PowerCmd on Bits du Jour

[trialpay]

Steven,

We're going to have to agree to disagree here.  I don't appreciate being called a scoundrel or having my integrity questioned, but I'm a big boy and will survive.

On Echinacea -- find me one peer reviewed research study in a reputable medical journal that proves its efficacy at treating or preventing illness (e.g., penicillin can provably wipe out many bacterial infections).  If something isn't FDA approved for treatment, it generally means that either the FDA is too slow to act (which sometimes it is), or that the "supplement" has absolutely no proven medicinal effect.  The fact that there's disagreement on Echinacea means that, as you say, caveat emptor -- the payment method is merely a conduit and not responsible.  Bank ATMs dispense cash that can be used to buy dangerous and unsafe goods.  I am not a medical expert and that's precisely the point of this analogy -- I don't believe Echinacea does any good which is why I don't buy it, and you disagree with me.  If you want to buy it, I'm not going to stop you -- if I'm Visa or TrialPay and you are committed to buying this product, we are not going to stop you because as non-doctors, we don't necessarily know which medical "expert" to believe and our specialty is processing payments for products that people want to get, and we have a clear feedback mechanism (like eBay) by which bad sellers are immediately removed from our system.

You're taking a few of the quotes out of context -- the "web of business relationships" was something that the New York Times wrote about us in a piece that was very positive about our model and customer experiences.  The partnerships are the advertising partners (Gap, Discover Card, etc) we work with on the other end.

I think I can come up with a few more analogies that illustrate my point -- but we're not going to see eye to eye here, which is fine. 

Alex

Hi Folks,

One more point. 

The dubious registry products have jumped at the chance to look legitimate and
increase their activities using Trialpay.

Here are some products names that are using Trialpay.  There may be more, as
these types of products operate in a murky realm.

Dubious
CleanMyPC
Registry Repair Pro
Registry Technician
TweakNow RegCleaner
Advanced Registry Optimizer (Sammsoft - reviews on File Forum, discussion on Security Stronghold)

Legit
Advanced Windows Care Professional - Iobit
Wise Registry Cleaner
Registry First Aid - Rose City

There was a Registry Cleaner that may not have been Eusings that seems to have
had a run as well, but no more.  Hard to tell.  Maybe Andy can tell use on that,
or any vetting at all, or responses, on the five above.

If anyone has had good experiences with the five I mark as "dubious", please share away.
Even if you have seen a real review from a reputable source (the top-ten-reviews site
is not reputable).

Caveat emptor.

Shalom,
Steven

-Steven Avery (May 01, 2008, 09:52 AM)

[Carol Haynes]

Registry First Aid - Rose City

-Steven Avery (May 01, 2008, 09:52 AM)

Never tried your dubious list but I have had my system thoroughly trashed by Registry First Aid and is one of the reasons I no longer recommend using any automated registry cleaning products. That doesn't mean Rose City is dubious though (they have some good products) it just means that like any program messing about in your registry you should use it with caution at your own risk.

We're going to have to agree to disagree here.  I don't appreciate being called a scoundrel or having my integrity questioned, but I'm a big boy and will survive.

-trialpay (May 01, 2008, 10:10 AM)

I don't blame you Alex.

Can we call it a day on this argument and take the thread back on topic. Thanks.

[Steven Avery]

I don't appreciate being called a scoundrel

-trialpay

Not you, but some of the software that you partner in marketing.  Your company is simply a happy partner to scoundrels.  And I only say that now, after watching your blasé unconcern about the integrity issues of your partnerships.

On Echinacea -- find me one peer reviewed research ..

-trialpay

Now you sound like simply a lobbyist shill for the pharmaceutical companies. 

When even the establishment source, the University of Maryland, says ..
"Several laboratory and animal studies suggest that echinacea contains active substances that enhance the activity of the immune system, relieve pain, reduce inflammation, and have hormonal, antiviral, and antioxidant effects."

Why would I care about your nonsense challenge, defining everything on your parsed terms. And Alex, do you attack all the unproven and dangerous chemotherapy treatment, that have never passed muster on peer-reviewed trials, or are you simply a hypocrite on a crusade against natural therapies ? 

I am not a medical expert

-trialpay

That's obvious. You just pretend to be one for political purposes.

if I'm Visa or TrialPay and you are committed to buying this product

-trialpay

Your analogy fails miserably when you are creating 'partners' for phoney products.  You apparently vette one side of the partnership a little bit, the ones who pay you, yet you will take any rogues and scoundrels on the other end.  Now we know now your modus operandi. 

(One other sad thing about this is that it will ultimately taint the many small and good software companies who are using Trialpay, as well as Trialpay, as well as the various partners.)

we have a clear feedback mechanism (like eBay) by which bad sellers are immediately removed from our system.

-trialpay

Where do you announce those removals ?????  I would love to see that list.

And this includes the Registry Cleaner product that vanished, I presume, that you refused to comment upon.  Do you take any responsibility for having encouraged the partnerships that trashed and annoyed and stole from folks to begin with ?

the "web of business relationships" was something that the New York Times wrote about us in a piece

-trialpay

Obviously they were not aware of your true attitude towards this web..  $ talks, and only $.

- The partnerships are the advertising partners (Gap, Discover Card, etc) we work with on the other end.

-trialpay

So the partnership is only on one end ?  Then you have an ethical responsibility to put that right next to the NYTimes quote on the Trialpay site.

 "We do not partner with the vendors, we check nothing, and 'caveat emptor' is our real motto".

Note, however you are contradicting your own literature claims, which specifically talks about merchant partners.

http://images.trialp...ialPay_Press_Kit.pdf
"Merchant Partners
More than 3,000 companies use TrialPay as an alternative payment
method, including McAfee, Corel, The Wall Street Journal, Ziff Davis
Publishing, WeatherBug, Plaxo and Skype"

And now we know these partners will include rogueware.

Alex, I started this discussion fairly neutral about Trialpay.  Now that I know your real attitude, and how you don't even know your own public claims about partners, I cannot recommend you to anybody for anything.  The real story has come out. 

Carol, I agree with you that even the legit registry products can do damage, that is why even the ones from legit companies (ie. they have real contacts, real customer service, refunds, forums, support, no games with the software and billing) should be used with great caution, and the companies should be encouraging their users to use caution.

However there is a whole industry of fly-by-night products (see all the ads for errornuker and regcure and dozens of other shady products), dens of thieves, and they are quickly learning to partner with Trialpay to be linked with respectable partners.

When I began this aspect of the discussion, my real hope was a responsive Trialpay, one that would be attuned to ethical concerns in their marketing partnerships.  Then I could use them without much hesitation.  After seeing the posts from the CEO, Alex Rampell, I now have learned a lot about the corporate merchandising ethical void, the blindness when it comes to software and system and personal integrity in partnerships.

Shalom,
Steven

[mouser]

I think this thread is getting way too heated and antagonistic, not to mention way off topic.

Steven, I do appreciate your concerns and looking out for end users, but personally i think you are being unfair.

I have no horse in this race but i think you are asking too much of TrialPay.  I don't know of any payment provider (paypal, shareit, etc.) that can police the people using their service the way you seem to be expecting.

I think it's fair to expect payment companies to look out for users, respond in a timely way to concerns from users, and respond promptly to complaints.  But i don't think it's really fair to expect them to do deep investigations of companies that use their service to set up payment portals.  This is one of those cases where the buyer has to exercise some good judgement, as when buying anything on the web.

Regardless if you agree with me or not, I really do urge you to tone down your rhetoric -- we have a long history on this forum of engaging in passionate but *RESPECTFUL* discourse here.  It's fine to disagree but everyone here needs to do so with respect, and with some humility.

[Carol Haynes]

Enough already ... please end this discussion now. Picking on one business in this way is not helpful. AS I said in my PM to you you have some valid points in the abstract but picking on TrialPay in this way is a bit unfair. Any more and I will lock the thread.

Lets get back on topic now.

[Edit - sorry Mouser I posted at the same time as you]

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

  My apologies for getting quite so heated. I simply consider this rogueware thing a scourge, and almost nobody really cares.  One of the problems is that it is designed to trap the beginner, the neophyte, the newbie.  And that is not us, the ones who could do something about it.  So we let it go by since we are so knowledgeable.

  We could do simple things like presuring Trialpay to vette out a dozen vendors.  As if it is really difficult to do that.  The rogues generally have no forums, no phone contact, no history, no this and no that.  It is amazing to me that instead they do ... absolutely nothing.  Until a bunch of people have been hurt and they have no choice but to dump the clump.

  We don't click on and download those Google links and other enticements because we have researched for hours and know that their claims to protect us are lies.  So we confer with each other, check Snapfiles and DonationCoder etc and are very careful.

  Meanwhile thousands of folks are losing money, time, data etc. to what are essentially fraud companies. Anybody who knows about this but doesn't understand what a problem this is, the enticing ads that end up vicitimizing our friends and family, has their eyes close.  And anybody who claims to partner with merchants had better be aware with whom they are lying.  And they should decide whether they are simply a payment plan or a merchant partner, not playing both sides of the street.

  Nuff said. I hope this passes muster. Done. Finito.

Shalom,
Steven

[mwb1100]

Sorry for contributing to the drifted thread, but...

One thing to realize here is that TrialPay is not the store or the vendor - you don't go to trialpay.com and browse the products they offer then decide to 'buy' something there.  As far as I know Trialpay does not even provide a mechanism to do that.  Trialpay doesn't offer to sell you software - the software vendor offers to let you use trialpay instead of some other payment mechanism.  Generally in order to get Trialpay involved in a transaction, the customer has already decided to acquire the software (or has been enticed by the software vendor advertising the trialpay option as a way to get the software for 'free').  Trialpay is involved only as an alternative to using Visa, MasterCard, Paypal or whatever.

So I'm not sure why TrialPay would have significantly more burden to vet the products than Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, Plimus, regNow or any other payment middleman.

There might be more of a case if the stuff that you actually do pay for on Trialpay were 'rogue' or malicious (the offered flowers, gourmet coffee club membership, credit card or whatever offer you buy/agree to), but I haven't particularly noticed anything like that.

[Steven Avery]

Hi mwb100,

What you say is true for the legit softwares, Backup4All, Roboform, Promptpal, NoteZilla, AuctionSentry, and many others.

(That is what makes this all so strange, there are plenty of fine, excellent products who are willing to work with Trialpay, they do not need the dark side.)

TrialPay is not the store or the vendor  ... the software vendor offers to let you use trialpay instead of some other payment mechanism. //the customer has already decided to acquire the software (or has been enticed by the software vendor advertising the trialpay option as a way to get the software for 'free').

-mwb1100

Enticed when fears were played upon in the case of rogue softwares.

  "Clean up your PC ..."
  "Get rid of malware".
  "Danger". 
  "Free scan of your PC now !"

This is usually through Google.  Then there is the effort to get money out of you, and the last step will be various other "gotchas" from spyware, rootkit, hijacking, uninstall difficulties, continued billings, false information.  Any of these and much more are possible with unexamined software, and Trialpay examines nothing.  So now they can combine one ugly hook, the Google enticement and various lies about your system and their product, with the Trialpay 'free pay' hook.  So they will be able to catch many more marks.  The bad guys can gain an apparent partnership respectability, maintain invisibility and add the enticement of "free" while raking in $ and putting their hooks into your system.  Hope that splains.

So I'm not sure why TrialPay would have significantly more burden to vet the products than Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, Plimus, regNow or any other payment middleman.

-mwb1100

Since they set up the FREE mechanism, using so-called (unexamined merchant) PARTNERS, giving respectability to MR. ROGUE (usually overseas away from the law and very invisible) who now partners with Trialpay and Discover Card or whomever, thereby increasing the enticement to sweetly get rogue stuff on your mom's or friend's computer.

Look, I would prefer not to bear such news, that vigilance is necessary, responsible, mandatory when you partner with folks.  Better now than after various catastrophes.  Trialpay now keeps all info about the baddies that used their system completely hidden, and nobody can find out anything negative about the "partners" (without yeoman efforts) till ... too late.

And Trialpay says essentially -

 "until we get many complaints, and have no choice, ANYBODY can hook up with us.  Invisible, no history, based in Irzturkganistamongastan, never reviewed, no checking, a transparent ruse, we do not care, as long as we get our cut for awhile".

Shalom,
Steven

[Carol Haynes]

Topic locked