After reading a web-page that by all accounts looks like a news 9 news story, claiming to have investigated a surplus auction site, and illustrating and depicting the news investigator's experience confirming everything about it is for real, and that by signing up for an account and purchasing bids people are buying through auctions, and winning items that cost over a thousand dollars for less than one hundred, and then going on to state that in case it was "just a fluke" she tried again and won a lap top for an even more ridiculously low price than the HD TV she claimed previously, encouraging anyone wishing to save big time to use this service/site, and then once signing up, with no up front notification of the charge, bills your credit card for $99.00 and then does not credit the bonus points on a special running out today.
Now whether or not this site in itself is providing any type of real service or not is beyond me, and not really what my complaint is about, my com[lain is about their using the TV news stations as a source for building false confidence and considering how reputable I have come to know channel nine news generally is, I failed to read further to find out it is all fiction. This is what I want the TV stations to know is going on and tarnishing their reputations for consumer confidence when it is just another internet rip off and with every site allowed to continue to rip people off it hurts ALL legitimate internet retailers without all the flash and WOW, to keep consumers trustworthy of their offerings once they have been burned.
Here is a link to the "article" for everyone to se for themselves how they are misusing reputable news sources as a means of entrapping people and hitting them with $99 charges, without notice.
http://newstoday9.com/?t202id=300069&t202kw={keyword}&adgroup=2437
If you notice (as this is something I usually check) they even went through the trouble of purchasing a domain name to APPEAR to BE that news station despite their "bottom of the page" disclaimer of everything on the page being fiction.
In my case I did not go all the way to the bottom because I have faith in what channel nine news has debunked in the past, until I saw the charge, and when I went back to leave an comment on the article I found all the claims of comments are not accessible and this in turn is what prompted my further checking the entire page to find how I was falsely led to believe I was reading an actual news story.
This HAS to be infringement on channel nine's use of their logos, trade names, and falsely posing as channel nine news.
I could not find a means to contact channel nine new directly, and do not have time to do additional searches so I hope THIS site is fully what it claims to be and that you will somehow get this page link to them so they can take legal action against the use of their reputation in such a manner.
Thank you for your time and attention and if anything could also be done to wan the general population about any site using such tactics to get customers, then even better.
Read Next Complaint >>
