iFriends.net WebPower Inc. DISHONEST & DECEPTIVE BUSINESS PRACTICES in LAKE WORTH, Florida
GREAT SCAM they have going: because the iFriends.net site has adult content they quite legitimately ask for your credit card information so that they can validate you're an adult. They promise only a "small charge" will be made for the validation, though they don't say exactly how much that will be. But they explicitly make clear that they won't be billing you for anything more unless and until you decide to sign up (which turns out to be a boldfaced lie) and there's a lot of free content there too, sounds real good at first. Until it turns out that what they told you was free really isn't, and you get huge charges made to the credit card that they promised would never happen until and unless you decided to join the website. Isn't that cute? Bait and switch! This has to be illegal and anyone who wants to join me in taking legal action against this sleazy company please file an update to this ripoff report and we'll figure out how to get together.
When you call their customer service you get people who sound nice enough but they act all innocent like "oh didn't you see the notice saying there would be charges for those cams you watched?" AS IF it was some kind of an unusual occurrence and YOUR fault you didn't notice the tiny little change from the free pages. They quit the phony act though when you tell them there are 404 Ripoff Report cases filed against them (this should be #405). I talked to a "supervisor" named Peggy who admitted though that they were fully aware of their Ripoff Report complaints. Sure enough, they should be, most of the complaints here get "answered" by someone sounding real nice and conciliatory and oh please just call us and we'll reverse any charges that you didn't anticipate. IT'S STILL A SCAM THOUGH because only a small proportion of people they rip off likely ever go to the trouble to do that. So they are ripping people off ROUTINELY with their DISHONEST BUSINESS MODEL. How dishonest are they? Well "Peggy" declined to give me the name of the person who runs the company, and when I asked her how she would feel about a company that when you called them up wouldn't tell you who runs it, she declined to answer that question too. She even said she sleeps well at night working for them, imagine that! These are people who rip off others all day long, they are fully aware of it, and they're fine with it too. I think the right term for them is 'psychopath', someone without empathy and conscience.
I told Peggy I wanted $5,000 in compensation and for her company's deceptive business practices to end immediately, or I would make a career out of 'outing' their dishonesty. Of course Peggy didn't find any humor in that but she did promise to have someone in management call me back. From prior experiences with soulless scammer ripoff artists like iFriends I won't be expecting that but will update this page if it does occur.
The irony of this story is that I was checking out iFriends as an affiliate marketer, actually intending to drive traffic to their website to make a small commission on each signup. Now however I am going to use the story of their dishonesty to generate traffic to responsible sites instead! Nice job, iFriends! You gave me a wonderful reason for posting all over the web! I think the day will come when you will wish you had paid me $5,000 for violation of trust and decided to run your business honestly, let's see how long it takes shall we?
This is the result of a WhoIs query on iFriends, showing they're located in Lake Worth, Florida, and the registrant can be reached at mario@webpower.com. If and when I find out who 'Mario' is I will post that information on this page.
Registrant:
WebPower Inc. mario@webpower.com
7765 Lake Worth Rd. #341
LAKE WORTH, FL 33467-2991
US
Domain Name: IFRIENDS.NET
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
WebPower Inc.
7765 Lake Worth Rd. #341
LAKE WORTH, FL 33467-2991
US
561-963-9005
Record expires on 02-Jan-2017.
Record created on 03-Jan-1998.
Domain servers in listed order:
H4.NSTLD.COM 192.54.112.33
J4.NSTLD.COM 192.48.79.33
3 Updates & Rebuttals
E.Ness
Chicago,Illinois,
USA
Great Scam/Fraud Indeed!
#4Consumer Comment
Fri, May 27, 2011
Karl is completely right.
He is not alone in his complaint, yet still nothing has been done by authorities concerning the illegal practices of the websites Ifriends.net, Ifriends.com, etc. or their owners, Webpower Inc.. There have been customers, ex-affliates, and ex-chathosts who have all complained of wrongdoing for years on ripoff report and other internet complaint forums but still this company and it's website has yet to be taken down.
I am here to ask Karl to please leave an email address on this report where I can contact him to get involved with his action against this very crooked website.
Hope to see an answer from Karl soon.
Thanks
Ell Ness
Karl
Long Beach,California,
USA
IFRIENDS EMPLOYEES ARE NOT JUST SCAMMERS BUT LIARS TOO
#4Author of original report
Wed, March 16, 2011
iFriends employee "Sarah" says "Virtually every assertion made by Karl regarding our business is simply mistaken" AS IF there were not 404 previous complaints made against her scamming company! WHAT A LIAR! Exactly what you'd expect from scammers! Notice how she didn't actually even attempt to refute a single statement of mine? She just tried to minimize it by saying that they'd refunded $1.67, but take a look at the charges they TRIED to gouge me for, nearly $400! (on the screenshot I uploaded)
It IS true that they weren't able to rip me off for all the charges shown on my Bank Of America credit card but it wasn't for lack of trying! BofA has a great feature called ShopSafe which is a temporary credit card number they issue you online which you can limit as to how much can be charged to it and over what period of time. THANK GOD I used ShopSafe or I'd probably still be trying to get my money back from the iFriends scammers! I had put a maximum limit of $2 on it LOL which seemed reasonable for their validation of my identity, so their subsequent high charges didn't go through.
DON'T BE FOOLED by these scammers, people! Just look at all the complaints here, most of them saying exactly the same thing! And Sarah, you should be ashamed of yourself for having such low morals and principles as to falsely misrepresent your scammy company.
Sarah
Lake Worth,Florida,
U.S.A.
Reply from iFriends
#4UPDATE Employee
Tue, March 15, 2011
We have refunded all charges that were incurred by this individual – a total of $1.67. Virtually every assertion made by Karl regarding our business is simply mistaken. We have been in business for more than 16 years, and we have always been sincerely committed to having model customer practices. Our business depends on return customers! Our internet affiliate program, established in 1995, is literally the oldest on the web, and has more than 100,000 registered affiliates.