| DreamerAdvance | 05-15-2011 01:20 AM |
The ever so famous Rosetta Stone...
Well first off, you'd probably be all jealous of the eBay account and think with such a high rating, no one would care.
The account has been around for 13 years with 99.6% positive feedback and no star rating lower than 4.8. There's a limit of 10 software auctions per month, and usually cap out each month.
Well this month I found 5 programs from a guy, 2 Rosetta Stones and 3 Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. Everything looks to be a 100% legitimate, all the seals are there, the paper work is there, the coloring is correct, bar code stickers and serial key stickers. Was told that they were never used, never registered.
Put 3 of the items up for sale before reaching the cap, the 2 Rosetta Stones and 1 Dreamweaver. 1st Rosetta was brought down within a day of the auction, 2nd Rosetta Stone was brought down an hour prior to the auction ending. The Dreamweaver auction completed, but we canceled the final sale.
The first tip off to things being off, was I made a call to Adobe to verify the serial key. They said that the keys were never registered but invalid. 2 of the copies were open, one copy was still sealed. All three had the same PN number and lot code. After 5 days of phone calls I finally got a call back from a Senior Management person, she finally told me that the keys were ⊗⊗⊗⊗. No one in the five days could tell me that.... I also tried installing the program till I reached the registration page and it accepted the code, but never finished the installation.
That same day, I contact the BSA to find out why the Rosetta Stone auction was taken down. They tell me to call RS. So I call RS and spoke to their legal guy. He said that the auction was taken down because it was counterfeit (referring to the second auction). I told him I was unaware of the copy being a ⊗⊗⊗⊗, it sold to me as real. The 1st was opened, and the second had shrink wrap seal around it. The 1st one had everything, headphones, warranty card, serial key, and the inside of the discs have the laser printing of "Rosetta Stone French Disc 1" (at least something like that). I didn't think the other copy would be ⊗⊗⊗⊗. He said to contact him after receiving an email.
Got the cease and desist noticed. Complied with it as eBay already taken down the auctions. Replied to the email stating how I obtained the copies (at the flea market), who the person was, and that I'd be willing to help in whatever way possible. He sounded much more reasonable during the first call.
Two hours later, got another phone call from him. He verified a few things, like I still had the products and all. Then he stated "well we can settle for a $1,000 with $100 payments or a lump sum of $800 with a payment by July 1st".
First off, the eBay account is my boyfriend's, he does all the selling and listing.
Secondly, when I replied to the email, I stated who I was and my phone number. The email already contained my boyfriend's phone number. He called me and spoke to me. Which raises some suspicion, I have no legal say over what my boyfriend does or his legal decisions. So why would their "legal department" contact me instead of him? Why would they ask for what "I" want to do?
Of course it's easy to flip out and freak out after having a conversation like that. I mean we complied with their request of not putting up a ⊗⊗⊗⊗ product or selling it. Although after reading many topics on here, it seems that this is not that uncommon.
So is this worth waiting out? Fighting over it? or paying for it?
Yes one copy is a ⊗⊗⊗⊗, we verified that last night after opening the package, but could not tell that from just the outside of the box. The weight, size, and thickness of the box all seemed the same as the other box.
So yeah, HI... I'm new. | 
