Category: Warning

December 15, 2016

Would You Like A Business Award?

Hard won awards are valuable but an award that you can have freely may have little value.

Corp-vis send out huge numbers of emails about their awards and there are a lot of awards, such as :- Large Business award, Canadian Business award, HR & training awards, Small Business awards, Consultancy awards, Eastern European Business Elite awards, African Corporate Excellence awards, UK Corporate Excellence awards, Businesswoman awards, Executive awards, Recruitment awards, Nordic Business awards, Mid-Market Achievement awards, and so on.

Corporate Vision claim they are dedicated to working around the clock to shine a spotlight on the brightest, best performing and most deserving companies and individuals from around the business world. Also, that they are fiercely passionate about recognising outstanding achievement, game-changing innovation and stellar performance, and all of the awards are carefully tailored to provide detailed and in-depth analysis of the very best each market, industry, sector and region has to offer.

So, how are winners chosen?

Reportedly, by a combination of votes gathered from their network of industry partners and their own in-house research.

However, large numbers of businesses get spam email from corp-vis.com offering them such awards. A recent such email also offered a spot on the front page of their magazine Corporate Vision for £2,200 reduced to £1,295 and that would include a double page advert/editorial.

Is this a scam?

No. Because there don’t appear to be any mandatory charges to enter for an award or to win. But, as they say, there are opportunities to advertise your win in the magazine.

The basic package they offer is for £399 and includes

1 page interview and profile
Front cover sub-headline and picture.

There are more expensive packages available and extras such as a personalised crystal trophy for £250 and a personalised winner logo for £100.

Have you won one of these awards and was it value for money? Let me know your experience.

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November 9, 2016

The Ten Most Common Scams

For more details, refer to www.fightbackonline.org/index.php/guidance/12-explanations/23-the-ten-most-common-scams

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Online Shopping and Auction Website Scams	Online auction sites such as eBAY are huge business and there are con artists who pose as buyers. They appear to pay for the goods that you then send to them. However, the payment bounces and you cannot get your goods back. There are also sellers who take your money but don’t send the goods or claim to have sent them but they never get to you.
Lottery Scams	This can be for the UK lottery or Euromilions or any other lottery around the world. If you didn’t buy a ticket then you cannot have won.
Premium Rate Telephone Number Scam	You receive a letter or email or text message or automated voicemail telling you that you have won a large prize and all you need to do to claim it is call a phone number. This turns out to be a premium rate number costing you up to £4 per minute. Over a million people a year fall victim to this, according to the Office of Fair Trading.
Identity Theft	Identity theft occurs when someone assumes your identity to perform a fraud or other criminal act. Criminals can get the information they need to assume your identity from a variety of sources, including by stealing your wallet, rifling through your trash, or by compromising your credit or bank information.
Phishing Scams	People pretend to work for a trustworthy organisation as a way to get you to divulge identity information and/or financial information such as credit card details or bank accounts.
Nigerian 419 Scams	Also known as the Advance Fee scam. This is a scam where you are promised a large sum of money in return for a small advance fee. But the large sum is from a dubious source and will share it with you in return for that advance fee.
Dating Scam	Scammers take advantage of people looking for romantic partners, via dating websites, apps or social media by pretending to be prospective romantic partners.
Holiday Scam	This can be a holiday or flight or holiday accommodation that you pay for but then find doesn’t exist. Or it could be a genuine holiday but with a ‘catch’ that you wish you’d never accepted.
Cold Caller Scams	The scammer will convince the victim to buy goods or services but once they’ve got the credit card details and identity information – they can then make unauthorised purchases or sell the information to other scammers.
Fake Loan Scam	This can be a free phone number or you apply online. You are told that your loan is agreed but you need to pay insurance costs via a money transfer. Once you’ve paid the fee, you never hear from the company again.
Investment Related Scams	Ponzi schemes are where people get paid from money coming in from new members but there is no investment and it all collapses as there cannot continue to be enough new members to existing members. Market manipulation is where the scammers find ways to artificially push up the value of a stock then sell at the top price and everyone else loses.

November 3, 2016

The Vistafun Competition Trap

You get an email from [email protected], Looks to be from Ryanair and is signed off as

Katy Smith, Ryanair Travel manager

The start of the message is:-

“The holidays will be here soon and to celebrate we are giving away a £250 flight voucher to our loyal customers and those who are yet to enjoy a flight with us. This limited offer is only available to a few selected participants in your area so please go here to claim your voucher now”.

Seems to be great – you get a free £250 voucher from Ryanair.

When you click on the link you see the following

If you don’t read the details then you may just type in your mobile phone number and expect that you’ve got a voucher coming your way.

BUT if you read the details, you’ll see that you’re actually signing up to pay £4.50 every week (until you unsubscribe) for a competition entry. That competition may or may not actually have a prize of a voucher.

The terms and conditions at the bottom of the page state

“By joining you consent to waive your rights to the cancellation period of 14 days”.

It also states that Vistafun is not affiliated to or sponsored or endorsed by any of the listed retailers i.e. RyanAir have nothing to do with this promotion.

If you want to pay a weekly charge to be in a competition – then this is fine for you.

Otherwise, do not enter your mobile number on a webpage without reading the small print carefully or it could cost you.

Vistafun is incorporated in Amsterdam so getting any money back from them would be very difficult.

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October 20, 2016

Is Empowr a Scam?

Not to be confused with empowered.com, empowr is a strange and complicated game of money where the rules are far from clear.

It claims to be a social network where people can make money.

You make money by posting items, sharing, blogging, liking, selling and ‘fanning’ .

It doesn’t make sense that you make money from simply ‘liking’ or from posting your own articles etc. Where does the money come from?

Seemingly people are soon told they have made a lot of money but it’s not real world money – you cannot cash out this money until 90 days later and in the meantime you have to keep making actions on the website and each time you do it costs ad credits which have to be paid for immediately with real money (not the winnings)

So you pay up front constantly and chase after the supposed winnings but cannot get to them.

Most people end up paying so much for ad credits and other admin costs they never make any actual cash.

It’s a game where maybe some people can win but as there is no apparent source of money except for the players then the money is being moved from one to another and empowr take their cut.

The people responsible for empowr are the ones that created Fanbox which was a similar game of circulating money (real and fake) and interestingly had legal protection in its terms and conditions

WARNING: Please use FanBox for entertainment purposes only. In particular, your use of FanBox may never materialize or result in any direct or implied benefit. Any content, Earnings, time, payments, and relationships associated with your use of FanBox may be subject to modification or termination.

The email inviting us to join empowr was from a Stacey Collins but using a Gmail address rather than an official empowr address. Strange?

The small print at the bottom of the email says dollar amounts are revenues, not profits and are for illustrative purposes only.

So, the top part of the email that says that Stacey has sent us $20 to try empowr – not real.

Empowr is not recommended.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment

September 16, 2016

Carol’s Story of Dealing with Lloyd Loom of Spalding

A guest post by Carol.

I was looking to buy some bedroom furniture – a bedside table and a couple of other items. I knew the name Lloyd Loom was a good British make and searched on the Internet for what I wanted.

I found a supplier (Lloyd Loom of Spalding) with stock and chose the items. I received an invoice online and paid by bank transfer (nearly £1,000). This felt safe as the “company” has a good reputation.

I did speak with the supplier and he seemed very helpful. He could deliver to Cornwall without any problem. He sent a set of swatches so I could pick the exact colour I wanted.

Over the next period, I received regular updates from the supplier but no furniture. There was no difficulty contacting him and I still believed the furniture would arrive.

But it didn’t.

I had paid by bank transfer and the bank tried to recover the money but the account had been emptied and I wasn’t able to get any money back.

Below is an update by Wikipedia.

Lloyd Loom of Spalding Ltd. and Lloyd Loom Weave Ltd., a subsidiary, entered Creditors voluntary liquidation at Companies House in February 2016. The factory in Wardentree Lane, Pinchbeck, was emptied under the instruction of company director Anthony Draxler just before Christmas 2015, with production machinery then apparently shipped to Romania.

Staff who have been laid off say they are owed up to 14 weeks’ wages and some ex-workers claim agreed redundancy terms have not been settled.

Several firms are owed money by Lloyd Loom Furniture Ltd – a subsidiary of Lloyd Loom of Spalding.

Lloyd Loom Furniture Ltd. was placed under a HMRC Winding up Petition and is now in liquidation.

A police investigation has been undertaken into Anthony Draxler due to unfulfilled customer orders. A Lincolnshire Police spokesman said: “There is an enquiry under way in relation to this business and an individual involved with it.”

As of 20 January 2016 a new company Lloyd Loom Spalding Limited was registered at Companies House.

BE WARNED Anthony Draxler is believed to be behind this latest venture.

Please note that Lloyd Loom is a style of furniture making and that there are other Lloyd Loom companies that are respectable and have no connection with Anthony Draxler and his companies.

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September 15, 2016

Be Wary of Web Developers and SEO Experts in Asia

There are increasing numbers of emails flooding the UK from web developers, SEO experts, Digital Marketeers and similar from India and to a lesser extent from Eastern Europe.

Some of these are reputable businesses offering a quality service, but many are just individuals offering a cheap service. That is fine if they market themselves as individuals but many claim to have wide ranging skills, be part of a large organisation and to have worked with businesses across the globe.

This is the problem – the lies.

If someone has to lie to market themselves then you cannot trust anything they claim.

A fake sales letter is likely to contain some of the following indicators:-

No mention of the name of the business, not even in the sign off
A personal rather than business email address. A Yahoo or Hotmail, Outlook or Gmail address or similar generally means the email is from an individual, not a company
A claim to have all encompassing skills i.e. a list of too many technologies for one business to specialise in.
Grammatical mistakes
The tone of someone desperate for business e.g. offering to beat any price.

Typical emails offering website design, SEO and promotions contain claims on what they can achieve for you

Put you at the top of Google page 1 search for your selected keywords
Double your customer numbers
Bring in any amount of business you want

People will sometimes make these claims without any evidence to back them up, in the hope of getting business but cheats will do this all the more and have more exaggerated claims.

You may choose to take a chance on someone on the other side of the world with no proven skills, but a safer approach is to ignore all such emails and search on the Internet for established businesses or consultants and look at the work they have done, check any online ratings and if possible contact their previous customers.

Don’t waste your money.