I should have checked for scam reports first, but I was in a hurry. My son wanted me to purchase some music on the Internet to give as a gift to a friend the next day. The site I normally buy from was down and I was pressed for time so I searched for MP3 site reviews. I came across mp3review.info — oh, how I wish I'd seen that tell-tale ".info" ending that often marks a scam site, but I missed it.
I read a five-star review for MP3-Freebie.com. The review (at http://www.mp3review.info/review-mp3-freebie.Asp) says,
"No doubt, Mp3-freebies is the site for those of you (novice to intermediate PC user) looking for a huge library of music sources with minimum investment.
"Every music title we looked for we found with speed & with ease, which supports their claim to provide access to over 2,000, 000 songs.
"Also, the site guarantees that you can play your music on all MP3 players, including the latest iPods. That is good news these days... They even guarantee it at 100%!
"They include a good privacy policy, outstanding support (even on the phone) and easy to instructions and tutorials on their website.
"Oh, they also have a money back policy, so really, what have you got to lose."
They gave the site five stars. I went to the site. I should have been tipped off by the lack of any offer to browse their music library, but I figured it would be presented after I paid the relatively low-cost life-time membership fee, and since they had a money-back guarantee, like the review said, what did I have to lose? (I'm so dumb when I'm in a hurry.)
The front page of mp3-freebie.com says, "Click to Download Music." Does that not clearly indicate the site offers music for download?
To the right of the "Click to Download Music" link are a list of music categories. Above the categories it says, "Download from a Huge Music Library." Again, this clearly represents to a visitor that they will be getting music from the site.
Below the categories it says, "Join Now and Start Downloading." Download what? Why, music of course. That's what it says everywhere else on the page, right?
I read the FAQ. The FAQ you get before signing up and the one you get after are different. Also, you will get a different FAQ from www.mp3-freebie.com than you will from mp3-freebie.com without the "www."
The FAQ at http://mp3-freebie.com/v5/faq.Asp says, "You GET all of the latest tools for accessing the largest Music, MP3s, videos, and software network on the planet, Instantly!" That's an outright lie.
First of all, "You GET... Tools" says to me that they (mp3-freebie.com) are providing the tools, not that I must get them from elsewhere, which is the truth of the matter. What I "get" is absolutely zero from mp3-freebie.com.
Secondly, "instantly" means "without waiting" and the only way this could be true would be if mp3-freebie.com provided the tools as soon as my registration was complete. They do not provide any tools, and it took me 55 minutes to install the software - that's a far cry from "instant."
The FAQ at musicformembers.com is different. It says, "You will find all of the latest tools for accessing the largest peer-to-peer networks on the planet." I was not presented with this until after they had my money. This sentence tells me the reality of what they offer and would have prevented me from giving them my credit card info.
If you type in http://mp3-freebie.com (without the "www") you will get the same first line of the FAQ as the registered site. Do they intentionally have two different sites — one with "www"and one without?
As an Apache administrator, I can tell you this is intentional. It is much simpler to have the site with or without "www"point to the same place than to point each variation to a different set of files. They intentionally made these two sites different. No question about it. Perhaps they did this so they could tell people in an e-mail to go to the one without the "www"and feign confusion as to how the "mark" could have gotten confused by their FAQ?
The FAQ before you join says, "I changed computer, is my membership transferable/can I use it on multiple computers? Absolutely! Thanks to our ultra high-speed website, all you have to do is login to your personalized members area from any computer and download all the software content you like! Its as simple as that!" Once you join this paragraph is not present in the FAQ, neither is it on the site without the "www."
It sounds like all I have to do is log-in and start downloading music. It says, "software content." Digital music is software in every sense of the word, exactly the same as a computer programme — a stream of ones and zeros. Why would I interpret this to mean anything but "music" on a site which has nothing but the words "music" in its marketing?
The word "product" is also used to confuse the "mark."
Elsewhere in the FAQ it refers to "programs." Why three words for the same thing? To confuse the buyer, obviously. They intend for people to interpret "software content" and "product" to mean "music" whilst the word "program" is interpreted to mean "computer software."
So I went ahead and signed up. I was offered a life-time membership for $26.88 USD, but after I gave them my credit card I was charged for this $26.88 plus another $14.88 USD for NetSpyProtector. I wrote to tech support and got an errant "thank you" message that told me a reply would be "send" nowhere (that is, it did not identify my e-mail address).
When I tried to check the status of my trouble ticket I found it very difficult to do so. The "Support" option only offered me the chance to enter another trouble ticket, and when I tried to start another one it did not let me but instead brought me to a menu of four choices: the FAQ, Tech support contact, Online Billing Manager, and Billing contact.
I tried "Online Billing Manager" and was brought to www.marketbill.com which asked me to enter my e-mail address. I did and it said, "Sorry, email address was not found."
I clicked to contact a "billing specialist" and was given a toll-free number (which it says is available from 7am to 7pm "Easter" time, whatever that means). Below that was an "e-mail" link which, when I clicked it, brought me to the page which showed the existence of my last trouble ticket and did not give me any opportunity to e-mail the company whatsoever. (Another one of the seemingly countless lies and misleading statements at this point.)
When I created my trouble ticket it said I would receive a response within four hours. Four hours have gone by and I have no response.
I did a WHOIS search on these domains.
Mp3-freebie.com is registered to Q Business Solutions, Inc., 160 W. Foothill Pkwy, Suite 105-20, Corona, CA 92882, USA. It was first registered on 10-June.
Musicformembers.com was first registered on 25-Jan. This is the site you are sent to once you are a member, however, on the Terms & Conditions page the title reads, "TERMS OF USE FOR THEMUSICSMEMBERSAREA.com SERVICES". Musicformembers.com is masked, showing "Private Registration."
Themusicmembersarea.com (which is also reported on this site) was first registered on 08-Jan and shows Peter Sebor of Palachova 39, Podebraday, Czechoslovakia as the registrant.
When I type "Podebraday" into Yahoo I get only one result — the WHOIS record for this same Peter Sebor registered to a Russian IP address 81.95.152.165 on which he hosts 7 domains. The city does not exist.
A WHOIS on MP3REVIEW.info turns up the same "Private Registration" as musicformembers.com. Does this seem like they are hiding to you? The combined evidence strongly indicates that is exactly what they are doing.
Oh, one other thing: I tried to write to MP3REVIEW.info using their "contact us" page, thinking maybe this was an innocent mistake on their part, but I got an error page. At this point I was suspicious, so I looked at the URL and noticed it pointed to a text file! I went back to the content page, pulled open the source code, and saw this:
In case you don't know HTML, this line should instruct the web server which _programme_ will handle the content (that is, the message).instead, they have intentionally pointed the content at a text file, which is not a programme, and therefore will of course generate an error... That is, if that text file even existed, which it does not: I got, "The page cannot be found."
Is MP3REVIEW.info part of this scam? There is no way to contact them (no phone number is given), other people on usacomplaints.com have given similar comments about them, and... Here's the biggie — if you click on ANY of their reviewed sites they all basically have the same cost, the same review, have the same FAQ, the same customer support hours — "7AM to 7PM - Easter Standard Time" — what is the likelihood that unrelated people are going to misspell "Eastern" as "Easter"?? — and the same general look-and-feel, I am absolutely convinced that mp3review.info is a willing participant in this scam, if not (quite likely) one and the same group of people running all the sites.
I contacted my credit card company and they told me I could file a dispute as soon as the charge posts to my credit card. That is what I will be doing. I hope the authorities go after these guys, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they are running a dozen (or dozens of) other domains doing the same thing.
I really hope the authorities will look into this one.
Angelo
Victoria, British Columbia
Canada
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