Check.me Website Review

Recently, my dear mother went to pay a bill online to pay her internet bill and ended up on Check.me, a website that appears to pay your bills for you. Knowing that sometimes companies will intentionally redirect their eCommerce transactions to be handled by a third-party site, my mom completed their forms and supplied her credit card number. Afterward she realized that she may have made a mistake and asked me to find out more. With a little research in her browser history, I realized that she had clicked a link from a Google search page.

Looking at their cancellation policy and their BBB rating with 52 complaints in the last 12 months. I realized what this company was actually doing.

Their Game: 
This company makes their money on convenience fees and short cancellation windows. Their website is set up wizard style, where they guide you through the process one question as a time with each question asking for more and more sensitive information by asking you the billing number and then credit card information. Up until now, you don't know that they are going to want to charge you a convenience fee until the next screen which shows you the totals and payment methods. They will default select the "fastest" payment speed which costs a little more and then bill your card once you click to submit the order.

The Fine Print:
This company does not make it obvious that it is an independent third-party service not directly tied to the payee. In fact, you will only notice this if you read the fine print at the bottom of the web page or dig through pages on their website.

Cancellation Nightmare:
They don't want to refund your money so they make cancellation next-to-impossible. In fact if you don't cancel before 10:00 AM or 4:30 PM the same day (depending on the next time after completing the order), you can't cancel at all. They might say this is because your bill payment is being transacted and can't be halted, but I doubt the company has that quick of a turn-around time (hence why they have to payment speeds; neither one being same-day or next-day). With the situation with my mother, she tried to contact someone to cancel within that window and wasn't able to get a hold of anyone. I've encouraged her to talk with the credit card issuer about a reversal as they did not uphold their cancellation policy.

Honest Business? Sure, by somebody's standards...:
This site does not appear to be a scam or illegal, but I wouldn't call their practices ethical either. Just like with your bank or credit-union, it is a bill-pay service. They cut and mail the checks on your behalf and you pay a little more for it. And regardless of tactics, it is the user's responsibility to do their research when using any website including understanding their terms and conditions.

Read more »

1saleaday.com review

Many people may be wondering about the website 1saleaday.com, a web site that displays several deals for the duration of 24 hours. The problem is that most reviewers of the web site have had a bad experience with 1saleaday.com, and now bid their warning to others. The common complaints included low-grade products, lost shipping orders, and products that are dead on arrival (DOA). I decided to take the risk using paypal to ensure my credit card data was not compromised. I purchased two 6' HDMI cables. After about 2 weeks, the cables arrived and upon inspection, I found them to be a lower-quality product. The total cost for the cables was $5.99 including shipping.

Looking closer at the situation, it only makes sense I got what I got. A company like 1saleaday.com is still out to make a profit. To do this they have to offer low-quality merchandise (or almost unwanted merchandise) to continue to make that profit. They are in the business of making money, but it appears they don't have the resources to handle customer complaints very well. For a company like this, loosing repeat business is a very bad move for these revenue seekers.

My caution to those who are interested in what 1saleaday.com has, you honestly do get what you pay for AND you most likely wont ever get something for nothing.

Read more »

You get what you pay for - beware of ecaseshop.com

My wife has an iPhone which has cracked on the back plate. I went in search of replacement parts online and decided to take the chance with ecaseshop.com due to good pricing. The web site didn't have reviews online and I decided to take the gamble. I purchased the iPhone 3G Black Housing unit and waited to see what I had purchased. After a couple weeks, the product (made in Hong Kong) showed up and I was exited to use it. I opened it at the post office and found that the plastic seemed really cheap. But I knew the weights and densities might feel different with the metal internals of the phone connected to it. As I went to begin the iPhone cosmetic surgery (with the knowledge that doing this could void any remaining warranty), I found that the tools they had said they would send were not the right tools at all. The "X" and "-" screwdrivers were star-screwdrivers that don't fit at all. I went on to compare the weights and densities of the housings to find that the OEM one was in fact more dense and felt stronger than the one sent by ecaseshop.com. I decided that the risk wasn't worth it and left my wife's phone with the OEM parts. My caution to those interested in ecaseshop.com is to know that you get (sometimes less) than what you pay for. On that note, does anyone want a new iPhone black housing kit?

PS. When I was waiting for the shipment, I got a notice from them saying "if your package has any questions, we'll let you know via email." I guess they know me better than I do.

Read more »

Spokeo - Helpful or Hurtful?

Some people may not have yet heard about spokeo.com, a service that allows people to find others by email, name, phone number, or friends. This alone seems innocent enough, but what happens when they decide to aggregate (or collect) too much personal information about people. What if they had information like how much you make, what your house is worth, your likes/dislikes, contact information, personal pictures of you, phone numbers, address, ethnicity, relationship status, occupation, and credit scores. The fact is they claim to have all this and more.

Spokeo has created a program that searches the web to collect information on you as a person. They store all this data on their servers (which by doing happens to violate most social networking site's terms and conditions).  This information is then sold at a price to others who want to find out your details.

Target Marketing: By having all your information marketing companies can potentially search you out by your salary or other qualifications with regards to what they are trying to sell and then call you, email you, or send you snail mail in attempts to gain your business. This data is worth quite a bit of money to them and the sad part is, you don't get anything but spam for your personal information.

Targeting Youth: Web sites that provide a service are required to inform their users that they must be 18 or older. This has to do with laws in the United States that protect underage kids online. Spokeo however has banners on the web site show underage teenagers (most likely high school kids) using their service to dig up data on friends. While those under the age of 18 (but older than 13) are allowed to use the web site, it is illegal for the company to collect and store information for individuals  under the age of 18. Despite the attempts of Spokeo to filter their collections, they are not able to verify the age of users in their system offering others a way to search and target underage kids. (These girls are most likely looking at people their own age...)

Unencrypted passwords/Password storing: Spokeo offers to connect to your email to download your contact list into their database (they will make money on these emails but you will make nothing) and possibly show you information about your contacts. They don't use any HTTP encryption when you provide this information. This makes it easier for hackers to see your password running over the web and obtain access to your email account to use for whatever illegal activities they desire. This can be especially dangerous when you have this email account linked to bank accounts, auction sites, and other personally sensitive information on the web. Secure HTTP is not difficult to implement, but it does cost about $15-$30 a year, a price they are not willing to pay to keep your passwords safe.

Potential Dangers: With a service providing so much information it definitely opens the doorway for more spear phishing (when people intersect your personal information and use it against you to get money or other things they want). In this case if I was to use Spokeo to get information about your house and I looked up your bank with your unencrypted email account and password, I could then call you pretending to be a bank and tell you that your previous mortgage payment did not go through and that you needed to provide a credit card and make the payment now to avoid various fines. Now of course doing this would be a little more work than the average internet user can do, but definitely could be done by a hacker.

Removing Yourself from Spokeo: If you search yourself and find that you are listed in the system you can ask to have your personal information removed from public view (I doubt this would prevent them from selling your data, but will prevent from others using their system to find you.) To remove yourself do the following:

1. Go to spokeo.com in your browser and then search yourself by name.
2. Select your state and city until you find yourself. If you are not listed, you have evaded them for now but you may show up in their system later. Unfortunately you can remove yourself from the system until you are in it.
3. If you do find your self, load your profile. You may not see all your data since they only show 'previews' of information (these are the same for everyone - but only paid subscribers can see all the data available on you). 
4. Copy the URL address of your profile. 
5. Click on the privacy link in the bottom right of the web site. When this page pops up paste the URL into the URL field provided, then provide a junk email address that you have email access to and type the alpha-numeric code. 

You can do this 1 or 2 times with that one email address. This is nice to remove a spouse, family and friends. If you have several junk email accounts you can remove even more of those you care about.

Spreading the word: Send this post to friends and family to spread the word of warning and help others to remove themselves from the Spokeo service.

Read more »