6 ms·
I lost a couple of thousand dollars using their services (literally 5x my ad budget) because they "refill" your ad account based on the ceiling you intend to sp
by motohagiography 6y ago
I lost a couple of thousand dollars using their services (literally 5x my ad budget) because they "refill" your ad account based on the ceiling you intend to spend - without an email notification or other notification in your main profile. It cycled through my ~$300 ad budget and charged me that amount multiple times before I caught it on my bill. Never received the refund they said they'd send either.
People say that half of all advertising dollars are wasted, you just don't know which half, but this company has perfected it to 5-10x what you mean to spend on advertising is wasted, and you don't know until they've taken it from you and then shown you the fine print.
In short, avoid.
- chinathrow 6y agoPerfect for small claims court if you are US based.
- Nextgrid 6y agoOr a chargeback for that matter.
- penagwin 6y agoI was going to say - it's a lot easier to not let them take your money (even retroactively) - then it is to get it back through small claims court.
- Archit3ch 6y agoIf they advertise increased click-through rate and they increase it, what stops them from claiming they fulfilled their end of the bargain? It could even be click bots.
- user5994461 6y agoFraud is not a valid way to fulfill your end of a contract ;)
- antsar 6y agoThat only matters if you can prove there was fraud.
- motohagiography 6y agoIf LI were still a public company, this behaviour would destroy their stock price. There is something to be said for public markets and accountability.
- XMPPwocky 6y agoIs there? To me, it seems like either this behavior would hurt their profits, in which case it doesn't really matter that much whether they're public or not (they get hurt either way), or it wouldn't but a public company would have more backlash, in which case it seems like an efficient market would have actors that look for companies getting backlash, buy the cheap stock, and then enjoy the (unaffected, by assumption) profits.
- caymanjim 6y agoBeing that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, they are a public company.
- motohagiography 6y agoExcept as a product, the company (MSFT) is insulated from their crappy behavior, where if it were a stand alone company, there would be more accountability. Maybe that's a new platform company strategy: build a bunch of low-volatility/low-margin enterprise products for long term revenue generation, then fund a bunch of shadey operations as products to be pools for off-the-books bonuses and incentives.
- caymanjim 6y agoWhen a company like Microsoft buys a company like LinkedIn, they aren't after direct profits. They're buying eyeballs and personal information for ad targeting. Microsoft already got what they wanted out of the purchase. It's the same reason Facebook buys tons of companies that will never directly turn a profit. I agree with your larger point, that LinkedIn isn't really accountable to anyone; the Microsoft shareholders don't care what LinkedIn does.
- 0xffff2 6y agoI don't really know if a chargeback would work here, but the basis would be "I agreed to pay X and LinkedIn charged me Y", not "LinkedIn did not deliver the services advertised".
- caymanjim 6y agoOnly if you put no value on your own time and want to lose even more money just to be proven right.
- swiley 6y agoIs it really that bad? I know land lords that have had to go to small claims court, they spent like a day dealing with things. I’m not totally sure you’ll break even but it’s not a total loss either.
- derwiki 6y agoThis sort of reason is exactly why I started using one time credit cards (privacy) for new service signups.
- bradstewart 6y agoWhat do you use to generate the one-time numbers?
- ilikepi 6y agoI'm guessing @derwiki's parenthetical "(privacy)" is a reference to privacy.com, which is a service for doing exactly that.
- WY3JBHIL3KLPN5B 6y agoPriavcy is the name of the service. https://privacy.com/ https://privacy.com/
- _trampeltier 6y agoJust for US persons. Are there other services like that for EU?
- achairapart 6y agoAny EU alternative for privacy.com or similar services?
- thiscatis 6y agoRevolut offers virtual and disposable cards. I've been (unethically) using them for these 1GBP / month trials a certain online newspaper offers.
- AlexandrB 6y agoRevolut was featured on HN just this morning: https://thehftguy.com/2020/08/12/a-haven-for-fraud-and-stolen-cards-or-how-my-wife-was-forced-to-quit-revolut/ https://thehftguy.com/2020/08/12/a-haven-for-fraud-and-stole...
- dkersten 6y agoSeems they’re still as shady as ever...
- jtsiskin 6y agoWhat is the purpose of allowing the user to set a "budget" if they automatically refill it? That doesn't sound like a budget at all, and highly deceptive on their end if that's what they called it