Calling Video Professor a Scam

palmerj3 writes in to give some wider attention to a piece on Techcrunch today in which Michael Arrington reacts to Video Professor's desperate attempts to shut him up after he called Video Professor a scam in a piece syndicated by the Washington Post. As described by Arrington, the ways the company's site operates (differently depending on where a visitor comes from) are strongly reminiscent of the practices a Senate committee recently condemned. (Here is a detailed example of another, similar scam, from a not-naive victim. Video Professor's tactics sound even more deceptive.) Video Professor seems to react with belligerence, not to mention legal threats, towards any hint of criticism. Please share any direct experiences you have with this outfit.

Comments

I ordered from them in 2005

[Chickan]

Ordered a disk from them in 2005 as part of another promotion I think (one of those complete X deals). I never got the disk as it was improperly addressed, they dropped off my apartment number, so it was returned to sender, but I got a lovely $70 charge on my CC a month later. I called to complain and they offered to resend out the disk at first, but I finally got them to refund the charge. Ended up working out OK, but again, that was a few years ago.

Re:Is this the guy

[MrShaggy]

In Canada this is called 'negative option billing'

It has been illegal here for 10+years.

No more CD of the month clubs

Re:Who/What is Video Professor?

[squiggleslash]

I have to disagree with you. If all of the below are true:

1. The offer is "opt in", that is, the buyer explicitly agrees to this particular trial (as opposed to the standard Cable TV scam of "That's odd, HBO just appeared on my line-up. Oh, I see, the bill says I'm automatically enrolled in a free HBO trial)
2. Clear to the buyer before he or she opts in to the offer that the deal is "First one is free, you pay for the rest, and you're enrolled unless you say otherwise"
3. The fees are reasonable, including for the first "trial" product
4. There are no impediments to cancellation - if you ordered via a website, the website allows you to cancel. If you ordered by phone, you should be able to cancel with a phone call. If you ordered by mail, a post card allowing you to cancel should be shipped with the product. There should be no ambiguities about what to do, it shouldn't be difficult in any way.

...then this is a reasonable way of doing a free trial. What the business is doing, essentially, is saying "We know you probably want it, but you might be concerned that it's the wrong product for you. Well, here's a way to try this while knowing that if it really is a mistake, you don't have to be on the hook for the whole thing."

These systems tend to have a bad name because at least one of the above requirements are broken by many bad-faith operators. In Video Professor's case, VP are selling unaccredited video learning courses apparently primarily aimed at the elderly for absurd amounts of money. In addition, apparently many customers were unaware of the fact they were signing up to an automatically rebilling system. So in my list of rules above, both (2) and (3) were violated. Book clubs in the UK were infamous for breaking rules (2) and (4), though in fairness their prices were reasonable enough that they had many satisfied customers. Cable and Satellite TV companies the world over are infamous for (1), often combined with (4).

The fact that so many scams use the model doesn't make the model a scam. There are plenty of scams that use the "You pay $X for something in the expectation it'll be sent to you" model too, but fail because a list of rules ($X has to be reasonable, the actual something you ordered needs to be delivered to you and be as described, the actual something that's sent to you can't be stolen property, etc) are broken.

As always, with any commerce system, the key questions are based upon good and bad faith, and the reasonable requirements and expectations of buyers. "First one free, others not free and sent automatically unless you cancel" is not inherently a scam. It is, after all, an improvement on "Pay for all of them, sent automatically unless you cancel."