Rosetta Scam

[burbuja0512]

So... just wanted to give you all a warning. A little while back, I made the decision to purchase Rosetta Stone software for Portuguese. Like everyone with a budget, I was appalled at the high prices, but really wanted to give it a try in spite of mixed reviews.

Anyhow.. somehow I ended up on http://www.rosettaus.com/, which looked EXACTLY like the regular Rosetta site only cheaper - look and see for your self. The official site is [url=http://www.rosettastone.com/][/url]. Rosettaus.com costs $150 and the real thing advertises a $479 price.

Well, a week or two later, the product arrived from China. It looked exactly like what I would expect a Rosetta Stone box to look like, but the box actually broke when I was opening it and the discs were obvious copies. I have to admit that I kind of suspected something funny due to the price, but I didn't really care.. after all, I was saving money.

Anyhow, the system did work for about two uses and then stopped functioning totally. I uninstalled and reinstalled several times and nothing. I decided to go to the site for tech support... funny no tech support number or anything like that. I emailed the contact option given and nothing. Then, finally I remembered that at one point I had been sent a tracking number, so I emailed the customer service rep that sent me the shipping tracking number.

She tried to do troubleshooting with me via email and in spite of a very poor grasp on the English language (hmmmm... maybe she should use the products that she's selling.) Once I sent her screen shots of the error messages I was getting and she realized that it just wasn't going to work, she offered me a 50% refund. I said that I don't want money - I want a working Rosetta Stone program. Every time I asked for them to ship me another one, she would respond with a slightly higher refund offer.

Finally, I explained to her that I could get my money back because I used a credit card to pay. I just wanted to give them a chance to give me a working product before I did this. Well, she never did agree to re-ship another Rosetta Stone set, but said that she could give me an 80% refund, which was the price of the product, but that the other 20% covers shipping which cannot be refunded.

Anyhow... I am tempted just to take the offer so I don't have to hassle with the bank, but still not sure. I told her yes and will be watching my credit card statement closely.

Just wanted to warn you all here so you can avoid this and I also thought it was interesting based on some of the news stories I've heard lately such as the fake Apple store in China..