Betamax GmbH & Co KG, FINAREA SA VOIP provider scamming and Unauthorized charges Kln Germany

Betamax has charged my credit card. I have NEVER even heared of this company before. I check my statement and there is a 34.26 charge for BETAMAX VOIP CREDIT COLOGNE DF

This Company is FRAUDULENTLY and Illegally finding credit card numbers and charging them. There is virtually no information on these crimminals. They will not return e-mail/ phone calls etc. I have cancelled my card, alerted my bank, disputed the charges, contated the State Attorney, federal, and others. They need to be prosecuted.

Here is a website that has a little info on them. They are not part of the scam as far as I know.

http://www.myvoipprovider.com/blogcategory/Betamax/

Here is a brief of what they say on the page.
Betamax VoIP Services

The Betamax group of VoIP services is made up of 13 apparently different companies. Many users do not realize that VoIPBuster, VoIPCheap.co.uk, Netappel, SIP Discount, Voipstunt, Sparvoip, Internetcalls, Voipdiscount, Poivy, Voipcheap.com, freecall.com, lowratevoip.com and justvoip.com are all part of the same group. A recent addition is also a Web activated VoIP service at www.webcalldirect.com.

This summary gives an overview of all the VoIP services, all possible SIP settings, supported Codecs, Free VoIP-IN numbers, Betamax infrastructure as well as validity of credits and free VoIP calls.

Here you will find a summary of all Betamax current free VoIP destinations (updated 2-3 times per month). These "Free" destinations change almost on a weekly basis and the Betamax group have the habit of changing their rates almost on a weekly basis.

Special Thanks: A lot of this information was provided by Wolf Paul in Austria, who can no longer maintain this information and has requested us to continue and some of it was translated from German from the IP-phone-forum, which was compiled by Karsten.

Please note: We are in no way associated or affiliated with the Betamax group of companies

Further Note: In the past few months we have received numerous requests from users of the Betamax VoIP services to help with unauthorized credit card charges from this company. We CANNOT help you. Just as they will never respond to any requests / emails from you they also do not respond to our requests to facilitate. It also appears that they have even shut down the only Forum for advice and complaints on Voipbusters website.

Overview Betamax and Finarea

Betamax GmbH & Co KG (www.betamax.com) is a company registered in Cologne, Germany.

In December 2005 it took over all of the VoIP services (see press release)previously run by Finarea SA, and has since added a few more VoIP services. With one exception, all of these services offer the same features; the only difference seems to be in the rates charged to various destinations at any one time, and in the color scheme used on the web pages and soft phones.

There are some indications that Betamax might just be a front for Finarea which still operates traditional PSTN call-by-call services in a number of European and Asian countries.

For more information on Finarea's current call-by call services in various countries, please check the following page: Finarea Call-by-Call

Betamax, specifically www.voipstunt.com, are sporadically using banners to advertise a dial-through operator in the US.

The service can be found at www.1010229.com and they offer very cheap international call rates, but only to residents of California. Betamax / Finarea may be expanding into the US through DAR Communications, the registered operator of 1010229.com.

While it is registerd in the name of DAR Communications Corporation, the contact address is dar@wxx.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , and wxx.com belongs to TVIConnect, who hosts all of the Betamax Voip services. In addition DAR Communications have applied for a telecomunications license in Canada.

List of Betamax VoIP services
Here is a list of services we are aware of; if you come across others, please send us an e-mail to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

These services provide a soft phone to use on your MS Windows PC, but also work with SIP devices and other softphones (as of May 3, there are instructions for configuring SIP devices on all of the websites):

www.internetcalls.com
www.netappel.com
www.poivy.com

www.sparvoip.de
www.voipbuster.com
www.voipcheap.com
www.voipcheap.co.uk (careful, different "free" list from voipcheap.com, and rates listed in Sterling Pence instead of Euro Cents!)
www.voipdiscount.com
www.voipstunt.com
www.freecall.com (launched 29 June 2006)
www.voiparound.com (launched 29 June 2006) - redirects to www.freecall.com now
www.lowratevoip.com
www.justvoip.com (launched 15 March 2007)

Some of these services are also available with a different top-level domain, i.e. netappel.com is also available as netappel.fr, voipstunt.com is also available as voipstunt.de, etc.

The following service is geared specifically towards users of SIP devices and does NOT provide a softphone. It does require an MS Windows program though to register for the service. It will work with standard SIP softphones such as Firefly or X-Lite.

www.sipdiscount.com
The following service requires an Internet Connection, a Web Browser, and a normal telephone; it is a web-activated callback service rather than a normal VoIP service (although it is probably
implemented internally by VoIP):

www.webcalldirect.com
NEW - Early September 2006 Betamax lauched their first wholesale VoIP service. This service is targeted at the business user with a minimum call volume of 5000 minutes per month. No free service here, but still they offer excellent rates to both landline and mobile destinations.

www.voicetrading.com
List of all current known Betamax VoIP domains

All of these domains are registered to Betamax and maybe in future more VoIP services will be launched. Please let us know of any other domain registered to Betamax.

1. www.12voip.com
2. www.cheapvoip.biz
3. www.freecall.com
4. www.internetcalls.com
5. www.internetcalls.net
6. www.poivy.com
7. www.sipbuster.com
8. www.sipbusters.com
9. www.sipfoon.com
10. www.spk2.com
11. www.spk2.net
12. www.telbo.com
13. www.voicebuster.com
14. www.voicebuster.net
15. www.voicebusters.com
16. www.voicebusters.net
17. www.voiparound.com
18. www.voipbuster.com
19. www.voipcracker.com
20. www.voipcracker.net
21. www.voipdiscount.biz">www.voipdiscount.biz
22. www.voipdiscount.info
23. www.voipdiscount.net
24. www.voipdiscount.org
25. www.webcall.biz
26. www.keenvoip.com
27. www.librevoip.com
28. www.lightvoip.com
29. www.loginvoip.com
30. www.lowratesvoip.com
31. www.lowratevoip.com
32. www.skp2.com
33. www.skp2.net
34. www.skypsite.com
35. www.voipappel.com
36. www.voipbarato.com
37. www.voipdescuento.com
38. www.voipgigant.com
39. www.voipgigante.com
40. www.voipshark.com
41. www.voipskyp.com
42. www.voipsmasher.com
43. www.voipsmasher.net
44. www.webcalldirect.com
45. www.webcalldirekt.com
46. www.webdirectcalls.com
47. www.yourvoipnumber.com


Denise
Rochester, New York
U.S.A.