The problem: they don't openly disclose that it costs $300 - their customers value the cost at free or ~$5 for S&H, while the charged cost is buried in fine-print on another page.
If it was explicitly offered at $300 and people still bought it nobody would be calling it a scam even if it was viewed as "worthless crap to us."
They only get charged after the trial. I thought it was quite clearly stated that it's a trial! Their pricing is quite odd, because if you click on the offer details, it says it's a a $20 something monthly charge after the trial.
I'm only saying this merits a little more investigation than just a quick glance by Arrington and everyone else being yes-men.
I hate scammers, but it's not a fine line between scamming, and sly marketing.
Nowhere that I can see do they sell a ~$300 product. They sell "trials" and subscriptions, and hide the full price in fine print. A legit business would at least show a real price tag for the real product. (For example, ads for products with a rebate usually show the after-rebate price in a large font, but the before-rebate price is always adjacent to it, not in a sidebar or at the bottom of the page, and never on a separate page.)
Type in your email and a password. While you'll see the monthly price clearly listed, you'll also see Free Trial Offer Details in really tiny text on the left. If you click on it, it tells you how you will be charged unless you cancel.Those sly bastards
This is a similar model to the video professor.
On the video professor page it does tell you, after you click to get the free trial, that you can avoid a full charge by canceling. It also says this on their home page. In fact, it's on the right side of the page on every page of the order process up until the credit card entry (which is where I stopped).
Any decently intelligent individual would know there will be some charge at the end of the trial. It is quite clearly stated as a trial. And because it is a trial, it doesn't matter what the full price is, just as long as you know you can cancel. Which you can, by the way.
So sure, it's very likely that a legitimate business would not be so tricky. So the odds are, maybe they do have bad intentions.
I don't have enough evidence, and Arrington didn't seem to have tried to procure much either.
The problem: they don't openly disclose that it costs $300 - their customers value the cost at free or ~$5 for S&H, while the charged cost is buried in fine-print on another page.
If it was explicitly offered at $300 and people still bought it nobody would be calling it a scam even if it was viewed as "worthless crap to us."