Should Plimus Change their Name to Slimus?
May 31st, 2010 | 
Author: You might have heard of the sales management company at Plimus.com. I never had and thankfully so.
I have been a full time internet marketer for three years now and have been publishing free information before that since the early 1990′s and before the World Wide Web I was publishing data through Compuserve and even earlier dial-up services back as far as using a 300 baud modem and an Apple II computer. In the 1980′s.
Ok, so I am not exactly a newbie.
Thought I had seen it all, and heard it all, but evidently not. I might have just run into the sleaziest, slimiest sales ripoff organization of all time, in my humble opinion.
Plimus handles the distribution of digital downloads for developers. Similar to the way you can purchase things through ClickBank and others like eJunkie where you can make your payment with a credit card or PayPal and then gain immediate access to the digital download product, only there is one catch.
Plimus does not give you immediate download access. First of all they do something that is totally irregular and in my opinion, unethical, in that in the product order form they ask for your telephone number, oh and it is mandatory. Well that sucks. I do not give my phone number out to ANYONE, certainly not to some internet marketing company.
Oh sure Slimus says that it is for security purposes and they will not share your number, BS, I say. Even if they do not intentionally share your phone number, mistakes can easily happen. How many horror stories have you heard of databases “accidentally” being released to the public?
OK, so I use a fake phone number in such a situation. For one, I do no business on the phone. If email is not good enough for you, then I do not want your business. The telephone is the most interruptive and annoying device invented imho.
So instead of receiving the expected product after paying in full with a verified PayPal account, I received an email from these bottom feeders that said they were unable to reach me by phone and to please make sure I entered my telephone number correctly, oh and of course their email was a do-not-reply address. Fortunately the form did have one line for a comment and I explained that I do not give out my phone number to ANYONE!
After a fairly long and annoying wait I received another email from them that said they were unable to process my order as they were not able to reach me by phone. Fortunately number two, is that the very next message was from PayPal that said I had received a refund from Plimus of my $87. WTF?
Now I have purchased hundreds of products online with very little problem and have never seen a company throw money away like that. So started checking around on Google, you’ve heard of them right? Seems I have company.
I found discussions on this very same company that follow pretty much in the same vein, and now I think I know why they do it. Evidently as reported on some websites, Plimus charges the vendor a $15.00 fee for charge backs. Any order that is not completed could generate an easy and quick fifteen bucks to these creeps, and best of all, they do not have to pay the affiliate advertiser their commission, as there was technically no sale. How sweet is that deal, for Slimus that is. Everyone else gets screwed.
Now to be fair to the affiliate advertiser that I purchased this product from, I have the highest regard for, and I have sent him an email explaining just what happened. He is surely being cut out of the commission that he would have received for a successful sale.
I also know the developer and vendor of the product as he is on some forums that I participate in, and he is certainly a stand up guy. I am saddened to think that he is missing out on sales and also for having to pay unwarranted transaction fees that are not his fault if that is the case.
You do not have to take just my word for it, here are some other sites where this company is revered in very low esteem.
Ripoff Report
http://www.ripoffreport.com/Internet-Marketing-Companies/Refunds-dataBaseEntr/refunds-databaseentry-com-cli-7e5mf.htm
Muff Wiggler (OMG)
http://muffwiggler.blogspot.com/2008/04/buyer-beware-plimus-ecommerce-sucks.html
Complaints Board
http://www.complaintsboard.com/bycompany/plimus-sales–bug-doctor-a87064.html
Merchant Circle
http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Plimus.Inc.858-350-7473/review/read?cid=579035
Discuss Tech Interview
http://discuss.techinterview.org/default.asp?biz.5.638126.18
OK, so I think you get the idea. With a simple search you will find many more articles on other websites with the words, scam, ripoff, fraud, etc. I would not say that but man Slimus sure comes to mind.
Caveat Emptor.
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Tags: 13 Responses to “Should Plimus Change their Name to Slimus?”
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Wow, that surprises me. I hadn’t heard of that either and my first computer was an Apple II GS. I see you tagged this post under rant? This isn’t a rant it’s an informative personal experience that people could learn from. thanks.
Hi early Apple user. Those were the days.
Thanks for your kind comment.
All the best.
Rich
Don’t you miss the old apple IIGS I miss the funny video games like Kings Quest. Thanks Rich for the reply and I look forward to seeing more post from you.
Ha ha, I wore out three keyboards, think it was the letters J, K, I, & M that we used for playing Threshold.
Somewhere a year or so ago I found a website where they had taken all of thos old Apple games and converted them to operate on PC’s. I don’t have the link but you could probably Google it.
Thanks for commenting.
My company has used Plimus for over 3 years. I agree that their service is truly horrible. I am currently looking for a new payment processor.
@gregw,
I guess I don’t really hold any long term bad feelings about them but I sure was ticked off at the time I wrote that post. \grin/
For me, I just won’t ever use them that’s all. How about PayPal for your products?
Say does your email responder work like the ones by aweber or mail chimp? Are there monthly fees or just a site license needed?
If you are interested in writing a post about your company’s products I would consider running it on this blog for you, if appropriate, at no charge.
Rich
Just has a similar experience with Plimus insisting on my telephone number – which I refused to give them for similar security reasons. I see that their sales web pages aren’t fully encrypted either (according to Firefox’s security report, even if IE doesn’t report a problem), which also doesn’t inspire confidence.
Fortunately they did refund my PayPal account and there is an alternative product that I’ll be buy instead.
I too made a purchase through Plimus 2 years ago for an SEO service advertised on DP Forums. The vendor took my CC number and disappeared – absolutely no contact for several weeks. I had no choice to to do a chargeback through my CC company (BofA) to get my money back.
But here’s the kicker – as a customer, once Plimus has a record of you doing a chargeback, they never allow you to purchase anything through Plimus again! That’s right – Plimus will REJECT any payment you try to make through them to any vendor!
Now, I spent many years as a software professional and worked for a company that developed credit card fraud detection software. I have been in many meetings with executives from the major US banks who stated quite clearly that it is good business sense for them to work with the customer and keep the customer satisfied, even if it means eating a fraudulent charge. Plimus however seems to have a very different, self-destructive policy: “if the customer gets screwed by a dishonest vendor and has to process a chargeback, we’ll just screw the customer.”
Plimus is a terrible organization. There are lots of complaints online about them. I just refuse to use them and refuse to purchase any products that are only sold via Plimus.
Hey Marc, glad you found this article and REALLY appreciate your very well qualified input.
As you can probably guess I wrote this when I was pissed off but my feelings are still the same, they are the other side of shady.
Thanks for the great comment.
BTW, followed your link and you have a killer product.
Best of success in 2011.
Rich
We switched from plimus to fastspring and our sales nearly doubled instantly.
The funny thing is that when i try to buy a software from a dev using plimus, plimus declines my orders !!! No wonder i get more sales via fastspring !
I heard from someone else once that said once you ever have a run in with Plimus they ban you from all future purchases or sales. Your comment confirms that. Thanks for the input.
Card holder not present online transactions are some of the most fraudulent there are and Plimus does everything it can to protect our vendors and shoppers from fraudulent use of credit cards. Requiring the telephone number for an online credit card transaction is standard practice as the number is matched to the credit card details. If you enter a false number – a possible fraud situation is created – and Plimus sets up a review of the transaction. If the number you enter is incorrect and we are unable to verify…there is not much we can do but consider it fraudulent – and flag for future. We save our shoppers and vendors many many fraudulent transactions this way and our security practices in protecting our customers have been instrumental in our rapid growth.
Plimus and RedTask they are crooks. They sell the product cover. There is no product. and money can not be returned.