Category: Time-Wasters

Any time-wasters not normally classed as scammers or spammers

Those Time-Wasters

Stop Wasting my Time sign

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

Energy GB sent us an email titled ‘You Could Save Over £350 On Your Annual Energy Costs” – we don’t pay energy bills as that’s included in our annual rent. Therefore Energy GB would have to pay us £350 per year for their claim to be true.

Malaga Parking. An exciting new Malaga Airport Parking Opportunity-  Really? Could anyone be taken in by such rubbish?

Tickets for a band called Freestyle performing at the Cutting Room in New York city – we aint exactly in or near to New Your city so why would anyone send us this? It doesn’t even say what date they are on. Dumb.

Get free quotes from leading debt collection agencies. So its not even a business – just an aggregator of debt collection agencies. But we’re a volunteer organisation. NO bad debts.

Andrea from Bensheng Furniture Factory wants to make furniture for us to sell in England – There is a Bensheng furniture business in China but do they really think the best way to find partners in the UK is to send out huge volumes of spam messages to random companies ? How many UK business sell furniture? – must be less than one in a thousand. 

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

What is The Xten Club?

xtenlogo

I received an email titled “Are you about to buy business software?”

It goes on “When you consider the decision to buy business software are any of the following points relevant for you?” and it lists potential difficulties in buying software such as the impact on people.

The point of the blurb is to get you to click on what seems a useful link to advice on purchasing business software.

However, the whole thing is a con. The XTen club don’t give software advice or anything relevant – it’s a network Marketing business – they are just chasing leads that they can sell on.

So instead of getting the advice you seek, you will end up getting phone calls and/or emails from  companies trying to sell you software.

This is duplicitous but not illegal.

With any website that’s new to you – read carefully so you know what you are getting and don’t be caught out.

Unsolicited emails – just delete them.

An Update on Those Time-Wasters

Stop Wasting my Time sign

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

An email titled “‘How to Photoshop your food and drinks to make them look stunning webinar” –What? You must be kidding.

An email about an APP for employee engagement – Any business that wants to interact with its staff through an APP doesn’t sound to me to be worth working for.

The Hottest Weight Loss Solution. Get your free bottle today – Yeah right! Another sad scam. This one from the Ukraine.

An email asking for volunteers supposedly from the Volunteer Centre in Surrey – but no content in the email after the title. Just a link to click on that is labelled Unsubscribe, but clearly is a scam.

A message from Barclays Bank wanting to pay us $1.2 million from the United Nations- but the real email address it’s from is [email protected]. Not exactly Barclays Bank. Just another pathetic scammer.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

A Magic Phone Number and Call Blocking

old style telephone

The Magic Phone Number
When buying something online or registering online there is usually a form to fill in of your details and quite often this insists on your telephone number even though you know it’s not needed.
This is annoying, plus, you wonder what they will do with your phone number. Will they sell it or give it to third parties?, resulting in phone calls you don’t want.

As the forms usually check the number is in the correct format, you need a real phone number to input.

You can use 0333 88 88 88 88 (the last 8 doesn’t matter if the form only allows 11 digits.)
When, they call, those cold call culprits will hear a short recorded message:-

“trueCall38 is handling my calls. I prefer not to be contacted by phone, so please contact me via my email address.  Goodbye!”
Problem solved.

Do companies block this number from being entered in the form?   No, but if they do then Trucall38 have a display page “Wall of Shame” but none has done so thus far.
Q. Why do companies ask for your phone number?
They rarely really need it, and you don’t know what they are going to do with it. Interestingly, experts say that asking for a phone number can reduce the number of people who complete an online form by 25%. That’s a big loss.

Of course, some companies sell their customers phone numbers on to other companies, so you don’t know who’ll get your number.
Call Blocking
The business behind the website trucall38.com have developed a call blocking device called Trucall that is reported to have been 95% successful in blocking nuisance calls. The technology has been licensed to BT and is incorporated in their BT8500 phone.
Trucall claim that half a million people in the UK are now protected from nuisance phone calls by their technology.

The guys behind Truecall say “We thought that everyone should have the opportunity to opt out of handing over their phone number unless they wanted to, so we launched the trueCall38 number – a completely free service”.
If you don’t want someone to have your phone number – tell them 0333 88 88 88 88

Fake Watches Are Big Business

wrist-watch-183143_640

Over the past few weeks, Brooklands Radio station has received hundreds of emails trying to sell fake watches. These are harmless as they are so obvious.

But it is odd that specific scams and spams  appear and become very common very quickly then disappear for a period only to reappear in a different guise later on. This is a very common one currently.

Marketing people tell you to vary your sales pitch and try different versions to see what works and these scammers seem to have read those Marketing books.

We received similar emails selling fake watches but with a variety of titles – some nothing to do with watches – just something to make the recipient open the email message.

Titles such as

Impress your co-workers with a fine new watch

Or Rolex doesn’t want you to see our prices

Or Economy uncertain – copy watches are the way to go

Or Diamonds at a steal

Or Green dial submariner at a steal

Or No-one will believe its fake

Or Cheapest luxury items

Or Start off with a new hobby

Or Its dream time for those who cannot afford

 

Selling fake watches is of course illegal even if you tell people the watches are copies or fakes it’s but presumably big business based on the number of emails being sent out about the watches. Remember that such sales may fund more serious illegal activities.