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i'd like them to turn my left hand into a BlackBerry.
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i'd like them to turn my left hand into a BlackBerry.
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I really hope I don't get disemvoweled for this because I mean it in all sincerity: why would anybody trust a website to perform magic for them for a fee?
If a website offered to make somebody \"saved by Jesus\" for, say, $200, would anybody trust them? I'd hope not.
So here's something to remember: religions take faith, businesses take money and contracts, so the two don't mix. You cannot pay for a miracle.
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@Ein2015: Saved by Jesus for $200?
Look at the selling of indulgences back hundreds of years ago.
Hell, the Church was selling off peoples' sins on a street corner to raise money for a new church.
Shit like this led to religious reform, etc, etc.
... Goddamnit, my AP Euro class is stuck in my head.
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@Ein2015: you sir are wrong! you can pay for a miracle every sunday (at 8:00am, 9:45am, 11:30am or \"fast track\" on saturdays where available). the first collection is for the church, the 2nd collection is for the mission, the 2 poor boxes at the entrance are for, well, the poor & the prayer card that someone purchased before the mass is to get their beloved out of purgatory.
but in the vestibule, you'll usually find a pietà . for a nominal price (recommended donation $4, NO PENNIES PLEASE!), you can light a candle, say a prayer & your miracle is heard (if the price is right).
c'mon...can't buy a miracle? we built an entire church on that very principle.
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@Ein2015: \"If a website offered to make somebody \"saved by Jesus\" for, say, $200, would anybody trust them? I'd hope not.\"
If they see it on a television station it becomes an entirely different matter.
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@Ein2015: I don't know what the website is, or even if it still exists, but a former boss of mine used to pay $15 for a liter bottle of mineral water that Christians would pray over and bless. They claimed it had healing properties and could even bring people back from the dead. One of the claims was that it would remove the \"floaters\" in your eyes, and he claimed it did, so he kept buying it. It's no $200, but people were buying it.
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@Ein2015: To keep the family from killing us my wife and I baptized our children. One church wanted $170 for classes, we used a different church. Many Catholics seem to still believe that unless a person is baptized they cannot not enter heaven, rather enter limbo, though this seems not to be official dogma anymore. So yeah, it was an institution that asked for $170 for your child to be saved or rather so your relatives believed it so. Good old church getting people to pay money for the grace of God upon their souls, scam for the ages. :)
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@mzs: Just mention the story of the condemned man on the cross next to Jesus who, I can pretty much guarantee, was not baptized and yet He is the only person in the New Testament that the Bible confirms went to Heaven.
I got fed up with one church I went to because we were looked down on because we put maybe a dollar a week in the plate. We were receiving charity baskets for crying out loud! We couldn't afford it. Read the story of the widow with the three pennies.
Spells, Wiccans etc. It seems like a pretty transparent scam. Same as the people who say \"Send me money because Jesus told me you have to send me money or I will die.\" It's an obvious lie but sadly some people will buy anything.
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What trash! Who pays somebody else to do their workings? At least doing things yourself is free (at least for labor, maybe not parts, LOL) and has a much better chance of success.
And what kind of Karmic impact must it be having on the peddlers of these so-called spells?
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@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->:
Carbon credits aren't always bad.
Don't knock pollution credits for corporations... economically speaking, transferable pollution credits on an open market are a much better solution and end up cleaning more than the non-transferable credits.
How much for love? The deluxe love that is, cuz I don't want no cheap love. I've seen what kind of girl a $40 love spell gets you, and I don't want to go down that road/escape that dungeon again.
This would still be a scam even if they didn't charge money!
This isn't a scam: I paid them to grant me immortality, and so far it's working great!
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@ratnerstar: ...I paid them to find a solution for all the guys with not so huge equipment ... and the next thing I knew my inbox was full of solutions... Hey, if you have the same problem I would bet your inbox got filled too.
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I may have to blame the victim on this one - everybody knows magic takes a while to work, and the idea of fast spells is laughably insane.
Snark aside, kudos to Trae for looking into this on behalf of his users/readers.
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How is this any different than other forms of obvious BS like horoscopes, palm reading, psychics, John Edward, lucky number printers, the lottery, and fortune cookies?
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@agnamus: Well, these guys claim they can do things like clear up an STD or cure someone's cancer... and while, yes, you'd have to be very naive or gullible to fall for it, some people do. And these are people in need who are being preyed upon.
It's one thing to pretend to be able to see the future. It's another thing to pretend to be able to save someone's life.
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@Trae: Well put. Formerly thoughtful people can become irrational and very gullible when struck with desperate need. If there is a Hell, there is a special level cordoned off for the creatures like this who prey upon those most needy of individuals.
@Trae: I don't think you're feelin me. I avoided the most obvious charlatans because I thought my point didn't need the controversy associated. But, taking money (tithing) in exchange for an ineffective magical spell (prayer) is exactly what every single church in America does on a weekly basis. Why do we object to these people? Is it because their god isn't as popular as other gods?
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@agnamus: Well they don't worship the Official American God! What can you expect, heathens should be tossed out of our country!
Wait, we don't have an official god? Oh right, I've got us mixed up with 16th-century Spain.
I bet they had cake.
But it was a lie.
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@Ein2015: You obviously didn't take any religious history classes in school. Almost all the major Western religions have at one time or another asked for money in exchange for blessings, favor, indulgences, spells, whatever you want to call them. Ask my parents how much 10% of their income for the last 35 years works out to - I bet $200 is a bargain!
@BlondeGrlz: The difference here is that Wicca isn't exactly an organized -- and believe me, I'm using this word as loosely as possible -- \"religion\". Organized religious groups tend to agree on how tithes should be collected, and in what manner. Wiccans, on the other hand, are hardly even as organized as the New Age aisle at Border's that births them.
In fact, it is there that they pay their tithes, by purchasing the thousands of books that can't even agree on what their chosen \"religion\" is about.
When it comes down to it, it's very likely that the so-called scammers at fastspells.com believe themselves to be doing right by Wicca every bit as much as Trae believes that he is doing the right thing by attacking them. That's the problem with a buffet-style \"religion\" like Wicca: it allows its follwers to pick-and-choose what they will believe and what they won't to such an extent that you are unlikely to get a dozen randomly-selected Wiccans in a room that believe exactly the same thing.
@processfive: \"When it comes down to it, it's very likely that the so-called scammers at fastspells.com believe themselves to be doing right by Wicca every bit as much as Trae believes that he is doing the right thing by attacking them.\"
However, there is one very fundamental tenet of Wicca, the Wiccan Rede: \"An it harm none, do what ye will.\" ANYONE who takes Wicca seriously would know this, which is why the person/people behind this website come off as frauds. Wiccans can cast a love spell to bring more love INTO their life (which can manifest itself in many ways), but purposely trying to make someone love you is wrong.
As Trae explains on his website:
\"Okay, I'm going to spell this out - the primary rule of Wicca is that you harm none. A love spell, which (if it were to actually work) alters the will of the person it is being cast on. It's mind control. Now, I'm fairly certain that no casting is actually being done here, and that they're just taking people's money and doing nothing, but on the off chance ANY of what they say is true, it's a big mystical no no.\"
@ellastar: And yet a quick Google search reveals that the rede is *voluntary*. The very word \"rede\" in fact, means \"advice\". No more, no less.
In other words, one can opt not to follow it, and still not be a \"bad Wiccan\".
Moreover, a little reading also reveals that even amongst those who choose to follow the Wiccan rede, they are free to apply their own interpretation of it. For some, \"harm none\" means no assisted suicide, but for others, such a thing is \"helping\". For you and Trae, it seems, \"love spells\" are overriding someone's will, but perhaps the people at Fastspells feel that helping two people fall in love is in fact helping them.
Having a belief system that is free and open to interpretation so that anyone can join seems like a nice idea, until you realize that it ultimately leaves you with a system of belief that is so vague that it literally means *nothing*.
@processfive: You completely misconstrued voluntary... It's a voluntary belief, just like the 10 commandments are voluntary...
Saying that 'harm' is open for debate is sort of true... Most Wiccans and Pagans have different ideas on what constitutes harm... However I have yet to meet an actual Pagan or Wiccan (or Druid, etc etc etc) that has disagreed that taking away someone else's free will constituted harm. Making someone fall in love with someone else would be taking away free will...
Wicca has no rules or strict code of behavior to follow. Wiccans are free to choose their paths and their own ways of life, as long as they do not intentionally harm others with their actions.
From Wiki - Rede is an archaic word meaning, among other things, \"counsel\" and \"advice.\"
see the \"among other things\" part?
And seriously... attacking a religion because it's not \"organized...\" Christianity isn't perfectly organized... Judaism isn't perfectly organized... Islam isn't perfectly organized... Every single religion is a \"pick what you want to follow\" religion in some aspects or another.
@processfive: Your theory is nice and all but you're really taking a ludicrously literalist view of what Wicca has to say. Wiccans generally know that the Rede is law and is backed up by the three-fold law in a karmic sort of fashion. Basically, you reap what you sow. Most of the ones who find those rules to be optional aren't Wiccan in a year or so anyway because it's not like Hollywood portrays it.
And in the end, to continue with the christian comparison, dogma hasn't solved much of the problem either. In the modern world we have a huge variety of denominations with a wide variety of disparate beliefs. Groups that believe it's okay to shout insults at passersby, groups who believe failing wars are a punishment from god for acceptance of homosexuality, groups who promote racism and radical nationalism, groups who actively promote beating (not spanking, beating) women and children as a necessary form of discipline, small groups who believe it's okay to drag a gay man behind a car or bomb an abortion clinic, groups who in a belief 'the end is near' do crazy and often suicidal things in the name of the same supposedly concrete dogma you claim is so nicely packaged and iron clad.
Most Christians aren't any of that, but more than you may think are, and even the main groups don't agree on some of the tamer rules. Heck, they can't even agree on how many deities they have (is it a trinity? are they three separate beings? Have all three always existed? All debates in the early and even modern factions).
Wicca has a mainstream set of beliefs. Not all Wiccans adhere to every single common trait, but most of them adhere to most of the traits, and nearly all of them adhere to the Rede and the threefold law as set in stone. You'll find very very few of even the fluffiest Wiccans who would approve of this site's actions.
People will make religion what they want it to be. In the words of a religious scholar friend of mine 'religion is just a way to justify ones actions.' I'm not that pessimistic, but I think it nicely illustrates the point.
Aremis
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@processfive: While in some cases that may be true, you'd get the same result with a roomful of Christians.
All faith is interpreted differently depending on the sect, path or tradition.
For example, Gardenarian, Alexandrian or Dianic Wicca all have very strict rules and are organized much like a Christian church with roles, titles and expectations.
@processfive: Except that the Fastspells.com people
1. Lie about who they are
2. Lie about where they are
3. Lie about a refund policy
If I thought they were just overcharging for something, I wouldn't have bothered digging. I would have just rolled my eyes and moved on. There are plenty of \"Spell Farms\" out there, some which might actually be run in good faith - but FastSpells.com isn't one of them. They're a scam.
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...you are unlikely to get a dozen randomly-selected Wiccans in a room that believe exactly the same thing.
@processfive: I don't think you're gonna get 12 people of any religion that believe exactly the same thing.
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@Rectilinear Propagation: Historically, if you put 12 religeous people in a room, everyone comes out believing the same thing. Unfortunatly, only about 3 actually exit :)
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Was she related to the 1-900 Spells by Phone scam too?
nuknuknuk
I don't get it.. A website offers to perform spells that will help you, and people who perform spells themselves go all vigilante over it? To me, this is like the ear candlers going after the leech people, saying they're flim flammers that are preying on people.
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@6502programmer: Its not the fact that the folks at FastSpells.com are casting spells, its that they're charging people outrageous amounts of money for services they will never render (12 hour spell?!), services that don't work, and services that are wrong in the eyes of Wiccans. Controlling people and/or changing people for your advantage is wrong in the eys of Wicca, and having these dudes call themselves Wiccan while taking advantage of others is, well...messed up.
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Agreed... The Wiccan creed is \"An it harm none, do as ye will.\" The key words being \"Harm None\"
Funny thing.... I noticed on their site that they are \"Awarded Top Spellcrafting Site by RateTheCaster.com\"
Now, both \"Fastspells.com\" and \"RateTheCaster.com\" are hidden behind \"Domains by Proxy\" -- Their IP address (Web Hosting) are BOTH in Michigan (Canton - Acenet Inc)
Coincidence? I think not. It's easy to be \"top rated\" by a rating website, when you OWN that rating website.
So, this alone stinks of scam.
Besides, I don't believe that spells can be cast remotely, through an anonymous exchange of typed correspondence. You need to be physically present, so your aura and energy are there at the crux of the spell. But that's another topic altogether.
@6502programmer: Wicca is a Religion. Wiccans do \"spells,\" but see Magick more equated to \"prayer.\" I don't charge people to cast spells for them. It's my religion.
Now, there is a person out there pretending to be a Wiccan, offering to do \"Spells\" that, any Witch worth anything will tell you won't work and then charging money for them.
Think of it like this: This is more like a Christian going after a Flim Flammer Faith Healer.
@Trae: Yup.
I second what Trae said. We don't perform spells for money. Spells are = to prayer, though usually a little more effective.
For those of you who would like to clarify what Wicca/other Earth religions are and aren't, please check out the resource www.religioustolerance.org
Rather than argue about the merits of religion I will just say that Trae deserves a pat on the back for warning his site's visitors about an obvious scam.
Also, pro-anorexics make me angry.
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Yay Trae! It's hard enough to get and keep credibility as a religion if you aren't mainstream, but this kind of scammy stuff always makes front page and thus undoes all manner of good works (and workings). As a Magickian, I may not agree fully with Wiccan methods, but \"I will defend to the death your right\" to practice them in peace and with respect. And yeah, I monetize my way through life without ever charging for magickal works.
@6502programmer: Not a valid analogy. Not only are the scammers damaging the reputation of legitimate magickal practitioners, they are seeding some nasty karma in their victims as well as stealing their money. The reason: sometimes what's RIGHT (ecologically and psychologically sound for the person) is in direct conflict to what their ego wants (and the ego is what's blind enough to be willing to pay for a magical cheat). By making that contract, they reinforce the ego in making its demands, which could cause that person all manner of future grief. Dirty work this site is doing, even if it is 100% scam there's not an ounce of magic involved. >:o[
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I'm not defending the site, rather advocating that people have the freedom to choose for themselves how they can spend their money. Is that site any different than the iPhone app \"I am Rich\" that charged $899 for a copy of the program that people actually bought? How about state lotteries? You realize that there is less than a 2 million to 1 chance you will win the jackpot, yet people still play. And most of the people who buy lottery tickets are the very ones who shouldn't buy them.
@vastrightwing:
The \"I am Rich\" app provided the exact service it advertised. So do state lotteries. Both are of dubious value, but they are legitimate offers of service. This is not. Big difference.
And just because lotteries are (mostly) the law of the land, doesn't mean they are right. There are many people (myself included) who believe that state governments have no business competing in the gaming industry.
@vastrightwing: i think the real problem came down to it was advertising on his personal website. and since ad space is sold more like through google than with real ad reps, he probably had very little if any choice on what would show up there unless he dropped ad space all together.
God forbid someone sell fake spells. It's like a snake oil salesman complaining that someone is selling worm oil...
churches offer 'prayer' services for a fee and make billions, why can't i get the same ultimate result by paying these scam artists who don't have thousands of years of propaganda behind them?
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I'm just concerned that these people can't spell \"magic\" correctly. Perhaps a spelling spell is in order?
@anonymousryan: No, again, it's like a Christian complaining about lunatic faith healers.
@Clold: I know it's a bit pretentious, but most Neo-Pagans spell it Magick to differentiate it from Illusionist tricks.
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As a customer, I appreciate that it's ok to purchase multiple spellworks for one situation.
Naturally, fastspells.com shows up in the Google Ad box along the left her on Consumerist...
...along with an ad to \"Reduce Online Fraud\"...
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@DougBB: I have a spell I can cast on your browser* to make them disappear!
*offer not valid for any browser other than FireFox.
So if this person is pro-anorexia, do you suppose she weighs the same as a duck?
@MercuryPDX: youre thinking of a swallow. sheesh, can't you tell the difference between swallow and duck?
As a Wiccan, I have had many people snigger and belittle me for my beliefs, and had to endure jokes that my beliefs are the same as snake oil salesmen. Thanks to Trae for caring about the people who visit his website that they are not snookered by someone looking to just profit by taking advantage of others. Blessed be!
ok.... let's stop before Roz comes in and casts \"Commenterus Disemvowelus\" or \"Bannicus from Gawerkerus\" on the lot of us. ;)
Its always funny to expose these scam sites. They are really a dime a dozen (maybe cheaper!). I think the interesting part though is that they are obviously profitable enough to continue advertising. I'd really love to meet the kind of people that fall for this stuff, not to mock them, but to understand them as I simply cannot see how someone with the least bit of intelligence would pay for this kind of service.
This reminds me of an old idea I had to become an ordained minister through one of those wacky internet churches and start selling indulgences on eBay. Maybe I should sue for stealing my idea.
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@Lucky225: Posting individual contact information is definitely not kosher, Lucky225. Don't do this again.
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@Consumerist-Moderator-Roz: Under the circumstances I'd think you could give him a pass on that. If he posted the contact info of, say, a random commenter, then yea, he's being a jerk. He posted the contact info for the scammer in question. It's relevant to the topic, and a public service to boot.
Not trying to step on any toes here, but if I were in your shoes I'd avoid following the rules to the letter without any regard for the spirit in which they were created - the spirit of the community.
These sort of websites pop up all the time. On the one hand, the owners of said sites should have to answer for their crimes. On the other hand, there should be more readily available info out there to educate the average consumer on internet scams and how to avoid them. A mix of legislation and education is needed to fix this problem.
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Scamming people out of money with no contact information to sue the person to get the money back is ALSO not kosher, but I digress, duly noted and won't happen again =)
@Lucky225: Forget a little contact info--the posters at TRHOnline.com can tell you where this scammer buys pizza and rents videos (including, I'm betting, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying). They scare me. Thank Bog they're using their powers for good!
Wow he figured out that a site selling love potions is a scam. STOP THE PRESSES!
\"Is that site any different than the iPhone app \"I am Rich\" that charged $899 for a copy of the program that people actually bought?\"
As stupid as that program was, it didn't promise anything it didn't deliver. Telling people you can read minds, cure disease by supernatural means and so forth IS making a claim you can't deliver.
Besides, your \"logic\" here seems to be \"two wrongs make a right.\"
\"How about state lotteries? You realize that there is less than a 2 million to 1 chance you will win the jackpot, yet people still play.\"
It's a rare person who is so stupid that they don't realize that their chance of hitting the lottery (a BIG prize, I mean) is very small. The state lotteries also are careful about telling you the odds of winning. You are buying a CHANCE to win. No one is being lied to by a state lottery.
Why is the distinction between a lottery and people who make impossible claims so seemingly difficult for some people to comprehend?
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So who do I send an EECB to at fastspells? I ordered some penile enlargement but something got screwed up and now I've got a fabulous set of DD-cups.
So you figured out Trae was exposing an obvious scam, STOP THE PRESSES!
This site is not only for the big scams and Trae wasn't aiming for fame and fortune so the 'big deal' posts confuse me. Trae's reason for posting was that their adds were popping up on his site which has articles on genuine Wicca. It was essentially damaging his credibility while taking advantage of consumers who may be in need of actual help. No one involved was under the impression it was a 'fraud of the century' moment. So lighten up a bit.
Aremis
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Obviously their \"Make Sure Nobody Realizes This is a Scam\" Spell didn't work.
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But, can they cure my impotence?
@linus: Yes, but that's a lie.