Yes you read that headline correctly, adult powerhouse AVN has for some odd reason decided to get involved in a very well known marketing scam that has been around on the Internet for years that all but tricks consumers and it’s completely legal because of fine print. It’s like pre-sales cross sales maximized. I can see some adult company doing this … let’s be real, adult companies don’t have the best reputation out there but AVN? A company who well, we have all come to know and respect. Why would they ever get involved in something so shady or at least with a program that has a reputation of being so shady? I mean even if AVN isn’t going to scam people, this type of program is such a well known scam, isn’t it just inviting trouble?
What am I ranting about? Well this new system is called “AVN Rewads“. You might know it best by other names such as “win a free ipod” or “get a free XBOX 36o” or even “get a free laptop”. These type of programs are EVERYWHERE on the Internet and have been for years. In short, you get people to sign up for a variety of free offers and once they do you are rewarded with the prize in question.
The catch? Well, what you are selling isn’t always what they are buying and because almost nobody reads the tiny fine print or the terms of service, they’ve just bought themselves a world of hassle and if you thought charge-backs were bad before, you have seen nothing yet.
So what are these offers that you are trying to sell? Well in mainstream some of them are remotely legit. Like you can join Blockbuster for 3 months at a slightly more expensive rate than their normal monthly rate. That’s not really to bad but then you have people like that Professor PC guy who is almost always involved in every one of these marketing scams. What he does is say take one of my learning CDs for free, just pay for shipping. If you don’t like it no big deal, we’ll call it a day but if you do like it then maybe you will buy others from me at a discounted rate. That sounds like a fair deal, right? Of course it SOUNDS good but in reality what you don’t know is that if you don’t return the “free” CD in 30 days they will charge you nearly $80 for it but they since you don’t actually get it for 4 to 6 weeks later, you actually get charged for it long before you ever actually get the product. Then since you didn’t cancel you got charged not only the $80 for that original CD, but they have also mailed you a new one as what you didn’t know is you signed up for a monthly program, and they have also now charged you for that new CD as well.
You get the free CD and try and return it but fight you on trying to get your money because you did agree after all when you originally placed your order and they fight you trying to charge it back with your bank because YOU AGREED to these rates.
Now let me explain a little further, these type of scams are the only way these guys can make money and that is the only way they can afford to pay you the huge prize they promised you in the first place. They typically offer you a prize valued at $300 in return for 6 confirmed sales. So that means each of those sales made has to be worth at the very least $50 to the company or it’s not worth running this marketing program in the first place.