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Warning: Do not try Blasty's "Free" Trial!

3K views 11 replies 8 participants last post by  17Sphynx17 
#1 ·
Buyer beware:

I made the mistake of entering payment information in order to try out the "basic" plan for one month. The trial was supposed to be free. However, they charged me for the month that was supposed to be free and then charged me for two more months after that even though I sent them repeated requests to cancel my account. (You can only cancel your account via e-mail, they won't let you do it by simply clicking a button.)

They also won't allow you to take down your payment information once it is entered.

Recently, they added a button to let you downgrade your account to "free" which I have now done, but that was two months after a customer service rep insisted she would do it for me and then gave me radio silence when I insisted she cancel my account instead.

I have talked to a lawyer, but it sounds like the most resource friendly (to me) thing to do is just to talk to my bank about unauthorized charges. Anyway, I cannot express firmly enough how terrible this company is and how horrible their customer service is. Furthermore, the Blasty service itself is clunky, awkward, and exposes your computer to viruses and malware in order to "blast" the sites that may have uploaded an unauthorized version of your book. All in all, I can't say enough bad things about them. I just wanted to warn others in case they are tempted to try them out.

 
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#3 ·
Thank you for taking the trouble to warn others. I have been caught myself by companies that say you only have to email them to cancel, then you find that your email comes back with an 'address unknown' and they keep charging you. I have had to report my card as stolen and get a new one just to stop them. This is why it's always a good idea to use paypal; at least then you can go in and cancel it from their end.

I hope you have some luck in getting your money back.
 
#4 ·
I didn't join up for their free trial, yet received an email from them just before Christmas thanking me for taking part. It went on to say:

'Your free trial was planned to end on November 21st, 2017. To make sure that you had enough time to try out all the latest features, we decided to extend it until January 15th, 2018.

After this date, you will be able to downgrade to a free plan, if you wish.'

I ignored it and haven't - yet - heard from them again.

Hate to see this sort of thing happening to fellow writers. Hope you can extract yourself from these parasites people without too much hassle.
 
G
#5 ·
You don't need a lawyer. All you need to do is contact your credit card company and dispute the charge. They will issue a chargeback and credit your account. You will need to do so in writing, however. Contact your credit card company and ask them how their process works. Each company has slightly different methods but it is actually easy.
 
#6 ·
Thanks for your positive thoughts, folks! I have been in touch with my credit card company and started the process of proving the charges were unauthorized. Blech. I also had to cancel my card. (I noticed too late that the 'downgrade' button had been added, but also didn't want to risk it not working even after I clicked it.)

@Julie The lawyer I talked to is my brother, so luckily I didn't have to pay for the consult, and he also advised me to go through the credit card company, but he did point out that I had a solid legal argument if I needed one. That just made me feel better about the whole thing, even if it's too expensive to do anything about.

Anyway, I'll keep everyone updated as I go through the claims process, but I just wanted everyone to know how shady Blasty is. I still haven't heard back from them at all. Although, part of that may be because I mentioned contacting a lawyer in one of my previous e-mails so now they may be concerned about making things worse for themselves by replying. Still, they had two months to reply to multiple messages before I talked about seeking legal counsel. They clearly just don't give a crap about their "customers."

They made the mistake of sending me a survey a while back, and I hadn't filled it out at all until two days ago. Then I blasted them (pun intended) for taking advantage of artists and creators (without resorting to any name calling besides "thieves"). If I'd been more on top of my game I probably would have gone for thieves and brigands. Oh well. Next time! ;-) 
 
#7 ·
Marty South said:
I've been using Blasty for a few of months, and I've been really pleased with it. Blasty has taken down 967 pirated listings of my books, and 57 more are pending. There shouldn't be any risk of viruses or malware unless you click on the pirate sites' links. If you follow this link and scroll down, there's a video that shows how it works:

https://kindlepreneur.com/ebook-piracy/
Or go here: https://youtu.be/5u65DRmXNgY
With the basic program you have to click the link to verify that the site is actually infringing on copyright. (Or at least you did back in November. I admit, as I've been trying to cancel since then, I don't know if they've updated the system.) So, you have to expose your computer in order to issue the take down notices. It is my understanding that with the premium version you do not have to click the links but can simply automatically blast all the sites listed. I was not willing to shell out for premium. Basic was already too expensive. And free doesn't let you do anything it just notifies you of infringements.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk
 
#9 ·
I was given a free trial subscription. Every one of the websites that Blasty said "no infringement was found" was infringing on my copyright. I emailed them several times and didn't receive a response. I think the site has potential, but at the moment it seems to have problems.
 
#10 ·
Bumping this thread instead of starting my own so that hopefully it's easier for people to find info about this company. I tried them for free and now they continually email me without an unsubscribe link in their emails. I've requested that they stop emailing me and they said they would (in March) but they haven't. I don't understand why they're not following spam laws, but the fact that they're not is a huge red flag. I've opted out of all emails on their site, yet I still keep getting them. There's no way to change the email address associated with your account so there appears to be no way to get them to leave you alone.



 
#11 ·
C.F. said:
Bumping this thread instead of starting my own so that hopefully it's easier for people to find info about this company. I tried them for free and now they continually email me without an unsubscribe link in their emails. I've requested that they stop emailing me and they said they would (in March) but they haven't. I don't understand why they're not following spam laws, but the fact that they're not is a huge red flag. I've opted out of all emails on their site, yet I still keep getting them. There's no way to change the email address associated with your account so there appears to be no way to get them to leave you alone.
Ugh. Sorry you are having to deal with that. I really can't stand this company. I still get emails from them as well, but I just send them to my spam folder. Still, you shouldn't have to do that.

In other news, I realize I never updated this thread with the results of talking to my bank, but my bank did indeed issue me a refund. Still, I had to cancel my card etc. and the whole thing was stupidly frustrating. (Resetting all my automatic payments etc.)
 
#12 ·
I'm currently just a new free user of Blasty.

But I don't recall ever being asked for a credit card number or any financial information for that matter. Not sure, maybe they changed the info they are asking now for free sign ups.

right now, I've been a member for 4 days but my main complaint is the search algorithm of the site. It is, quite frankly, weak as a good old google search allowed me to find more copies than what blasty has in 4 days of searching.

But, for the premium with AutoBlast, I honestly don't see it as a good feature for ebook self publishers, because the only hit blasty ever found was my volume 1 on scribd. So if say it was an autoblast, then they would have hit that copy. Not really good then.

So you'd want to opt for the manual blast premium then. But the search algorithm they use is just not that good if you want to rely on them to find and inform you about illegal copies. Like I said they found the scribd volume 1 copy, but they never even found volume 2.

I've already linked amazon author profile page with them to make sure they got the two volumes, but still they only found volume 1 on scribd, and that's about it. 1 alert, out of all my listings through other sites. They didn't even find the illegal copy on kisslibrary.

Regarding the Spam, right now, I've created a rule for emails from blasty to move it to a folder labeled Blasty. If in the future, I do suffer something similar where I want them to stop sending emails to me, then I'll change the rules to move the blasty emails straight to trash.
 
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