Emailadcampaigns.com This company scams their buyers. Beware! Plano Texas

I am an affiliate at a web site. They sell diet pills and I can resell them and/or get people to buy from my website and get a percentage of their order. Well, I decide to try and get more direct orders through my site, I would do an email marketing campaign to people who have already opted in to emails about weight loss. I find a site that will send 350,000 emails for 49$.Now, I didn't research it a lot, but the site looked totally legit and I thought that was a fair price. They have a place where I can request a sample email. I do so, receive it in a couple of minutes and I decide to run 2 campains for $49 each. I spend forever designing the HTML email advertisements I will send and I get everything situated and buy the campaigns.

So, I pay for the campaigns through paypal and get my payment confirmations and such but no other confirmation about my campaigns. I find it odd, but then I think "maybe they will send it when they start my campaigns," which was supposed to be Thursday 3/13. All of this happened yesterday, 3/10. Today, I am at work looking for a place to login or whatever to check the status of my campaigns and I go to my paypal receipt because I couldn't remember the site name. I click on the site on my receipt and I go to almost the EXACT SAME SITE... like a mirrored site.. only the prices start at over $1400 for a campaign. the same one I got for $49.

I remember the sample email I had gotten and find it in my email. I click the link in it to their FAQ and sure enough... everything is the same except the pricing, the contact number and the opt-out email address. Even the address in TX is the same. I look up the places on the internet. First the paypal'd one (which was listed with the contact information at www.emailadcampaigns.com). I find it and like 4 scam reports on it some people saying it's a scam, some not. I try to look up the site I received in my sample file ... NOTHING. I even COPIED AND PASTED the web url of the site back into my brower (http://emailmarketing.emailmarketingmedia.com/opt-in/faq.htm) and NOTHING.

Still giving them the benefit of the doubt, I send an email through the paypal email contact information (support@emailadcampaigns.com) asking how they are affiliated with the place I started my campaign (just trying to find out who I paid). They respond that they are a reseller and to contact the company I originally started with... which struck me as odd because I PAID them. So I went to the "contact us" part of the site for the $49 (only found through the sample email link... I could not re-find them through Google like I had the night before) and email them asking first when I will receive the stat counter they said came with it (to check on the % hits to your email you are getting) and a confirmation about my actual order. I also ask their affiliation with the people I paid and why the prices were so different. They ignore my first question and respond "There are over 200 re-sellers of email marketing... some choose to have different prices or have similar websites...." (That quote was copied and pasted. It was their exact response.)

I noticed that when I click the link in my sample email, it goes somewhere else first and redirects to the page I purchased from. I see it goes to getresponse.net (also get response.com) with a bunch of numbers after it and then to the site. I go to getresponse.net (which is getresponse.com) and notice THEY have an affiliate program that pays people to market from them. I think "I get it... This place is an affiliate and makes money off of people who are routed to them through getresponse.com but how do they connect with the people I paid through paypal through THEIR site?"

I email them back and ask them just that. I asked them again when I will get confirmation of my order and my stat thingy and I ask how they are affiliated with emailadcampaigns.com because that is the contact information provided on my Paypal receipt. I mention emailadcampaigns.com has a BBB report (I did a lot of research to find out how everything was connected), but that I couldn't find anything about this particular site (the emailmarketing one) and wanted to find out who I was paying money to, for what and how it was all connected.

Well, I must have dug too deep.... because IMMEDIATELY, they refund my money through Paypal. No explanation... no reponse. Just refunds that I never even requested.

So, now I know they are a scam which means they are scamming others who won't dig like that AND they are getting paid to do it by being an affiliate of getresponse.com. I call getresponse.com and tell them one of their affiliates is scamming people... because that means they are being scammed too by paying him and that has got to be a breech of TOS somehow. The customer service rep wasn't much help, but I was able to forward all of the emails I got to him from all of the places so he can forward them onto their security area. I am trying to give the customer service rep more information and remember that sample email with the FAQ link? ALL of the pictures in the sample are GONE and the link has blocked my IP address at work... like the company never existed. I also called the numbers listed both at the page that the sample email linked to and the number on the emailadcampaigns.com ... no one answers and they both go to similar generic voicemails.

That was when I decided I was going to contact Paypal to report the situation so no one else becomes a victim. (I will also contact the TX BBB). At this point, I thought that emailadcampaigns.com was also a victim and that this other site was just stealing their information since by what I saw on the Texas BBB site, they seemed ok. I decide to go back to their website www.emailadcampaigns.com to get their information. I found out fast they are also tied into this scam because instead of taking me to the site again (which I had visted plenty of times today) like normal, it recognized my IP address and brought up the music video for that song "never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..." by Rick Roll and a pop-up with the lyrics. I immediately stop and freak out because it just gave my WORK computer a virus. Luckily, our IT department was able to fix this. I see now that I am at my home computer that the IP address here is not blocked yet. I can access www.emailadcampaigns.com and the sample email links with no problem.

Now, I never even GOT to the point where they ran the fake campaigns the other people are talking about on here, but I totally believe them after all of this. I also in NONE of my correspondences asked for a refund or mentioned them being a scam. I was legitimately just trying to find out who I gave my money to, how it was all connected and who I would contact for support. At that point, I was still thinking I'd have a campaign run on Thursday and I would have been just as big of a sucker as everyone else they've ripped off. THEY are the ones who knew I was apparently getting too close and thought a refund would shut me up.

Let me tell you... they were wrong.

Words of advice: Research email marketing from a variety of companies. Prices vary, but all of them are expensive. If someone is offering to send 100,000+ emails for a low price... it's a deal too good to be true. I got lucky. I just hope my reports and email forwards to Paypal, getresponse.com and the Texas BBB will save someone else from being a victim before it's too late. I only would have been out $98 if I hadn't struck a chord with them... I am really feeling pity for the people who went to www.emailadcampaigns.com directly and signed up for the $5000+ package...

Anonymous
Beaufort, North Carolina
U.S.A.