Woe is me! I thought I was too experienced to get caught in a simple Internet scam but I fell for this one, hook, line and sinker.
Kyle (my stepson) reported this morning that his Xbox360 was scratching disks. As the games he plays cost around £45 each, this seemed a serious issue and so I did some investigating. It appears that he’s far from alone, XBox360’s have a well documented history of scratching disks. I decided the solution was to get some software that would enable me to backup his games. More Google searching led me to www.gamecopypro.com which seemed to be a well linked and recommended solution for copying video games. The $29.99 price tag was also quite appealing and so I bought it though Paypal.
As with many software purchases, I received an email within a few minutes thanking me for subscribing. The unusual thing though, no link for downloading the software. After some bemused clicks around the members area it quickly became apparent that I’d been scammed. There is no such thing as GameCopyPro, it consists of nothing but vague info on how to backup games disks.
After yet more Google searches I soon learned that I was not the first to be tricked by this outfit; there are loads of references to angry people who lost their money just like me. The reason GameCopyPro seems to rate so well on reviews is their Affiliate Programme. Every referral to their website that results in a sale earns the referrer 75% of the sale. Neat trick!
I’ve now launched a dispute through Paypal to try and recover my money on the grounds that the product I bought doesn’t actually exist. According to Paypal, my dispute is forwarded to ClickBank who presumably provide payment services for GameCopyPro. I’ll update this blog entry if there’s any progress.
Update 9th Nov 2008
Score one for Paypal and another for Clickbank. Seems that the dispute process actually does work and my entire charge was refunded. Based on this episode I’ll be considerably more disposed to use Paypal for payments in the future. Now if only GameCopyPro’s website would be forced to close for being the nasty scam it is, all would be well.