I bought a product that disappeared before the year was up. It was an email verification service; the seller collected money on AppSumo and then shut the service down.

APPSUMO refuses to give me a refund because the seller provided an alleged source code on GitHub so that those of us who were scammed have to rent a server and hire a developer to install it and get it running. All of that is already more expensive than what we paid for the service, but that's not all—we also have to pay the monthly cost of the server where the software would run.

This ridiculous situation is enough for AppSumo to say that the service was not taken down completely, so they will not give me my money back.

If it sounds like a scam, smells like a scam, and tastes like a scam, what is it?