Outing Scammers on the Forum

It's just not a good idea.

There is too much he said, she said and there are 2 sides to these stories. While some scammers might be outed, innocent names will also end up dragged through the dirt.

That being said, there used to be a specific rule against this sort of activity here, but that doesn't seem to be included in the new rules. So maybe it is fair game.

There is a distinction between:

1) low-quality products or courses given by incompetent and unmotivated teachers,
2) exaggerated advertising without being false advertising,
3) and fraud.

We can not condemn alleged fraudsters only on the basis of one or two stories.

But if a committee followed an established procedure to identify scammers, so this might be a good idea ... in theory. Because in practice it is difficult.

Partly because to denounce someone may result in legal and financial consequences for the forum and for whistleblowers.

But if you really think being a victim of fraud, you can still make a disclosure to the police.

Would love if you can be more specific... but

If you're new to the online community my friend, don't quit your job.

You will get more experience as you're going through more scams

or maybe not that, so many people wanting to sell their own product, but their product cannot bring much satisfaction to customers.

just google their name with the word scam or spam

and put here

If you took the time to read the rules here you would know that this is not allowed

al

Trust me, it'd be great if you did, but you'd just end up getting shouted down by the sheep...and then getting a temp or perma ban from the mods. I've been temp banned a few times for calling people out on their BS. I gotta be on good behavior from now on before I get perma banned...but boy oh boy is it hard to keep my observations to myself.

You can however, furnish the scammers information to several sources, including:

Ethan Vanderbuilt
The Salty Droid
The Federal Trade Commission

Or you can start your own site profiling neer-do-wells. However, you have to be factual because it's a delicate dance with defamation and libel. Also, con artists love to do whatever they can to silence dissent and criticism...especially when you're 100% factual.

Here is the problem with your idea.

Even though the admins did not include it new rules, I really don't think they are going to allow you to do that.

Why?

Because (and I am sure we all know and the admins know) they are as many untrue scam allegations as there as legitimate ones. We all know that a lot of complainers are unethical people who hold grudges and are willing to ruin other people's good reputation at the drop of a hat.

I am not saying the OP is one of these kind of people, but let's look as his situation as an example of how one man's scam is another man's bad experience with a vendor.

In the case of the OP's experience, I wonder what would most people consider his situation. Did he get scammed or did he just get bad customer support.

You see...He never mentioned if the product or service was legitimate or a complete scheme. He just said that the vendor stopped answering his email.

Note: I want the OP to know that I am only using his situation as an example. In no way am I suggesting that my example is a true interpretation of his situation. Again..It's just an example.

The example:

The OP states that the vendor stopped responding to his emails. This indicates that he did have some contact with the vendors support them. Suppose the vendor stopped responding to the emails of a customer because that customer became abusive. And suppose that customer did not actually get a bad product, but just got a product that they did not know how to properly use or maybe did not want to take the time to learn how to use the product the way the vendor instructed him to.

In this example...The customer did not get scammed. He just had a bad experience with a vendor. And that bad experience with that vendor may not be the vendors fault.

As you can see by the this example...It is left to one's own interpretation.

I give this example to say this...

If you are going to let someone who claims they got scammed just post names at will, then you are risking ruining people's good name while the bad customers are not held to any standards.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

@webmarke: I understand your point. It would be quite easy to abuse this, if it were allowed. But the problem remains - how to handle when an actual scam happens.

To further clarify my experience - the service was a DFY one, where the provider was going to create a new funnel for me, launch it in the WSO section and get their affiliates to promote for me. Now, the funnel never even got created. So of course the launch also did not happen.
The case is of non-delivery, and not about the quality of the delivery.

Yes, initially they did respond to my messages (I was never abusive btw), but after a while they just simply stopped responding.

I know you're not implying that I was abusive, just wanted to clarify my situation.

This sounds like it'd be ripe for abuse. Wanna smear your competitors? List them as scammers. Weren't happy with the product/service? List them as scammers. How would the alleged scammers be verified as really scamming people? Are we just supposed to take someone's word for it?

If you think you're being scammed, take it up with them. If they use something like Paypal, file a report with paypal. Enough complaints and PayPal will yank there account. Same with the other payment processors.

What you can do is give a review about the product or service without tarnishing the name of the person. For example the seller that you paid $2500 and did not deliver. Give an honest review about the service without the words scammer or fraud.

The problem with this is when you post that someone
is a scammer how do I know that you aren't the scammer?

How do I know that you aren't his competition trying to
drive his reputation down? How do I know that he didn't
deliver a quality product that you failed to follow and caused
your own failure?

I don't.

It's a horribly bad idea. If you've been scammed there is
a proper venue to seek redress. Public forums are not the
place for that.

It was foolish of the new owners to remove Rule #1.

Since you're not using your forum signature yet, you could put up a web page detailing your negative experience with the seller, being sure to stick just to the facts and then include a link in your signature like "I'll Never Buy Another Product From Joe Blow -- Here's Why".

Your page is going to get a LOT of views from the very people who would have likely been future victims.

IMO Problem Solved

I think i suggested this before to the previous Admin but ......

There is a certain BH forum that deals with this kind of problem inhouse.
They have a forum where the plaintiff and the defendant can both state their cases
accompanied by solid evidence; emails, skype logs, paypal payments etc.
A senior Mod/Admin will then act as arbitrator taking all evidence and statements into
account and make a decision....

It seems to work well over there so i don't see why it can't work here?

name them here this is to warn people about them

You don't have to name names to teach others this is a bad idea.

If there are members here offering to create a funnel and launch a WSO for you - taking your money and not providing the service....I'd think WF management would want to know about that (help desk or PM to an admin perhaps?).

There are enough scams (or at least attempts to scam) - I think WF owners would be interested in the names of anyone using the WSO platform as an excuse to fleece marketers here. THAT is where I would "out them" - to the help desk or an Admin here.

I reported 3 scams (faked screenshots) to admin but the scammers are still active on the forum.

All you can do is report it - what happens after that is up to those in charge here.

Any report of a "scam" to mods or admins should be accompanied with clear proof of the claim. That's the only way they can look into it fairly.

My take. You should look up slander and look up libel. Decide if you are prepared for the worse case scenario. If you decide you have the time and finances, should someone come after you because of what you claimed, then by all means go for it. Otherwise, learn from your mistakes and move on. Also, understand that the truth is not always found in a court of law. And, really, why would you pay thousands of dollars to someone you don't know? I wouldn't. Move on.

The problem with the word scammers is that even though there are many legitimate people selling software or other products, somewhere somewhere is going to be disappointed and will react by calling the vendor a scammer.


I have been disappointed many times by products I have bought, but if the vendor responds positively, I would be hard pressed to call them scammers.


True, there are rip off merchants in all walks of life. But please do not call people scammers if you just don't like the product you bought before communicating with the vendor and giving them a chance to put things right.

The rules at present for Buyers and Sellers of WSOs

Rule #2: Reporting Fraudulent or Misleading Offers

If the seller fails to deliver the product or service as advertised, or does not honor a posted refund policy, please report the problem using the Report tool or contact the Helpdesk.

In your report, include enough details to allow them to look into the claim properly, including the thread Url and the seller’s username. To report a problem, use the red triangle to the lower left of the post you're reporting. Fill in the necessary information and submit the form. Please keep in mind that investigating a claim requires time and multiple reports should not be submitted.

The forum is not part of the transaction between a buyer and seller. We have no ability to force a refund or any other action by a third party. We are limited to reducing or removing access by parties we believe may be acting improperly or who violate the forum or WSO rules as described here.

Rule #3: Resolving Issues

Buyers should attempt to resolve any issues with sellers privately so the seller has the opportunity to fix any issues. Should the issue remain unresolved, buyers may report the problem or offer for moderators to investigate.

Buyers should be aware that if you have purchased an offer, you may also review the product or service in the seller’s thread.

id say out the son of a bitch, **** what everyone else is saying, he took your money, did not deliver and your being told "well there's nothing you can really do about it"????????

Hi,
Interesting questions and comments. I agree with people who are saying, be very, very careful. They may have taken $2500 off you and by the sounds of it, they'll think nothing of taking you for every cent you own if you out them on a forum thread such as this. That's the problem with scammers - they know how to use the rule of law for their own benefit.

If you paid via Paypal, I wouldn't even bother sending them an email to inform them you're going to seek a refund from Paypal. Simply hit the dispute button and if necessary escalate the claim immediately so Paypal can make the decision.

The important thing is to get your money back for non delivery of service. If the scam took place due to a WSO then hit the button and inform the admin/moderators providing all relevant evidence so they can make a decision to potentially ban the *******s.

Another thing that's not stopping you is developing a 'review video' of the product and posting on YouTube and sending heaps of traffic to the video link so it hits page 1 of Google in nothing flat; then keep on sending traffic to the link.

A lot of buyers even if it's a WSO will check out the vendor's name and product for good or bad reviews on Google first before hitting the buy button.

Then if you have a website that promotes online marketing, write a review article for your website and send traffic to it. Then with the article, create a PDF and post to Slideshare, Reddit and other social media outlets.

In other words, you can remain a victim or you can take positive action that will do more to inform people of the none delivery of service than trying to out people on a forum thread.

All I say is: ensure whatever course of action/s you undertake you can fully back up what you say. In other words stick to the facts rather than get carried away with emotion language.

Hope this assists.

Statement applies to 90% of the WF community.

And here come some of those 90% to quote me now...

Generic, unsubstantiated claim...at least they're on topic.

Remember the con artist character Henry Gondorff (played by Paul Newman) in the movie The Sting?

He gave us the line . . . "Revenge is for suckers" . . . which maybe holds true for this discussion - maybe not.

People that get scammed typically say they want to stop the scammer from hurting others and that's why they want to publicize their bad experience and "out" the scammer.

The reasoning makes some sense for people that honestly want to protect others.

But in reality, how many of those scammed people simply want to get back at the scammer in some hurtful way? How many want to exact revenge . . . a pound of flesh? They were wronged and they're not going to let some money-grubbing con artist get the best of them!

As a business owner, my advice is that you do what you can privately to get your money back if it's a meaningful sum, and then you move on . . . quickly!

Revenge brings no long lasting satisfaction. Instead, it brings stress, negative feelings, and a loss of time, energy, and sometimes even more money down the drain.

Chasing after a few dollars is a distraction. There, I said it.

How many hours are you going to spend seeking revenge because you were scammed on a lousy $27 purchase? [ I'm not referring to this particular OP or the money he has lost]

But I have to ask all of you . . .

What is better for your business?

1- Lose some money, learn what you did wrong and remember the experience . . . then quickly move on?

or

2- Go out of your way to spend time, effort, your resources, associating your name (and maybe your business) with a scammer and his business online where both of you lose? Remember, the "memory" of the Internet can come back to haunt you in the future.

In almost every case, you are going to come away from your effort to "out" someone with a black eye, negative publicity, and with a lot of time wasted that could have been spent on building up your own business.

Just my two cents . . .

Steve

If you have a genuine concern about people who blatantly rip the community off it does not hurt to report your experiences, this industry is potentially brilliant, the opportunities are all very real - but wherever there are opportunities, and inexperienced people who wish to participate, you will get those who wish to exploit the situation.

It is a sad reflection of human society that there are predators - they use their knowledge and skills to deceive and manipulate.
Unfortunately internet marketing is precisely such an area - you can protect yourself by gaining skills and learning all that you can-these people simply leverage the greed of the newcomer, and the willingness of newbies to purchase 'short cuts' or 'Technical systems' which promise easy wealth. It is by learning the basics, and gaining the insight into how Internet Commerce works that you prevent the pond-life from exploiting your naivety-and desire for 'Easy money'.

If only we can name names. Please limit the number of up sells in an offer to six. I am tired of clicking [NO THANKS] over an over. Yeah, it is a pain. Often what I receive is an e-book with a list of resources. Things the vendor is selling and cost money. Hey, that does not help me. I paid for the so called "course" good money. It says - course. Well, there is something I did learn - stay away. There are too many scammers.

I wouldn't expect ANY support for a $7 e-book. It consistently amazes me that some people do. You don't expect first-class amenities if you're paying for a cut-rate hotel. With a cheap e-book, I'd expect no support, and to read it and decide to take action on it or not, based on what I thought of it. It also wouldn't occur to me to ask for a refund on something that cheap, especially as there's usually at least some little nugget of new information in any e-book that you can use in your business, whether you decide to take action on the information in the book or not. People who shout "scam" and ask for refunds on such cheap products either aren't in the financial position to be spending the money on that book in the first place, they're serial refunders, or they have unrealistic expectations on what a cheap e-book and its creator can/will offer.

I'm not sure about the OP's idea.....

It all boils down to defining SCAM.

As mentioned above by a poster, there is a continuum between FRAUD, SALES TECHNIQUES, and LEGIT marketing.

Some people have a very narrow definition of legit marketing. To this crowd, attraction marketing is a scam.

Some people have a broader definition.

While the legal definition of FRAUD is easy to understand, most of the problems people encounter are outside of that end of the continuum.

Hi,
Interesting thread. Yes, I think that maybe we do have to take some action re the scammers hijacking a legitimate forum and selling and/or promoting their shoddy products, regardless or the s/he said who said. And I'm about to out one after over 4.5 weeks of trying to get the issue sorted to no avail.


I purchased a WSO produc to do with a Bing Advertising product, was able to initially access the member's area; then when over 4.5 weeks ago I tried to access the members area I was unable to do so, regardless of a password reset etc.

I have continually being trying to contact the tech support who took over 3.5 weeks to respond, and only after I did what I wasn't supposed to do and contact scammer via a private message on FB. The Vendor did reply via FB and apologise for the delay, however did jack s....

All the idiot (and yes I ended up calling this idiot and idiot) tech support person did was resend me my login details even though I continually explained this was not in fact the problem. That I suspected the problem was the members area had been set in the backend to register the original IP address the member either signed up or logged in on; ignoring the fact that many members would not have a Static IP address, and each time they tried to login they would in fact have a different IP address.

Well the idiot kept sending me the login details and each email response from me had me even more angry than the previous, for consistently explaining the problem wasn't my login details, that I suspected the problem was the site had been set to only accept static IP addresses, therefore if one doesn't have a Static IP address then one is unable to login in.

In the end I asked if the person could actually read plain English da de da. The response I received was I should read my subject line which was I can't login. Well this is a fact: I actually can't login because the idiot tech support won't fix the damn problem and not with the login details.

So I responded stating the idiot should read the content of people's emails.

Over 4.5 weeks and still unable to login to the members area. I've also repeatedly stated if they're not going to fix the problem to refund and cancel my subscription, only to find I've yet again been charged the monthly subscription and no refund in sight.

Buyer beware is all I can say.

In conclusion:
I'm not one to be normally outing people on forums however I've had enough. Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I certainly became curt and potentially highly impolite. I detest not getting what I paid for. I detest tech support who take over 3.5 weeks to initially respond and then simply do the same thing repeatedly expecting a different result. I detest scammers with a passion.

This vendor have taken a relatively passive and easy going person (which I'm considered to be), who also doesn't like being taken for a ride (which I'm considered to be) to a situation that now believe - we do have to have additional mechanisms on WF that enables customers to ascertain whether the vendor is in fact a scammer or not.

One may potentially think - what about being sued for slander and this does need to be taken into consideration. However, we do from my erstwhile perspective have mechanisms in place to protect customers and genuine vendors however weeds out the scammer vendors who literally refuse to to anything to address customer's issues and continue to think they can take customer's $$$ in the process.

Maybe a rating system on tech support might be useful for customers to be able to review. Not only on the product the vendor is currently selling but also on products sold over a period of time. (Whilst I'm not overly enthused about the Fivver rating system, maybe such a system which is improved upon for WF might be worth considering.)

So in answer to your question: should we be outing scammers on this forum. From my perspective - absolutely. And I think it would be even better if WF instituted a mechanism re vendors that customers can quickly ascertain whether the vendors are legit, rather than simply have customers give their opinions on the product, because these scammers literally bypass all the rules and genuine customers can be caught with the reviews being oh so positive. We need to include another mechanism that backs up the reviews of the vendor and his/her products, so we can really start to weed the scammers out of the forum because they'll have a damn hard time selling their shoddy products.

This is my erstwhile perspective; and I've tried to be fair in outing this scammer by informing in this post some of the words and actions I have undertaken.

Next step to contact my bank and not only get the subscription cancelled by my bank.

Thanks for reading this far.
Desley

Update:
I finally accessed the Warrior Plus members area to trace a few more things back; and low and behold I'm now able to access the members area (from the Warrior Plus link.) Seems the vendor suddenly had a change of heart and actually decided to give me access to the member's area - because the login URL is exactly the same as I've been using all along to login. So thank you Vendor. However, wait for it - the URL for the traffic stream is a URL I have never heard of and certainly didn't include, so the clicks were going to some other person's affiliate link!!!

However, I still have ensure the monthly subscription has been cancelled and sure would like a refund for being unable to access the product for over 4.5 weeks.