If the company closes up shop and disappears then their credit card processor "eats" the chargebacks. But they also grab all the so called "legit" charges. The processor is also getting a much larger percent transaction fee, supposedly to cover the higher chance of fraud for online transactions. So if the company actually skips town the processor is the one that grabs any other transactions to pay off the chargebacks and keeps the rest of the money themselves.

Credit card processing is a dirty dirty business

Well they were strippers, just clothed strippers, they happened to be absolutely naked (underneath their clothes), and nothing in the shrink wrap eula that covered the entrance to the champagne room said anything about them actually letting you see them naked without clothes.

The chargeback rules haven't caught up with technology. The thinkpad was a tangible piece of merchandise. The credit card processors know how to deal with that, i.e. bought x and x doesn't do what x is supposed to do, and as you said wasn't bought "as is". But what if you pay for a piece of software that only claims to restore your original home page and let you search AOL again. These people bought something that did that. How do you explain to your cc company that you clicked a link you shouldn't have and then you bought this software to fix the pc and it did fix it, but that you were scammed, because the original link was misleading.

As for warranties as I recall most software requires that you sign away just about any rights before you are allowed to use it. It is a slippery slope, try charging back MS Office because it is "broken" because you can't make pivot tables.

Depends on what they actually promised, they did "clean" the pcs of the browser hijacker. Even then just try suing a company from Russia in your local small claims court. Now this isn't ethical, but that doesn't mean it is not legal.

But the bogus product did "fix" the pcs. Now if their browser was still hijacked after paying the money it would be fraud, but here they got their pcs fixed for $80.

The rogue antivirus "appears" to be defrauding the customer. This is hair splitting, but it is important. Imagine this scenario, click a link for our super duper antivirus cleaner, customer clicks link, doesn't read fine print that says this is for novelty purposes, that it will change your homepage to goatse, that it will redirect all searches to images of kittens, or whatever. The super duper antivirus cleaner says the pc is infected. The customers pc is now "broken" because their home page shows a gaping ass, and every time they try and use yahoo search they get kittens. They see a link to give their credit card to clean their pc. They cough up $80 and their pc is fixed.

Now is that fraud?

They can't "just" reverse it because the customers' cards weren't stolen, the customers initiated the transaction, and they received the "merchandise".

If anytime a customer felt wronged by a company he could just reverse the charges, it would be chaos. This is no different than using a credit card at a casino and losing your money there. Or using your credit card at a psychic, and being upset when you don't meet a tall dark stranger.

Taken to absurdity, this would be like trying to reverse the charges for buying Norton AV, when you do get infected.

These are all valid charges - now the customers should have spent a few hundred dollars more and taken their pcs to someone who could disinfect them, and spend a hundred or so more to buy proper av software. But this way they spent $80.

Although the company that was given the cc number was shady - the customers actually authorised the charge. When you process a charge back it has to fall into a certain category with the processor. The customer can claim that the card was stolen, the customer can claim that the charge was never theirs, they can claim that they never received the merchandise, etc. But in this case the customers still had their cards, they actually did initiate the transaction, and they received the merchandise, i.e. their pc got "fixed".

There is no chargeback category for this, and as long as these card numbers aren't then resold and used in a traditionally fraudulent manner, nothing will happen.

It would be like trying to reverse the $1,000.00 charges for the champagne room strippers because they were ugly. Just you didn't get what you thought you'd get doesn't mean you can reverse the charges.

What was reported on the morning television news is that the laptop must be a mac because only macs will work with the schools wifi. The news also reported that the school would lease you a mac for $25.00 a month

Same issue I've seen with redirecting of web traffic it was crazy - I figured that it would only effect firefox and IE on the machine, but it even effected a new install of chrome. Browser looked fine until you googled microsoft, avg, trend micro, etc. Just plain nasty

Not all of them are so easy, yes google is your friend, but many times the googled answer has been reinstall windows, which is easy I suppose except for having the person dig up all their software cds and licenses.

What is scary is that some people will read your comment literally, and they actually believe that.

This is exactly why PCI compliance won't do much to stem identity theft. The institutions that get the benefit of credit cards, i.e. the issuers like Visa/Mastercard, have nothing to gain from preventing it and everything to gain from allowing it. If Visa card is fraudulently obtained and used, Visa loses absolutely nothing. The person whose identity was stolen loses time and effort to get things reversed, the merchant loses because the charges will be charged back, and the merchant loses again because she pays fees for the original transaction and fees for the chargeback. The issuers actually make MORE money when this happens. Visa/Mastercard don't even have to game the system, they are the system. PCI stands for payment card industry. Foisting all security onto the merchants is one small step removed from blaming the consumer.

I agree that companies need to safeguard credit card data, but Visa/Mastercard doesn't even have something as simple as chip and pin for cards in the US.

PCI is a broken system, in that the cartel reaping all the benefits has no risk and foists off the responsibility for protecting card data to the merchant processors who get practically nothing, and then down to the merchants who are PAYING for the privelege of taking credit cards. Visa/Mastercard could and should develop a more secure system, but they won't because they don't have to. Interchange is defended as a cost for originating the credit cards, but why then is it as high in the US as when we still used knuckle busters to process and microfiche to track down stolen cards. I agree hold them accountable, but hold the right people accountable