PartnerWithPaul, another deceptive scam like site

I was reccommended to this site by Steve Albright, creator of reviewopedia (you can see what I think of that site here. I haven't tried partnerwithpaul, so who knows if it works. All I know is his page is covered with lies and he sells your email address to spammers. I confirmed this by using a unique email for his service which resulted in receiving spam.

So after signing up for the newsletter at reviewopedia, which promised to let me know what the best system of making money online is, I got an email telling me to look at partnerwithpaul and some other site called project payday. Since the email made a bigger deal out of emphasizing Partnerwithpaul, I decided to look at it. The first thing that caught my suspicion was the fact that Paul claims repeatedly to be a normal guy who is just creating this system to help himself expand his business, rather than opening an office and hiring employees. Despite having no employees and just looking for a handful of partners, the site is very elaborate and has a very strong marketing feel to it. Everything on the site is done so carefully, even the video showing his screen when he showcases the sums of money he has made seems quite professional. Paul himself is extremely careful to conceal his identity. He covers his face and modifies his voice in all videos, and a whois report on his domain reveals that extra services have been used to conceal the owner of the site.

The next damning example of outright lying on the site is something at the bottom of the page that says that Paul intends to close the offer in a couple days. It states a specific time and day when the offer ends, however after googling the site, and looking at the cache, I saw that the deadline HAD AT ONE TIME been the date BEFORE I was looking at it. So in fact there isn't any deadline, it keeps getting pushed back. So do you really want to trust someone who is trying to trick you? It's made all the worse by the fact that he keeps trying to come off as a friendly guy. Kinda makes you not wanna trust anything he says anymore. But just for the sake of investigation, I signed up. I didn't pay anything of course, I just crossed the first hurdle of his site by offering him my email address. I don't reccommend you do this with your personal address, use a cjb.net domain and make a new address for each site you sign up, or else use gmail and use the + to make a note of who is getting your email address. I did this, and sure enough I began getting unsolicited messages to partnerwithpaul@{myusername}.cjb.net.

So once you get in, you get to see another video about how he has made even MORE money. Of course he still doesn't trust us enough to see his face or know his full name, but that's ok. He's only asking for our money after all. Wait a sec, didn't he say he wouldn't do that? Well of course it's only $10 in comparison with the large amount of money that we should, at this point, have "no doubt" is around the corner. Although fortunately his disclaimer is honest enough to say that there is a chance you may lose money, despite his site constantly claiming you will make at least 5k per month. At this point I also found an FAQ, which didn't add any transparency to the situation, as expected, and surprisingly a contact page. Unsurprisingly, no "live representatives" (hey didn't he say he didn't like to hire people?) were available, and I have the lurking suspicion that none EVER are. So it redirects to an email field which lets you write him a message without finding an email that you can really use. (most of the emails he sends out come from noreply@partnerwithpaul.com) The form guarantees he will or a representative (hey??) will get back to you within 48 hours. So I figured, why not give him a fair chance to defend his offer before I completely trash him on my blog? Here is what I wrote:

Let me first say this, I am very interested in the opportunity. That being said, there is one thing that bothers me, which is the very first transaction occurring in the program.. the payment of $9.95 for shipping of the starter kit. If you are willing, I would like to pay FedEx directly rather than pay you. This is not out of spite or anything like that, I would just enjoy the peace of mind of knowing beyond any shadow of the doubt that your primary income is not just charging people for "startup kits." I'm aware that this is a small amount to pay but the nature of the transaction, as I'm sure you would understand, makes your offer somewhat suspect. Please understand I mean no offense by this, it is just a fact that people seeking business opportunities with strangers must be cautious.

I didn't receive any response back, all I received was a form letter signed "Rebecca Hoffman/Paul's Support Team" asking me why I hadn't paid up yet. The letter contained yet another lie:

You can take the next step with no out-of-pocket costs, so this
really should be a no-brainer for you.

Paul has made millions online, and there's no better person to
help you get started and help you reach your own goals.

If there's something holding you back, please let me know?

Sincerely,

Rebecca Hoffman
Paul's Support Team
http://www.partnerwithpaul.com

P.S. Please do not reply to this email as your response will not
be received. To contact us, please use the contact form at:

http://www.partnerwithpaul.com/contact.cgi

So a few days later I get tired of waiting for a REAL response, and I send him the following letter to followup:(once again, through his contact form)

I thought I had made my question fairly clear, however you haven't answered back at all. It's been several days. At any rate, I have another question for you. Of those that pursue this program, what approximate percentage do indeed make $500 in a month? and what percentage struggle to do so or in fact lose money? (of the people who actually pursue it, i'm sure many people will give up after the first or second steps.) Please note, I am writing a review of your site for my blog. Both of the emails I have sent you as well as any you send me may be included in my review.

All I received after this was a nearly identical letter again from Rebecca Hoffman, but this time with an ominous warning at the beginning that the window of opportunity is "closing," followed by an endorsement from Paul himself about someone named Nick Marks about something equally irrelevant to my questions. I sent him one last pleading email asking him for some support.

I have already sent you 2 emails. You have answered neither, but that's ok. I just want a confirmation that you are open to communicating with me before we start. That's all. You keep sending me emails about how to get started, however you fail to aknowledge the fact that I have asked you a question, or even that I sent you anything. I hope these generic letters are not what was meant by "get back to you within 24 hours." Please let me know if I should continue or not.

"Poor me" I didn't get a response. Until Rebecca finally sent me that form letter again on our "month" anniversary.

It's been about a month now since you first created your account
at http://PartnerWithPaul.com, but you never really got started.

Maybe you've found another opportunity that is working well for
you and you're making money. If so, great!

Maybe the timing just isn't right and you're busy with other things.
I know how it goes, and that's fine too.

Mainly I just wanted to touch base and remind you to bookmark our
site so you can easily find your way back if and when you're ready
to take the next step at some point in the future ...

Followed by the same exact junk as before. Well good luck Paul and Rebecca. It would've been nice to know whether your company is run by human beings. But I guess that's too much to ask of making money at home "opportunities" with flashy websites.

reviewopedia and the scam trend

This is a true story which I hope will expose some scam artists out there. It all started when I recieved a bulk email message describing an opportunity of processing rebates. I usually ignore such blatant junk but it was curiously similar to data entry job scams I had seen before. More out of curiosity than anything else, I googled something about rebate processing jobs, and google's first result was a review on a site called reviewopedia.

Now the name of a site in many cases may not tell you much. But in this case it was clear what they were going for. Two things come straight to mind, a review site, and a wikipedia-like site. There are numerous sites for user review of products and services. If this were one of those, it might've been helpful. But it's not. It is a facade simulating user-to-user communication while in fact being run by one profit-seeking individual. His name, Steve Albright is at the end of every article. At first I thought he was one user of the site. But he is the sole reviewer. This is how he aims to get your trust.

And if you only look on the surface of the site, it is a convincing facade indeed. The first review I read, (that of the rebates job) was a negative review. This is another tactic to gain your trust, to make you think Steven Albright is "selective" and "looking out for you" when in fact he only writes positive reviews of sites that pay him to net them suckers. You can tell this simply by the fact that he never links directly to one of the sites. There is always a redirecting page on his site which then leads to the link (look in the status bar when you put your cursor over the link, it has reviewopedia in the address) This means that records are being kept of who goes from his site to the "program" or "opportunity" in question. And I'm sure he gets paid for anyone who signs up.

There are even user comments at the bottom of each page. Whoah wait, doesn't that mean that if he is being dishonest, users can refute whatever he says? Well to test that out I tried to post a comment to an article about something called profitlance on his site. This one had an almost flawless record of user comments, not a single one rating it less than 4 starts out of 5. I posted a reply saying that it wasn't working for me and surprise surprise:



He obviously filters out any comments that don't support the statements he makes. I'm convinced as well that he has added some of the comments himself.

The whole purpose of this? He makes money by promoting certain sites based on what they pay him. Not how useful they are or how successful their users are at making money with their "program." Personally I wouldn't trust anything that called itself a "program" or "system" for making money. It's some kind of bull shit buzzword that has been made up to make it sound like it's easy to make money. Like you can follow some secret formula and you will guarantee success. Well the world isn't like that, it's dynamic and you have to use your head. Sure, there are ways of making money. There are ways of making lots of money, but the ones that are easy can't be kept secret for long. You shouldn't pay for such "secret" information, research it yourself. You have no guarantee at these sites that the "program" works, until you pay them and find out for yourself. It's not a good idea to pay for something if the seller of this thing won't tell you what it is to begin with.