Kim Komando Misrepresents; Causing Business Losses; Uses Scam techniques; Misrepresentation by Omission. Internet

Advertisements are not always clear on the site, especially Google advertisements.  Someone without much technical experience could easily be fooled into clicking.  Even if Kim has no connection to a product or company and gets no kickback, she should still fact check the information.  For instance, Dashlane is not free, it is a paid product with a free term.

Recently, I find a lot of sensationalism in Kim's newsletters, designed only to attract readers; I find that she skates the ethical line of professionalism.  There are discrepancies in what she advises or advertises and in reality.  She or her employees are obviously not fact checking or just ignoring reality. Some of the advice could confuse a nontechnical user and interfere with their computer running correctly.  

I have also seen ads in poor taste on Komando.com.  In one of her recent shows she stated that no one clicks on ads, so why are they on her website?

I know times are tough and the majority of companies skate the ethical line, but I am disappointed that komando.com seems to have joined them.

I have worked for Kim Komando for a long time, and I can categorically say that she is the most honest, hard working person you could ever encounter.

Her editorial and personal integrity is beyond reproach, and to suggest that she receives kick-backs for anything she may recommend is complete nonsense.

Let me be perfectly clear here--Kim recommends a lot of products on her Web site. Occasionally one or more of those products may happen to be paid advertisers, but that typically occurs only after Kim has been recommending the product for some time, and that company realizes having Kim's recommendation carries significant influence. Kim also will go out of her way to make sure her audience knows when or if a product she recommends happens to be a paid advertiser--everything is done on the up-and-up.

In the overwhelming majority of instances, however, Kim has no connection to the company or product--zero, zip, zilch, nada. She receives nothing from her recommendation. It is, in fact, her job to be objective and if she finds something that doesn't serve her audience like she believes it should, she will let her audience and the company know!

Let me also explain that the extraordinary number of resources available on Kim's Web site--the majority of it available free to all--is very costly to create and maintain. Kim has thousands of tips, site recommendations, links to tested and free programs and much more, and the infrastructure required to keep all that running is enormous. So, Kim must have advertising on her Web site to offset those costs.

Some of that advertising is direct, and some is third-party, provided by Google, for example. In either instance the advertisement is clearly labeled:
A D V E R T I S E M E N T

When a visitor to Kim's Web site has a problem--and we are given the opportunity to track down the issue--99.99% of the time it comes back to the person clicking (and then buying) a product from one of the third-party ads. Again, they are clearly labeled as advertisements, and in the case of third-party ads there's an additional disclaimer stating the ads are neither selected or endorsed by Kim. All of Kim's direct advertisers are checked and tested to be something we would actually purchase and use on our home computers.

Even in those instances where there is a problem with a third-party ad, if given the opportunity we can sometimes help out the person, acting as liaison between customer and company. When Kim (or one of her employees on her behalf) calls, companies tend to jump to action to make things right.

Now, on to your particular problem. Since you didn't include the name of the product you purchases, I can't very well help resolve this. It's my guess, however, that you did not click on the link from Kim's Security Center (http://www.komando.com/securitycenter), where she lists 10 programs that are both effective and free for personal use.

I don't know if you've asked whatever company you are having trouble with for a refund, and I don't know that we can help you either, but if you would like to provide us with additional information you can send a message to Kim (yes, she does read them all, though she doesn't have time to answer each one personally) using this form: http://www.komando.com/feedback.aspx

I will also attempt to contact you directly via e-mail as you did send in a previous message using Kim's contact form, though with a slightly different name than you used to post here.