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Posts Tagged ‘Should Plimus Change their name to Slimus’

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.