter a problematic email. The latter is especially problematic if you have a single optin system. Regardless, as long as the vast majority of your list is responsive, you should be good to go. How do I know? I run a 10K+ list myself.
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by writeaway View Post

      Considering how big the list is, 600+ blocked addresses doesn't seem that big. Some people press the spam button reflexively. Others forget that they opted in. Sometimes they bounce or enter a problematic email. The latter is especially problematic if you have a single optin system. Regardless, as long as the vast majority of your list is responsive, you should be good to go. How do I know? I run a 10K+ list myself.
      Well, these people likely NEVER "opted in". They might have opted into another list, or even some adhesion contract to do something they were forced to to get something else, but it is unlikely they opted into THIS list.

      Steve
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