One of the ways sites sell ad space is "per action" (known as CPA). What this means is, rather than displaying an ad X times or paying for a certain number of click-throughs, they are paying for actual customers. In other words, they only pay for the ad space when someone sees the ad, AND clicks on in, AND subsequently makes a purchase from the target website. Obviously, the fees for such ads are higher because the occurrence is less frequent. If a website was not going to meet their quota, perhaps they'd do something like what you saw in order to make it. Or, as caryabend suggested, to make their success rate seem higher in order to encourage more people to pay for ads.
Maybe merely signing someone up for the trial is good enough to earn the ad fee, even if that person calls to cancel the subscription later. I suppose that my failure to become a permanent customer doesn't always end up getting flagged as fraud, or that the companies follow up on fraud enough to realize who scammed them. I've been calling the companies that sent me stuff and telling them it was fraud because I want to document everything (who, me, obsessive?), but if all I had done was work via my credit card company to challenge the charges and not notified the companies, the ad fees might have been paid out before the charges were invalidated.
Vistaprint scamsongtygerApril 9 2009, 11:28:35 UTC
Please don’t use Vistaprint or recommend it to your readers.
Using Vistaprint could very likely lead to you being signed up to FAKE discount clubs and hundreds of dollars benig taken from you Visa/bank without your knowledge or permission.
I have a huge blog post with all the details of all of the different scamming sites Vistaprint and Adaptive Affinity run and how best to get a refund.
Comments 6
"We referred 5000 customers" translates into "How much will you pay for a share of that?"
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Using Vistaprint could very likely lead to you being signed up to FAKE discount clubs and hundreds of dollars benig taken from you Visa/bank without your knowledge or permission.
I have a huge blog post with all the details of all of the different scamming sites Vistaprint and Adaptive Affinity run and how best to get a refund.
http://www.hubbers.com/index.php/i-got-scammed-by-vistaprint-and-adaptive-marketing-and-adaptive-affinity-ltd-and-amazon/
If you don’t believe me check this blog and the scores of comments form people who have been ripped off!
http://www.thegeneva.com/vistaprint-scamvprewards-scam-warning/
If you have already used Vistaprint, start checking your bank statements.
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