The problem with this scam is that if a company has too many chargebacks (customers contesting the charges on their credit card) then Visa, Mastercard, etc. will shut down their account. Also, a chargeback typically costs a retailer upwards of $50. Obviously they're hoping that the charges are small enough nobody even notices.

FYI Cryptonomicon is a great read!

What drive do I stick the book into??

Digismarket.com dinged me on November 16 via my PayPal debit card for $6.95. I had to wait until it cleared last week before I could file a dispute, and since it was a debit card issue, I had to fill out paperwork and send it in with a signature. I haven't heard anything back yet. I'll be damned if I'm going to let them get away with it!

I'd love to know how they got that debit card number, though, as it's a card I rarely use...

myliberia.com? Yes, for $10 you, too, can own your own African country.

@stanfrombrooklyn: actually, the small amount works to their advantage b/c chargebacks are also expensive for the bank (typically $12-$30). under that amount, a bank must choose to just refund the charge to the customer, or spend more to charge it back.

i had to deal with a BIN probe kind of like this a few years back. what a nightmare. some b.s. magazine company in bulgaria was literally spamming visa with fake cc numbers & collecting $6-$9 with each successful hit. they hit our BIN with 12 numbers, each charge below $9. at the time, a chargeback cost $15. do you eat the $108 or spend $180 to charge it back?

you have to charge it back or you can end up with future losses that far exceed that amount, but the point is that most banks hit with a few of these charges will simply eat the cost instead of a chargeback.

I purchased some e-books from [www.diskuspublishing.com] and was shocked at the incredibly GOOD service I got. In particular, I ran into a scam through the company DiskUs was using to process credit cards. When I complained, instead of just being ignored, DiskUs responded the very same day, letting me know that they were confronting the credit card processor immediately and either the problem would be fixed or they would switch companies. Sure enough, the problem was fixed that same day. And just to keep me a happy customer, DiskUs threw in a free book download, even though the problem had not really been their fault.

DiskUs also once allowed me to re-download a book I had lost through a hard drive crash, even though It had been purchased months and months previously.

There are certainly a lot of scams going on out there, but it's nice to know there are some companies that still emphasize honesty and customer service.

Why would you have to purchase e-books from your own company? Aren't they part of your employee benefits?

No, I'm not an employee. I DO know one of the authors who publishes there though. Which is why I happened to be purchasing books and had the above mentioned good experiences with customer service.

@surgesilk: Hellz yeah it is! As long as the damn thing is, I still wanted to reread it as soon as I finished it.

GPNETHELP.com might be another one.