Legal Question

[BobtheCkroach]

About 3 months ago, my mom bought the entire Brisco County Jr series on DVD (awesome series).

She found a site that sold it www.briscocountyjr.com and purchased it from them. She paid something to the tune of 45 bucks, and never got the product. Calling their phone hits a machine that simply asks you to leave a message. She's left several. She's written e-mails. She cannot get ahold of anyone and she hasn't gotten a product.

Recently the site went offline. (according to netsol.com's WHOIS, they're ownership of the site ended on july 9) My mom was wondering if there's a department of Internet Crime or something - a proper channel to try and report this theft to. Does anyone know what channel she should go through? I know the odds of getting either her money or the dvds is small, but she'd feel better if she was at least able to report it or whatever.

Any ideas?

[BobtheCkroach]

Wow. Guess I just didn't google it well enough the first time.

http://www.ic3.gov/

This looks like what I was going for.

If anyone else has other suggestions, though, I was appreciate them.

[JIMINATOR]

yeah bob, buy her the set and put it in a fake package for her, and say hey, look at what arrived, that way she will no longer feel like a sucker. aside from that, contact the bbb in the area where the company is located. I doubt that a website that probably processes hundreds of thousands of complaints a day is going to be able to do anything against minor offenders, and lets face it, www.briscocountyjr.com is not going to be a high volume fraud site. anyway there is a saying about not throwing away good money after bad money. The saying here would be to not throw away good time after bad money.

[EXEcution]

Damn that's one way to get screwed over online. It's happened to me several times when I purchased web hosting and one time when I ended up paying money to play an MMO which wouldn't work on my computer so I deleted my account but still got charged. Unfortunately the anonymity of certain sellers and their websites can often hinder the legal actions which should be taken into account when fraud is committed.

[ME BIGGD01]

I would find out who owned the company, locate their place of living and go there, stab them in the throat with a suprise attack and watch them bleed to death. (You see Video Games do cause violence)


another way is contact your credit card company and put in dispute to get your money. Then go to your local Block Buster, rent what you need and pay the biatches back;) .

[Death Engineer]

Uhm....This has credit card reversal written all over it. As long as it was within the last 60-90 days (some cards will allow longer).

[BobtheCkroach]

Uhm....This has credit card reversal written all over it. As long as it was within the last 60-90 days (some cards will allow longer).

You're gonna have to help me - I'm not sure what credit card reversal is. As for 60-90 days, I think it'd still be in that timeframe.

[JIMINATOR]

basically have your mom contact the credit card provider and tell them that she disputes the charges.

Some credit cards (like american express) are really good and will kick ass on your behalf, other credit cards (bank cards) don't do much. It's worth a shot.

If the card has guarantees agaainst internet fraud, then that is something to bring up.

Of course if the company has closed their credit account, then that will be a problem.

[Death Engineer]

Pretty much all credit cards will have a dispute policy. Call the number on the back of the card and explain that a charge on the card was fraudulent. They will immediately pull the charge amount out of the vendors account and put it into a "betweener" state until the thing is resolved. Typically an unscrupulous vendor will just give up as they must provide proof that they delivered goods to the address entered on your order (which they won't be able to do). It can take a while, but at least you're not out the money. Most cards will allow you to collect 100% of whatever was charged.