On a whim, I thought I'd look to see if one of my favorite old sitcoms ("Grace Under Fire") was available on DVD, and came across this website.

On first glance it looks like a simple, no-nonsense online store, but the alarm bells ring when the prices are less than half that of other sites, and if you read the not-so-fine print, you find that they apparently are selling pirated copies of the DVDs, and not the original authorized box sets.

Next, finding that the only "contact" possible is submission of the order itself seems suspicious.

Then, the only payment type they accept is check, money order, or Western Union (no credit cards) is a big red flag.

But wait... they don't give a mailing address to send the check or money order to, they don't ask for my bank account numbers, or offer any information about how to send them money by Western Union, so even if I wanted to succumb to their scam, there is no way for me to do it. Oh, yes they do... buried deep in a paragraph of mind-numbing text is this gem: FOR THOSE OF YOU, WHO DECIDE TO MAIL YOUR PAYMENT IN, E-MAIL US AT E-Mail: [email protected] FOR THE PAYMENT ADDRESS & INSTRUCTIONS. Yeah, I'll be sure to do that.

Now, this makes things look official: They tell me that they are displaying and recording my IP Address for verification purposes. I don't know whose IP address that is, but it certainly isn't mine!

Are these guys just monumentally incompetent scammers, or am I just not smart enough to figure out how to let them take my money? The price looks good, but I think I'll pass.

tanstaafl.

I very crappy attempt at a scam, but they are displaying my IP address successfuly, maybe you are going via an HTTP proxy you aren't aware of.

I think they are selling DVD burned copies of stuff you can download, or could have downloaded in the past. They are probably being careful with their details because of that, although it's a bit pointless because they would hardly be tricky to trace.

They almost had me at Airwolf.

If they are scammers. accepting payment via us mail makes it postal fraud.

I'd like to think I've developed an instinct to spot scams simply by domain name. Alarms go off when I see pointless use of numbers, long dash delimited phrases, any anything associated with about.com.