Is Cash 4 Gold a scam?

Of course it is. This is one of those random posts that I feel I need to make because I understand SEO and this company makes me ill. I am SO TIRED of seeing companies that prey on the uninformed. Cash4Gold.com Cash for Gold Cash 4 Gold.  This is a post I found on another site that needs to be re-broadcast to as many sites as possible. I will print the post in its entirety. You can read the original at:

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/cash-4-gold-c87309.html

I am a former employee of Cash 4 Gold. I did not know much about the company before being hired. On my first day of being hired, I was taught the “Cash 4 Gold Scam” from beginning to end.
1. The “refiner’s pack” that is used for you to put your jewelry is “insured for UP TO 100 dollars, ” according to how much they feel your items are worth, NOT appraised at
2. We receive your “Refiner’s Pack” within 3-4 days, but we are instructed to tell you that it takes “7-10 business days, for us to receive your pack, ALTHOUGH your package has already arrived.
3.Your jewlery gets appraised by hand/magnifying glasses/
a small weight pad, and a bottle of mystery fluid, which your items are then give a value for. Not million dollar equipment or specially trained jewelry experts.
4. Although the payment (check) for your item is dated within 24 hrs of testing your jewelry, we sometimes DO NOT actually send out the check until up to 3-4 days later.
5. We claim a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee or your jewelry returned, BUT THE CATCH IS, that the guarantee is contacting us within 10 DAYS from when your check is DATED. (This begins with the time it takes for the accounts payables dept. to issue the check and also including the transit time for you to receive your check in the mail. **** NOTATE THE COMMERCIALS THAT STATE U GET YOUR CHECK IN 24 HRS.***
5. IF you are lucky you will receive your check around the “7th-10th” bus iness day, AND more then 97% of the time Customers are outraged when they lay eyes on the amount of the check. Some Customer’s even receive a check for 0.01 cents. (TRUTH) Thats including items of great value (Diamonds, Platinum/ Gold and Sterling)
6. They sometimes even receive your valuables and like them so much THAT we CLAIM to not have received the items just so the “TOP” people or even “FAVORED” people can get first dibs on your items. From which point we issued an INSURANCE CLAIM for UP TO 100 dollars. GOD FORBID your items are worth more then a 100 dollars, and when you call in to check on the status of your items, we tell you ” YOU SHOULD”VE ADDED EXTRA INSURANCE ON YOUR ITEMS.” We do not have an actual Insurance company, they use customer service reps as the claim department agents.
7. For those who receive there check within the 10 day frame, GOOD LUCK with trying to get in touch with a cust. srvc. rep before your 10 days are up. Which after your 10 days, your items are “ALREADY MELTED” or NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR RETURN.”
8. For the “LUCKY” people who do get in touch with us within the alloted time frame, we already know what you are calling about. Customers want their items returned, because there
check amount is so insultingly LOW. The first thing a Rep will ask you is “HOW MUCH WERE YOU EXPECTING TO GET BACK?” This way we can know how much to “BONUS” you.
Definition of a BONUS: We issue low checks just to have you call us back if you are smart enough to realized that you just got scammed. For the smart one’s we are paid to offer u a bonus up to 3x the original amount of your check and you accept. For ex: Sally Smith receives a check for $27.86 for a rolex watch(which we dont issue value for), a class ring, a ring with diamond chips, a pair of earrings with emeralds, as well as a few sterling silver pieces, and maybe a few items that were really of no value. Now Sally Smith calls the cust srvc dept, where she speaks to a rep who seems so concerned and will see if she can do better with the amount by speaking to a “SUPERVISOR”. We then place the caller on Mute, and speak to our neighbors or doodle on a sheet, or twiddle with our hair for about 45 seconds, while we are supposedly speaking to our supervisor about Ms. Smith’s complaint. We then come back with an offer to “BUMP UP YOUR MELT DATE or any other lies the cust srvc reps can think of, and offer you a total amount of $53.20 which is a little under double the amount of your original check. In which case if you accept, the cust srvc rep makes a 15.00 bonus off of your transaction. If the cust srvc rep offers you under triple the amount of your orig check, she makes 10.oo in bonuses.
9. If you accept the offer, the deal is done, and you are told that the call is recorded(which most of the time, the record button does not work.)Just a way to make your feel binded by a verbal contract. IF you do not accept the deal, you have to return your check, and it takes sometimes up to a month to receive your items back after we receive the check.
10. If you only want the items that we do not find of any value back, you have to pay a 10.00 shipping and handling fee to have your own items returned, which varies depending on sales for that week. IF sales are good, there is no fee, when we are slow, you must pay.
Cash 4 Gold is definitely not a trustworthy or credible company to do business with. You are almost better off taking your items to a local pawn shop or shopping around for other companies. With the economony the way it is, Cash 4 Gold seems to be a way out of financial stress for some, but in actuality becomes a stress of its own. I would advice you to think twice before sending in valuables or items inherited and of sentimental value. Its not worth it. I am not doing this as a way of Bashing their money making process but more so to warn everyone.

Are Penny Auctions a Scam? Answer : YES, ALL OF THEM!

Penny auctions have been around for a while now, a few years actually. I have been working online for 15 years which has really hammered home : if it sounds to good to be true, it is.. Not probably.. It is.. I actually did some work for someone in Montreal that was starting a penny auction. I felt a bit slimy helping him and I eventually bowed out of the deal. Two days ago my 75 year old Mother messaged me and said she had been ripped off – by a penny auction.

We all know the above saying, but there is something about the human brain that really wants to believe. Unless you are skeptical about everything – which means you probably have missed out on a lot of great stuff – it’s a good bet you have been taken in by a too good to be true deal. Unscrupulous online marketers know how to push all the right buttons to suck money out of even the most intelligent people. Marketing is about playing to emotions, a good marketing piece will actually trigger a rush of serotonin and dopamine in your brain causing you to do something foolish. Auctions have been doing this for hundreds of years, I am not telling you anything you don’t know.

The Psychology of Advertising

SO.. Onto penny auctions. There is no such thing as a legitimate penny auction. To say that one site is legitimate is to say they are all legitimate. This makes my scam argument a bit shaky, technically it’s not really a scam. It’s a suckers bet. There is a difference. What is a scam is the advertising being used to promote these penny auction sites – that is a scam. I will get to that in a minute.

The penny auction sites are run on a very basic principle. They advertise an item for a fraction of the cost and place it up for auction. You come to the site and create an account and deposit funds to be used for your auctions. The terms of the auction say that the bid price will go up incrementally by a few cents as people bid, but every time a bid is placed the counter on the auction adds an additional few seconds or minutes. On many auctions you are expected to pay for the action of bidding, so to stay in the action it will cost you every time you increase your bid. This time will continue to reset as long as people are still bidding. You see whats happening here?

Example:

You see an XBOX 360 for $1.00 and the auction closes in an hour.You decide to bid $1.25, the cost of placing a bid is .75 if the bids are increasing by .10 increments you will have to spend about $3 just to be able to bid $1.25.So, imagine if you said the most you would pay for the xbox is $100!?!. If the bids are incremental at .10 and it costs you .75 to place a bid, that means that you would pay $749.25 just to stay in the auction. Add $100 more if you win. Congrats, you just paid $849 for a $299 Xbox.

The goal of the site owner is to get as many people bidding as possible on a pay per bid system. If there were 100 people bidding on that item and they all stayed in to $100 the site owner would make $74,925 on the auction for that Xbox 360. Please re-read the last sentence – the website owner would make $74,925.00 for selling an Xbox that he paid $299.o0 after the item was sold.This is an extreme example, but yes – its true – the profit margins are that much. It’s obscene.

I remember a few years back there was news about a site called Unique Auction.com they had an interesting model that was quite clever – to someone who admires a good ponzi scheme. The premise behind Unique Auctions was that you could buy a high dollar item for pennies if you were the only person to bid that exact amount. Essentially that was it – Im sure Im missing somethings but I only looked at it for a minute. So they would advertise things like a $60,000 Nissan with a starting bid of $300. So the goal was to bid a totally unique amount above the $300, and you should know that because its a car – each bid will cost you $10. Do you see whats happening here? Let’s say that the company was 100% legit , the auctions were real and real people won. The profit being made is still STAGGERING.

I am not anti-capitalist, not at all. I am anti-rip off and all these sites are obviously run by people who just don’t give a shit about ripping off people who are already hurting for money. They are no better than high interest check cashers, spammers,  fake pharmacies, hidden cross sell site, shady continuity programs, penis enlargement pills, diet scam, etc. Would you be surprised to know that all of those industries I just listed were the former industries of most of the penny auction owners? Its a natural progression. Profit off the hopeful with no remorse. Hacking a persons weaknesses should be no different than hacking a computer system. Its illegal to exploit a hole in a system and there is absolutely no difference. The FTC is the human anti-virus software.

There is NO doubt in my mind that the FTC is going to drop the hammer on a lot of these sites. I am sure the warnings are out there but many of them have been in the shadows. Recently I have seen them popping up in the sponsored links on MSNBC.com and other reputable sites. The majority of these sites are veiled corporations with offshore merchant accounts and address in the Nevis, Cyprus, Antigua and any other place with lax banking laws. Penny Auctions are basically the porn sites for the masses. Not that I am against porn sites, but the marketing is the same.

There is a crafty online marketing technique thats been employed heavily in the supplement and weight loss industry, also in teeth whitening and basically every information marketing scam. The happy Bob penis pills made  billions with this method. Create a fake news site and push the product. Its not new. People have been doing advertorials in print for a long time. The beauty of the online advertorial sites is that they are doing one thing that the print world is not. They are flagrantly violating FTC laws. Posting fake online testimonials is illegal – plain and simple. I ran across a fake news site pushing a penny auction and I was impressed, even the domain is convincing.  I will post a link here, but please do not click on this link and think that I was mistaken and this site looks legit. Its 100% bullshit and you will lose your money.

http://cbcnews9.com/2a/?t202id=881&t202kw=160×600-bid-2

I have spent too long writing this , but I do get some good scam traffic to this site so I wanted to put something out there for people wanting to know if Penny Auctions are a scam – the answer is YES basically, but this isnt the question you should be asking. What you should be asking is : Will I get ripped off by a Penny Auction? The answer to this is unequivocaly YES you will either get completely ripped off or you will end up paying 500x the price of the item you wanted. There are NO reputable penny auctions. There is NO WAY to get an item for pennies on the dollar. You WILL NEVER find a hidden gem on the internet fun by charitable philanthropists who want to give away high dollar merchandise.

If you want to bid in an auction, USE EBAY. Even on Ebay you run the risk of getting ripped off, but at least you know the reviews are legit and you have some recourse. If you throw your credit card down on a Penny Auction – the money is gone. You should just send 50% of it to me and I will make you feel better about not getting ripped off.

TicketsNow.com : Rip Off : Yo Yo Ma Milwaukee Concert

This should get interesting. I am entering into a battle with TicketsNow.com over the use of deceptive tactics to sell tickets. Before you read this, first let me say: I do accept partial responsibility for this situation. I made an emotional decision to purchase tickets from TicketsNow.com who are a ticket scalper portal. I have been an online marketer for years, and it takes a lot to scam me, but I definitely walked into this one head first.

The back story to this is that my Fiance is a cellist. She has had a tough year and I really wanted to take her to see Yo Yo Ma at the Pabst theater in Milwaukee. I knew that the ticket scalping businesses would snatch up all the good seats (which I am amazed is still legal) and I was prepared to spend a little more for the tickets. I am fundamentally opposed to companies like Ticket King and other companies that use expensive software to bash away on online ticket sellers, using proxies to fake ip’s. The process is disgusting to me – and honestly – I can’t believe people don’t put some rocks through their windows. Maybe they do and I don’t know about it. Anyway, I have been known to go against my beliefs on occasion so I can’t complain too much, I pulled out my credit card and contributed to the problem.

My issue isn’t with the cost of the tickets, $150 a piece. I would have paid that much for decent seats. My issue is that the website uses a seating diagram that very conveniently implies that these tickets are in a nice spot in the house, in fact they are literally the WORST seats in the house. This show isn’t sold out. I could have walked across the street to the Pabst and purchased them for $55. Seats on the 1st section are $130 a piece and are still available.

When you purchase the tickets, you see a message that says Front Row in Section, the night I bought them, it said Front Row in Section * <– there was an asterix which is no longer there as of today.

As you can see the section says 3LC, when I bought tickets it said 3RC, Row A. This is where the seating diagram comes in handy (for them). The seating chart is vague, but appears to have all the information you need. However, the illusion is that the row is actually the seats, and the section (to me and everyone else I have shown this too) would be left center, or in my case right center.

Here is the image of the pabst theater that they use next to the tickets:

The information that is conveniently missing is the 3LC (3RC) etc. What is  noticeable is the section A.

I lingered on the tickets for a while, trying to make up my mind whether or not to buy them. I decided I would go to the next purchase screen and order them.

At this point a box popped up that said that my password for Verified by Visa was required to make the purchase, then without me touching a key, an error box popped up and the screen forced through to the purchase page without me being able to stop it. Interesting, this certainly looks like they are forcing transactions to go through. Why would they do this? Do they benefit from credit card fraud? Do they know that a certain percentage of fraud will never be reported? I have worked in online fraud for many years and I know that the ticket industry is rife. This is speculation on my part, but I certainly found it strange that the website could force a bypass on me having to enter my Visa verification password. I will leave that up to Visa to determine (I have sent them my concerns).

Well, my gut was telling me not to deal with scalpers, and as soon as I saw the transaction go through I had a sick feeling in my gut. It was impulsive on my part. I was trying to do something special for my Fiance. I really couldn’t afford it, but it would be a nice evening. I decided to check the Pabst theater prices and chart so that I could accurately see where my seats are so I could surprise Sarah (my Fiance) with my awesome seats. Well, this is what I see:

WOW! Can you see the difference? The sections are clearly marked and would you look at that? 3RC is the very last section and the worst seats in the house!. I walked right into it.

This entire research project took less than 2 minutes. I immediately called customer service at TicketsNow.com, a maze of options leading to no answer. I emailed customer service and the “manager” at manager@ticketsnow.com and told them that I had placed an order less than 2 minutes ago, I had not recieved confirmation that it had gone through but that I wanted to cancel it because I was clearly misled by their diagram of the theater.

2 minutes later the confirmation came through. I responded to that and forwarded it to manager@ticketsnow.com and explained my situation. I was polite, but I knew what to expect. So, I called my bank. I explained to them what happened. I said I wanted to give TicketsNow.com the opportunity to cancel the order. They listened to the story of how it went down and agreed that this is a clear case of misleading a consumer.

The next day, I received the email from TicketsNow.com that I expected. They said “tough luck”. I sent them back a polite reply. I told them about my career as an internet marketer and search engine optimization expert and that if they behaved honorably, I would be more than willing to write them a glowing review and spend some time making sure hundreds of thousands of people saw it. However, if they didn’t stop the transaction, I would definitely go out of my way to tell hundreds of thousands of people of my experience.

I mentioned my dealings with Venue.com, how they had taken advantage of Sarah and within 48 hours the search engines were plastered with my negative experience with them. We received a phone call from Venue telling us that her money would be returned and would we please take down all the bad press. My story about Venue.com ended up costing them quite a bit of money in lost sales and I feel good that I was able to help steer consumers away from the company. Every email I received thanking me for the review of Venue.com that prevented one more person from getting sucked into their predatory practices, gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

So, in the beginning of this, I said I take partial responsibility for this. I didn’t do my due diligence on TicketsNow.com, which is very unlike me. Had I done some research, I would have seen all the complaints about the company and their practices. I would have also read about the $500 mil  lawsuit against TicketsNow.com and Ticketmaster. If I had done my homework on the company, I never would have pulled out my credit card. However, me not doing my research on the company is one thing, using a sparse mis-leading map of the theater to increase ticket sales on scalped tickets is something altogether different.

So. There is the story, but it’s not over. Now comes the online assault. I spoke to my bank and I will be getting my money back. I will send the tickets back to TicketsNow.com when they get here. I do not want anything for free. I will also post all of my email correspondence with them as it happens. I am afraid that I am going to have to take it one step further. For the next month, I will be using all of my SEO and marketing skills to make sure the WORLD knows to stay away from this company. I will have PPC ads, top search engine listings,  I will even post videos on 30 sites, and email my list of 300,000 people and ask them to pass it on. I will also be bugging our Wisconsin politicians about this company. Milwaukee is a music loving city, and a city of blue collar workers. Ticket Scalpers should be tarred, feathered, and run out on a rail. I am embarrassed that I fell prey to them.  I can afford the loss I suppose, but many people cannot, and if I fell for it – many, many others will too.

I will begin posting the emails and saturating the internet tonight.

MESSAGE TO TicketsNow.com:

If you are a representative of TicketsNow.com, and I know you will be reading this. I want you to realize that it was really silly to not take my proposed plan of paying you the face value of the tickets plus handling charges. Your tactics are despicable. The music industry, venues, and industry have been raping fans for years. Your adding poison to the mix has pushed me to the limit and I am going to cause you as much headache as I possibly can. Don’t bother trying to troll comments on this blog, they are all reviewed and I wont post them.

Watch the first page of Google in the coming weeks. You will recognize my mark.

Incoming search terms:

• pabst seating chart