Facebook threatens USocial with legal action over paid friends
USocial has been offering Facebook friends for sale for a couple of months now. But it hasn’t taken long for Facebook to threaten legal action, sending a cease and desist to the company. And it looks as though USocial has paid attention to the warning.
USocial is a company specializing in buying and selling social networking commodities. In essence, they act as a go-between for people looking to buy votes, friends, and followers and those happy to abandon their morals and sell these for a fast buck.
Using USocial you can buy votes on social media sites such as Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Propeller, and StumbleUpon. In July the company also started selling followers on Twitter, closely followed by friends on Facebook in September.
The whole idea of friendship as a commodity to be bartered and traded over is pretty garish to say the least. Forget love, affection, mutual closeness, and live your life purely seeking capitalist gains. Everything is for sale, even a friend.
USocial began offering Facebook friends for sale in September. One thousand Facebook friends would set you back $177.30 while 5,000 could cost $654.30. So it was never a service intended for the casual Internet user, at least not those with shallow pockets.
Facebook’s ToS clearly prohibit the use of “personal profiles for commercial gain,” and BBC News is reporting that the social networking site threatened USocial with legal action for breaking this rule. It also accused USocial of “sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.”
USocial has defended itself against the allegations of wrongdoing but has also taken steps to try and avoid getting sued. It has posted a note on the site informing users it isn’t affiliated with Facebook, promised to delete the login information it has collected, and stop selling Facebook friends.
However, it has also noted it could start offering the service again in the future although it will inform Facebook of its intention to do so. Which clearly makes the practice OK after all. Don’t set the lawyers on us, we told you what we had planned.
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March 2nd, 2010
uSocial.net is the biggest scam on earth!. If you have guts try them and I can assure u that ur monies are gone!
uSocial is the biggest Scam in the Social media marketing space ever!
usocial scam is for real, stay away from it. I have been robbed and so have many others!
http://twitter.com/jjJehengir
And for the record Leon Hill is a Wanna Be Social Media PIMP
TechCruch should atleast cross chk or try their service before posting this!!!
So far the only genuine firm I have worked with regards to Twitter followers or YouTube View gainers is KIPL.Net http://KIPL.Net a grt firm Bombay, India
Try and save yourself and stay away from uSocial!
January 24th, 2011
An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little bit evaluation on this. And he the truth is bought me breakfast as a result of I discovered it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the deal with! However yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading extra on this topic. If potential, as you become experience, would you mind updating your blog with extra details? It is extremely useful for me. Large thumb up for this weblog publish!
December 3rd, 2011
I would like to provide everyone with the emails I was shown to test this service. All of us running companies are aware that the more followers we gain, the more the stigma is that your business is successful and worth following or buying from. So why wouldn’t it entice every business just trying to keep up with what society had demanded we do which is -be popular online.
I tested Usocial out and bought the 1,000 likes for facebook page. This was the cheapest plan they had so I started with this. The promise of a money back guarantee is what made me put my usually very high guard down and buy into the gimmick. As always in life, the old saying, if it seems to be to good to be true, it probably is” was something ringing in my head about one week info the purchase due to emails that were excuses on giving them time to keep the money and not deliver results.
Below are the emails they sent. No results were given.
I would like to recommend a few things to get them back for this:
1. Call your bank and dispute the claim.
2. Write an online complaint to the bbb . org against Usocial by looking up the company that took the money out of our account which for me was
BANK INFO : PLI*USOCIAL Plimus,Inc 11/16PLI*USOCIAL
3. find other outlets such as this one who have written popular reviews that is high up in the search results for blasting their service and calling them out and leave comments verifying it to be true by sharing your story.
4. write your own blog, or if you feel the need, share with your following what happened. you would be surprised how many fans and followers will respect the honesty of why you tried to buy followers and understand that your just trying to grow your business.
USOCIAL EMAILS TO ME TILL THEY STOPPED WRITING BACK:
Hi Melissa,
Thank you for your order and we look forward to fulfilling it for you.
We have received your order confirmation and now we only require your Facebook fan page URL. If you could email this to me as soon as is convenient for you, that would be great. We recommend that you pause any other promotions you have running, as this can interfere with the numbers we used to calculate your order.
Regards,
Misty L.
Customer Support — uSocial . net
misty@usocial . net
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*** Want to partner with uSocial to resell our fantastic Twitter, Facebook and YouTube marketing services to your own customers? Head to http://usocial.net/partners now for more information. ***
*** uSocial . net is in no way affiliated with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Propeller, Mixx or Del .icio .us ***
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Hello Melissa,
Your order should be starting any time now.
Regards,
Misty L.
Customer Support — uSocial . net
misty @ usocial . net
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Here is my Complain submission to Better Business Bureau at bbb . org
Complaint Description:
This company is linked to the business who removed 124.10 from my account for the purchase through Usocial . net internet marketing services. Not only did they not live up to their guarantee stated on website, but the emails were false, stating results would be seen 5 days after purchase. no results were ever delivered. no email responses to solve the issue were responded. upon research online, other customers claimed same issues. Stating they had never been delivered the services purchased, no proper correspondence from company, and no refunds. With the claim of a money back guarantee and not living up to this or providing services and stating false emails that results would be seen soon, verifies a scam. I have contacted my bank and deputed the claim.
Your Desired Resolution:
I would like to warn others of this Scam. From my business with this company and reading several reviews of the service not completed and no money back as they claim to offer. This needs to be addressed.
This case will be reviewed by a complaint specialist at the Better Business Bureau, and then forwarded to the business for their response. It is our policy to allow the business 10 working days to respond to your complaint. You will be notified when the business has responded.
*******Feel free to use parts of this for your own submission.