In January of 2009, I wrote an article detailing everything I hate about the then-frequently aired commercials for FinallyFast.com. In the article, I explained five reasons why the commercial made me want to throw my TV out a window every time it came on. I also initially stated that the software likely did absolutely nothing useful for any of the unlucky suckers who bought into it.

Shortly thereafter, I received a letter from an attorney representing FinallyFast.com asking me to remove their commercial, screenshots, and all “defamatory, false, and misleading” comments I had made. I obliged, ONLY because I had never actually used their software and couldn’t say with a 100% certainty that it did not work. Now I can.

Ascentive, the company behind FinallyFast.com, has now been penalized $78,000 and is being forced to issue thousands of $17.90 refunds to customers who purchased their misleading software and ultimately didn’t use it.

The software downloads for free, scans a user’s computer, identifies “problems” with it, and then presents users with options to “fix” it at an additional cost. But those costs were apparently automatically charged whether the user wanted them or not.

To make the situation worse, Assistant Attorney General Jake Bernstein says the FinallyFast.com software finds problems regardless of whether there are any. Even new computers or ones with freshly reformatted hard drives would be identified as having hundreds, if not thousands, of “errors.” In addition, until March 2009, the software was bundled with adware and regularly popped-up warning messages declaring how many “errors” it found.

In the meantime, customers were automatically charged for subscribing to Ascentive’s practically fictitious “cleaning” service and had to jump through hoops to figure out how to cancel.

So it seems I was right about Ascentive and its FinallyFast.com site and software all along, despite what their attorneys wanted me to believe. I won’t bother re-editing my original article, as it’s simply not worth including their obnoxious commercial here. (Plus, I don’t think it’s airing on TV anymore – thankfully.)

I’d like to think this is a lesson learned for anyone who even remotely considers buying computer “fix-it” software off of a late-night TV commercial, but it’s most likely the case that anyone who gets suckered in to buying such software will never read this article or even hear about the ruling against FinallyFast.com.