Extreme discounts in software. Are they true or will I get ripped off?

I am interested in buying some programs, Photoshop among them.
If you go at the official Photoshop website the prices are... high! $2499 is waaaaay too much for me.

Then by doing a simple google search I found this site, claiming to sell exactly the same product (Creative Suite 4 Master Collection) at $299.9!
$2200 is kinda huge huge discount!!!

This is what they say in the FAQ explaining why they sell so low.

So my question is, has any of you seen anything like that before? Has any of you bought software from this or other similar companies? Is it safe???

Tnx!

 

That website seems very generic looking, and they also didn't turn up in resellerratings.com's database. There are also no "seals" from TrustE or VeriSign or Hacker Safe.

Also, the method of obtaining the software is VERY shady and potentially illegal. A software company like Adobe or Microsoft would never willingly authorize a reseller to provide software in Zip files, without hard optical media, and with documentation in a wordpad document. Also they mention not being able to update and register the software online, probably because it would fail the product activation process. You don't know exactly how they got this software, it could even contain viruses or spyware.

I'd strongly recommend looking elsewhere for the software, even if it's more expensive. Consider using a student discount on a site like http://www.academicsuperstore.com/. Do you really need Photoshop? You may be able to get away with using something like the GIMP which is free. Office 07 can be obtained for 60 bucks if you have an @edu email address (theultimatesteal.com) and the home and student version for around 80 bucks without an @edu email address on amazon.com and you can install it on 3 machines.

 

You know exactly how they got it: torrents. Every Tom, and Harry can download those and being charged $225 is actually preposterous. I want go further as I have already been warned about talking about these things.

For Photoshop, download Paint.Net. Absolutely free and has similar capabilities. For MS Office, screw Office. Download OpenOffice.

 

Tnx for the replies! What you are saying about their credibility were exactly the same concerns I had.
I will have a look at the mentionned wesites and the alternative software proposed.

 

Looks dodgy and best avoided! Shift to free open source software instead:

• GIMP instead of Photoshop
• Zoho instead of Office

 

It's not an original one, go to the websites and just read buyer responses, cox every good selling website usually keep their buyer response thing on their home page.

 

This entry in their FAQ was pretty funny:

Chargeback Policy:
9.1 Chargebacks are not good neither for you nor for our Store because in this case you will lose 10% of your money and your credit card’s fraud rate will increase which in its turn results in inability to make other purchases online. That’s why its simpler to make all the disputes together with our Support team and resolve them in a timely manner;

 

I have missed that bit. Pretty funny actually you are right. Anyway I am more than convinced that I should stay away and I am looking for other options!