Betamax accused of fraud
 

Interesting, but it doesn't strike me as very balanced.

Apart from how on earth could the company charge people and cards it had no details of, and is the fraud perhaps by other parties, a couple of other complaints might be a bit spurious

I agree.

The article says that they're doing it with PayPal accounts also. As far as I know they only give the opportunity to pay by PayPal manually, which means that user interaction is required and PayPal at all stages tells you exactly how much is going to Betamax. There is no continuous authourity being set-up. All sounds very strange.

What do the other Voxalot users think? I guess that there are many Betamax clients among them. I had personally never a problem with Betamax, but some of my blog readers posted comments against them.

Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments: WTF is Betamax (VoIP)?

Maybe it's a plot from a competing company who went crazy over Betamax' prices?

having lived in many parts of the world I think that a lot of what is happening is relate to cultural differences and expectation of customer service. from what i have read the vast majority of complaints are coming from the USA. here in the USA it is somewhat expected that if you are unhappy with a service or feel deceived by misleading marketing that you should be eligible for refund on what you spent. most American companies do indeed give 100% refunds to their customers no questions asked when they complain. i do know from having lived overseas that is not the business etiquette everyplace. there are a number of reasons why many people may feel deceived since the betamax 'fair use policies' are not very clear. in particular concerning additional charges for use of SIP devices on some services. it is all exasperated in that americans also feel that every company should have a customer service line where they can call with questions(or complaints) or at very least email support with a quick turnaround to response(same day)

i do have to say though that it seems many people who complain about numerous betamax companies continue to try the others. this is very similar to what i dealt with working for a very large retail company - some of the biggest complainers and returners of products for refunds were also some of the biggest shoppers; i would see them on nearly a daily basis.

i personally have never had a billing issue with betamax. although in recent months my only funded account is nonoh; since the rates are so much less for the mobile destinations that i call than with any of the SIP options and i have unlimited calls to NA and most landlines through another provider.

I use to buy betamax voip since long time back. But recently on 2007-09-18 my credit card was charged by Betamax voip credit cologne of EUR -12,50 equavalant to Swedish krona-117,33. I contacted the betamax company and they asked me for the user name. I have several usernames from different services of betamax and could not give them the exact user name for which the credit card was charged. I then contacted the bank and cancelled the credit card. I never received any refund by betamax. Teolabm Malmo
Sweden

This family of VOIP providers never did seem to be on the up-and-up, and from the beginning engaged in relatively dodgy practices, so when I hear reports of abuse by these companies, all I can say is that along the lines of Captain Renault, "I'm shocked, shocked" that there was dishonest and potentially fraudulent activity going on here.

I am not one to say they are clean, there is a lot of iffy things happening, and their policies at times are unclear.

That said though, why bother trying to get in touch with BetaMax, both Visa and MC (at least in the US/Canada) are good at doing chargebacks upon claims. Imagine, eBay sellers have to watch for chargebacks on stuff that was actually bought and shipped, so getting a chargeback done from a German Based company which has provided no real service should be a lot easier...

As for PayPal acct charges, I see that as being a bit off, unless some of the BetaMax services have started creating Preapproved Payment arrangements with PayPal...

BetaMax may have a lot of ways to get someone annoyed, just look at all the FUP troubles, but in some cases I think this is being made a bit more tragic than it is...

i tend to agree and i have to say so many of the accusations that i read are from people who said they were suspicious in previous postings before they even signed up. why did they go ahead after all? if you do not trust a company to begin with i would suggest looking for one you trust to do business with. after all there are over 2000 VOIP companies out there; yet it seems that 75% or more of every forum posting i see is related to one of the betamax companies. with that popularity they will surely have more than the average number of complaints(especially considering that they do not offer customer support - which no one in their price bracket does)

spg

interesting post in tipsity
 

when i read this on tipsity thought of this thread:

Something fishy about some VOIP | Tipsity Online Tips

VoIP provider Betamax apparently victim of a scam
 

Read about the latest Betamax developments:

Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments: VoIP provider Betamax apparently victim of a scam

i am a customer of BVetamax for over 2 years and no problems ever. But I remeber that a friend of mine setup a voip business, and he was very happy within 1 months he was receiving loads of account. Sadly 95% of the transactions were fraud with credit cards and paypal accounts. Basically American Credit cards were used from within the US and outside the US to purchase credit, the credit was used in hours dialing mobiles and numbers in Palestine, Middle East. and next month ne got a charge back request from the bank and the bank took the money back from him.

Actually fraudsters were able even to beat the 3D secure (Verified by Visa System) of visa and master card.

Basically he lost a lot of money and had to declare personal backrupcy

I dont think it is betamax charding, but may be fraudulent users using stolen credit cards and paypal accounts to purchase credit.

I remember that he told me that he got an order from the US with a US card when he google the Email it turn out to be a normal couple living the UK who had purchased credit using a stolen card. Not far away from where he lived.

Amazing!!!

Lowrate Voip,voipwise {betamax}
 

Dear All,

These are compinies are totally fraud.They get the payment from the customers on there cheap calling rates.But after fews days or months they Block your account and you will be unable to use services due to Unknow error.Adn also there will be no customers support for me.These all compinies are totally fraud.

Thanks to paypa they help me alot to geting refund from them and still i am waiting for UKASH refund.I dn't know what is the law in this world for this kind of peoples.

I can prove that these compinies are based on fraud.Becayse on the first time they will accept credit cad,paypal and all payment option that are secure and second time they will say to sen western union or Bank tranfer.

PLease don't use any product from BETAMAX.otherwis you will loss your money.

I have used them for years. I've never had any financial problems at all. The only issue that I had was in common with all Voxalot users (the FUP problem). Thanks to Martin that was fixed, and I remain happy with them (and him!) Authenticated CID works well and speech quality is good.

Just my two pence worth. . .

ataboy

It's quite noticeable that the comment submit form on the blog Tony found for the OP does not work; on the 3 or 4 times I've gone back there, it repeatedly asks for a new entry of the letters in the image.

edit: odd, this time it worked

Betamax Fraud
 

Hi All,

Just registered to give some info on my recent experience with Betamax...

First I heard of them was from my credit card statement. Two small amounts taken. After investigating Betamax through google I contacted my provider and got refunded. Naturally my card had to be cancelled.

The CC company have no idea how my card number was compromised but think it's probably just found by chance through an unsecured website (how many combinations of CC numbers are there?)

I do a bit of online shopping and sometimes use paypal. Never used any Voip firm apart from some free skype. I'm in the UK BTW.

Cheers!

you are lucky enough! i didnt get any refund from betamax as they couldnt trace for which account they charged me. they were asking for either username or member id. how come i will know which username or member id was used to charge my card? i sent them the info from the bank but they told me that was not sufficient. so sad:rolleyes:

Ah, Thats a shame. Hope you can get it sorted.

My refund came from my Credit Card provider - I had never heard of Betamax until I found them on the statement. As far as I am concerned the transaction was just a fraud attempt.

cheers!

Hi i experienced the same issue, todai i cehked my E-statement and realized i was charged twice in one day $30 each time a total of $60 Bucks, i contacted my bank and they are going to follow up with this matter!!!

To be honest I don't like betamax practice at all, but they have a point when they don't allow us to use more than one clone. However, their restrictions are not valid all the time (currently I have three different accounts) and create problems like this one described here.

In any case, this is THEIR problem and they have (or had) to take care of it.
I think they will be in trouble, if this issue affects many customers. We will see...

Interesting to read people agreeing with a web page that doesn't exist any more

When Paypal & betamax are involved in this issue, it is no surprise that the page was deleted. It would be no surprise me even if all the site was deleted :)

Never EVER had a problem with BetaMAX (Internetcalls)
 

:) Ditto here, I use BetaMAX as my primary provider for Termination in USA; they are the "BEST and ONLY" economical way to VOIP. For 10 Euro every 120 days and get 1,500 minutes a month to use "rolling average based daily"

I have NEVER been defrauded in any way by BetaMAX; smells like competition is not happy with them and this is a setup/scam to discredit them.

Not everybody has been affected... in some cases the fraud has been as simple as the fact that peoples accts have been frozen before they could use all of their credit...

The original article has become lost (not erased in MyVoipProvider's Web update)

You can see most of the original info at:
Rip-off Report: Betamax GmbH & Co KG, FINAREA SA VOIP provider scamming and Unauthorized charges Kln Germany
Betamax VoIP Credit - Scam - Fraud - Cheating | MyVoipProvider.com
Betamax Scam Update | MyVoipProvider.com

(On a personal note, I haven't had any issues with them yet)

i have used betamax for quite a few years. I have used. Sipdiscount smsdiscount. smslisto, voipbuster, justvoip and paid with credit cards, moneybookers paypall and never ever had a problem with payments or extra charge. All perfectly. with money booked instantly.

Certainly all those people complaining must be that the CC have been compromised and fraudsters are attracted by voip to make call. Hence thats why betamax has so many restrictions with payments.

A friend of mine setup a voip business and 9 out of 10 purchases were made with compromised credit cards. he lost a lot of money on this voip business.