Finally the Scam story, folks!

byHeidi56

1.2K followers

7 years ago

First of all: Be grateful that you are here on WA - because "outside in the world" there are people who want to drag the money out of you by creating fear of things you feel unable to control.

The pre-story:

I wrote an earlier blogpost on Sept 1. - that was the first part of the story: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/heidi56/blog/websi...

Bluehost had shut down my account and the only way to get the websites up again was to hire SiteLock (the internal telephon of Bluehost directed me directly to them, no other choice). Ok, the sites came up again, for 10 bucks a month for each of the 3 sites I hosted there, means §30 each month.

The scam begins

Then I got a message that something is still wrong with my website. They got me on the telephone and told me that their machines couldn't do it, it would be needed manual intervention.

I thought to just re-upload a backup of my website to the server. and gained some time. You cannot imagine how they spoke to me, that the virus would go everywhere and what not. In the second telephone call, with more intimitations from their side, I asked how much the manual cleaning would cost, right at the beginning. No answer, more intimitation. I insisted, and finally I got the answer: the cleaning is complimentary, but from then on I would need to pay $59 a month for the 3 sites (179!) to make sure that my websites would be ok in the future. I obviously declined

Run away from fraud and scam!

This was the moment when I decided to hurry up to bring over all my websites to WA - and no problems at all with a virus of any kind here. I shut down my Bluehost account.

More or less at the same time when I gave my credit card information to SITELOCK a strange detraction occurred on my (better: my husband's) account (not sure if there is a connection, but I tend to believe now that the whole thing was set up somehow...) and the bank recommended to cancel the credit card and get a new one - this was LUCK!

SITELOCK starts the extorsion

Guess what? The bots of Sitelock, obviously, couldn't check my websites anymore, they were deleted on Bluehost. I got a notice that they were not able to detract the payment from the card and asked for new credit card info. I got a telephone call from England, obviously Sitelock people who urged me to give them the credit card info, because the said that I had agreed to a yearlong contract. I HAD NOT. They tried it in all ways until I got very impolite and hang up.

Another call, they still insisted on the payment for the whole year (Only 2 months were payed). How would I need to pay for website security which are inexistent? They said they would offer me a way out: 50% and that would still be almost $200.!!!! For NOTHING!

I am not a helpless victim

Fortunately I have learnt something, I am not any more like my mother who would have paid for fear of some unpredictable bad outcome. And I was really grateful that I the old credit card wasn't working any more, otherwise.....

Bluehost instead seems to be a more serious company. I got all the money back I had already paid for the coming year. But collaborating in exclusive with SiteLock can easily ruin their good name, as, for me, their behavior is fraud and completely un-ethical.

Your opinion?