Platinunbucks scam? Please someone from pb step in!!
 

Hello, i'm aware PlatinumBucks has been around for a long time and seems to be a big/good company, but i just experienced something AT LEAST odd which probably someone from the company should notice and take action on it ....

I was browsing the net trying to find a tool ( ffmpeg, an open source tool for video manipulation ), and i got to a site called baydownloads.com which seemed to have what i needed. So i had to pay a trial payment of 4.95 to get access to the package. Once i joined, the suscription form actually joined me to megadownloadpass.com ....

So, two options, or the scam site baydownloads.com which is proxying sales to megadownloadpass.com is from platinumbucks people OR an affiliate is doing a scam to get paid for adult suscriptions which probably will get a lot of charge backs ( I'm right now calling my bank to do so ... ).

Could someone from PlatinumBucks please contact me asap on icq cause this is a serious thing .... We are taking about fraud and clearly violation of the TOS of any serious CC processor ( At least the ones PB seems to be using Epoch/CCBILL/etc ) ....

On the other hand, leaving this fact behind, still when i try to cancel the trial membership, its being done very difficult .........

ICQ: 278-058-243, PLEASE CONTACT ME ASAP!

/s

madawgz where are you

This isn't news. They have been doing this with lots of sites for years.

Well, i have my doubts, i will still wait them to contact me and see how we solve this, but if what you say is true, CC processors deny this type of procedure .... Its just a matter of knowing how to report this type of fraud :P No CC processor wants to loose their capability of billing third partys :P I'm waiting, in the worst case, FTC is always from the citizens side right ? ;P

/s

Why are you paying for warez?

Type in "ffmpeg" in google and where does it take you?

Why in the hell would you pay for something that is free.

Someone point this guy to proper thread

Theyve been doing that for ages. Welcome to the internet.

LOL, i knew someone stupid enough not to read my message was going to send something like this even when i left clear the fact it was not warez ....

Check google for ffmpeg .... its an OPEN SOURCE PACKAGE! You can download it and use it for free .... i just wanted a Windows version of it and as i didnt wanted to compile it myself i searched the net for someone who already had and it seemed that on that site there was a version ( Next time just take the time to read the whole message before writing ) ... just in case you didnt understand it: ITS NOT WAREZ!

Ps: Still, if i were downloading warez, which i'm not, that doesnt invalidate the fact of the fraud i'm mentioning ....

/s

Wanted wind32 compiled version with vhook support ... its a messs to compile it myself, i would had to install Visual Studio which i didnt on this machine, lets say i'm a moron and i just wanted to pay ;P Now lets focuse on the fraud ;)

/s

The win32 binary is free too.

Anyway, thats what you get for signing up for warez sites.

ok, their cancellation page is a mess, difficult to cancel membership BUT i must admit that i sent an email and i got a really quick answer ...

Greetings NorbertoEmiliano, Your member account has been cancelled. Site name: megadownloadpass.comSite URL: Members AreaValid until: 2008-10-17 15:05:26

STILL, i want to know what happened, cause clearly my CC information was proxyed so i want to know whats going on, how can i know now if my CC information wont be used in the future by a third party ? its funny that actually i would be happier to know this is a scam from them and not from an affiliate LOL

So, platinumbucks representative, please contact me asap .... I'm serious .... Dealing with CC information this way is no joke, nor for me, nor for CC processors, nor for banks behind the CC processors and of course nor for the FTC itself ....

Still waiting ....

/s

I found several builds, non with vhook support ;) if you can point me to where i can find one with support for it, cause actually, not sure if you noticed, i was scammed, lol, it would be great :)

Sorry, this answer was for k0nr4d, about what i get when joining for warez site, yeap, it seems there are no serious guys behind the warez site, dam, you cant trust no one nowadays ;) anyway, need to continue watching a porn movie in a wonderful tube site i just found ;)

/s

You may not have wanted to download warez, but you joined a warez site... the reason they use such kind of site to proxy the sign ups is to make people who were indeed looking for warez, feel they have them by the neck and not do the chargeback I'd guess :winkwink:

Funny because i did read the whole message, and the stupid person is yourself who searches for ffmpeg and gets to a warez site and then decides to give them your credit card then yells wolf at the sponsor;

Search on their site for "ffmpeg" on baydownloads.com
Downloading Freedom (That's their tag line)

Ffmpeg ripped 01-10-2008
added to New Releases 11.4 days ago
1385 Kb/s

So regardless you are paying for a warez site.

Has no sense, cause the billing information of any porn site never says PORN, lol, actually i think they could be proying it for two reasons:

A. Actually PB owns the site so just proxys suscriptions and say if someone complains "hey, they are proxying the signup page, we are no responsable", which talking technically, its not that true .... Speaking technically and legally :P They are responsable for their affiliates ;) If not talk with some huge sponsors, if not to say the biggest one about affiliates doing email spamming and the huge sum of money they had to pay to FTC for an affiliate doing email spam ;)

B. Warez site off course never gets CC processing approval for obvious reasons so this way they can "charge" for the access to their site .... And i guess they picked a porn site signup form to proxy instead of a mainstream one because we all know the "ethic" of porn sponsors ( If not sure what i'm talking about you can search in the last years a lot of different nice topics covering sponsors supporting different wonderful advertising options such as Trojan/Spywares, Email Marketing, or the latest great tendency Tube Sites :P )

/s

LOL, didnt get what you tried to say ( I didnt try to understand it too much off course also) but i will say you are right so we dont focus on a stupid discussion which actually dont helps anyone ;) ( Unless you are trying to help PBucks trying to focus the attention somewhere else which i guess you are not trying to do off course :P )

So lets say that i'm a stupid for joining that site :) You are right, you are clever, i'm stupid, sorry for calling you something you are not, and thanks for helping all us fight the warez sites .........

/s

You paid $4.95 to get software that's free? Wow, you're convincing me to open one of these sites, lol.
WG

lol, here we go again, software is free, mainly distributed for linux, if you want to use it in Windows, you need to compile it from source, which is not that easy ( Compiling software intended for one platform to another is usually a mess, didnt want to take the chance of proving it :P ), so i searched the net, there where some versions avaliable for windows already compiled, but they lacked support for a specific scheme i needed, so i would still needed to make all that mess, finally found on a site a package that had that version with the scheme i needed already compiled for windows ;) I understand mainly all guys mentioning this free/not free stuff have no programming skills at all, but believe me, i paid the 4.95 to avoid wasting 2hs of trying to compile a software and doing some hacks on its code to make it work .... But at the end, loose that time and 4.95 LOL, if "warez" site was at least serious, i would had gotten what i needed :P

Ps: ITS NOT WAREZ! The soft i paid for downloading is not warez, actually didnt know the site was warez, i thought it wasnt cause i couldnt understand any CC processor would process a warez site .... but again, even if it was, i paid for the "compiling service" lets say ....

PlatinumBucks representative please ??? come on ... i thought big sponsors answered quick ?

/s

you can charge for anything if its presented right, there are guys charging money in mainstream magazines to submit your webpage to google and msn

They obviously don't give a shit.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...kage_id=248632

Win32 version of ffmpeg, took less than 15 seconds with Google.
WG

LOL, that version does not has vhook support!!!

Ps: I found one although googleing it that actually does aparently :) Still again, if i wanted to pay for it, is my right :) And its not the point of the thread :P

jesus christ people , shoot the messenger, he is explaining a typical surfer process and a completely illegal transaction by pb. He wanted a non-standard addon for an open source product , he got ripped off and assumed maybe other people would like clarity on an often fuzzy subject.

You should have taken screenshots.

The idiot tax has never been repealed.

Yes but you pound googlebot so you cant assume everyone else has it as easy.:winkwink:

Seriously though its really funny when i am with some friends and they google something for about 10 mins before i step in plop my keywords down and find what they wanted in like 5 seconds, and these aren't novices either. If i knew i sucked at searching , i wouldnt mind paying $5 to get exactly what i wanted , even if i knew i could find it for free.

PB has been involved in this scam for years and years, but this year they have been reported to heaps of different US and Canadian authorities, including the ftc and Visa, so I guess we will just have to sit back and see what happens