Those Time-Wasters

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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.

Joanne Has a Persistent Cold Caller

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Joanne isn’t bothered by scam and spam emails – just presses delete for anything at all dodgy.

And she has fun with the Microsoft support scam phone calls that have been happening a lot recently.

Joanne says “With ‘Microsoft’ scam calls I tend to feign interest. I go along with what they’re saying, let them deliver their speech and then say ‘Oh, I don’t have a pc’.  Then they hang up, which I find amusing”.

But she has had problems with a very determined cold caller – Zenith Windows.

Constant calls annoyed Joanne and no amount of explaining she wasn’t interested would put them off. She tried a high pitched whistle – still they called.

She threatened to report them for harrassment – no effect.

She threatened a solicitor’s letter – still they called.

She complained to their head office – no change.

When she moved house, she assumed that would be the end of Zenith calls, but they tracked her down through a previous employer.

Fortunately  for Joanne, her ex employer realised the situation and denied knowing Joanne.

When does cold calling become harassment?
When does cold calling become threatening behaviour?

Not good.

What is The Xten Club?

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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.

Online Auction for Domain Names

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We received an email at the radio station, offering the opportunity to participate in an auction for sale of the Internet domain name radio.co.uk

Clearly they are sending out the invites to every radio station they can find.

This is a Dutch company that runs the auctions and claims to have 21 million domain names .

It claims to connect the best virtual real estate i.e. domain names with industry leaders. But that’s false – they just sell to the highest bidder. That’s how auctions work. There’s no quality check – just counting of money.

A quick check shows they are currently auctioning

259.com estimated to be worth €50,000

Also 43.com estimated at €3,000,000

Estate.com at €1,500,000

Multivitamins.com at €150,000

There are much cheaper domain names available e.g. ann.nl estimated to be worth €1,000

It seems there is a group of people calling themselves domain name speculators or domainers  whose job is the buying and selling of  domain names.

Is there anything wrong with this?

Buying and selling commodities of all types is normal business practice – from farm output to stocks and shares to minerals. However, I do feel there is something repugnant in buying things you think other people want and making money from their need without adding anything.

So I think this is legal but objectionable.

It is clearly a big market – the buying and selling of domain names.