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Comment by davewiner | Hacker News Reader

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davewiner

It may be harder than you think to get the credit card company to stop the charges.

http://uncrunched.com/2012/08/26/my-undead-credit-card/

Like it or not they have a good business model.

And the VCs probably don't care if they're ethical, as long as they get a good ROI.

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Some VC information on this page if you're interested.

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/justfabulous

<Series A> Gilt Groupe Investor Matrix Partners Leads $33M Round In Fashion Retail And Styling Platform JustFabulous — JustFabulous, a fashion retail and styling platform, has raised $33 million in <Series A> funding lead by Matrix Partners (who also invested in flash sales giant Gilt Groupe)[1]

The <Series B> Round was led by new investor Rho Ventures, with participation from existing backers Matrix Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and Intelligent Beauty, JustFab’s parent company, which incubated and launched the startup in 2010. The total amount of money now raised by JustFab is $139 million.[2]

______________

From:

[1] http://www.techmeme.com/110921/p29#a110921p29

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/26/justfab-just-nabbed-another...

FWIW, I've personally worked with partners at a couple of these funds, as well as some of the senior execs at the parent company, and they are stand-up guys, not con artists. Aggressive direct marketing isn't a crime (have you ever watched TV infomercials?), although there are certainly gray areas where disclosure could be clearer, etc.

IMHO the most important consideration is that the more aggressive any company is about acquiring new customers under this kind of model, the more liberal it should be about returns/refunds/cancellations. There were many lessons learned a couple years ago when discount-membership checkout programs (WebLoyalty, Affinion, Vertrue) and their e-commerce partners (Fandango) got the smackdown from various state AGs. There's enough similarity here to warrant paying close attention and making sure to stay on the right side of a thin line. Here's example coverage of the previous controversy:

http://www.zippycart.com/ecommerce-news/1165-affinion-vertru...

Yeah, one of those investor entries is bizarre... Basically, a random set of characters:

Website pcjyyvafopee.com Blog pcjyyvafopee.com Twitter @mpizldqpida Phone 91857712122 Email juxukt@yhjfkm.com Employees Founded 8/95 Description tPdwOyyKkVKVskrYrIv

http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/technology-...

As an aside, one of the investors is listed as mpizldqpida - what kind of name is that?

If you say his name backwards, you send him back to his home dimension.

VCs investing in con artists are scum.

Charge-backs hurt their credit score, I believe, so it's going to hurt them well and proper, if it keeps happening.

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