2013 – The year of the Scammer?

So far this year we’ve received upward of 30 emails a day from people claiming to be hotshot SEO Gurus or, despite their poor grasp of English; Copywriting Pros. Those that follow our Big Eye Deers blog will recall last weeks post ‘Optimising my website for Google’ – a rant on the dodgy world of spam email marketing and the steps savvy net users have taken to gain the upper hand in Google search algorithms.

While email spamming is clearly a huge part of some dwindling businesses who more than likely provide outsourced work and then outsource it themselves; today was a first for the scam phone call…

I answered the phone to ‘Zoe’, a Lady from a call centre asking to speak to Steve. She said she was calling from ‘The Information Bureau’- I passed the call on assuming she was just checking that our information was up to date…

The conversation started with her checking some of our company details, which was sort of what was expected initially, and then she moved on to thanking Steve for his support- Erm, say what?!- Zoe explained that back in September, Steve agreed to have the Big Eye Deers name published in a book that was being made for schools. Lie number 1. He was actually in San Francisco at the time.

Zoe maintained that he did, even though she couldn’t prove it with any email correspondence. “The Teenage Information Bureau” she said “is to help promote sexual awareness to teenagers”… Hang on, it was ‘The Information Bureau’ a second ago. Lie number 2. Now the question you need to ask yourself is why on earth would a web design agency agree to have its name published in a sex education book? It wouldn’t.

Zoe continued to say that she’d be sending an invoice for £195 in the post and would give us till 3pm before calling back to confirm the payment. Wow.

As you do when on the phone, you take down the vitals- Here’s their shoddy website. I also ran a good-ol’ Google search too, here’s what I found. Apparently lots of people have fallen victim to this scam and have been conned out of money- Why they were so naive to believe they actually did what Zoe and her money hungry team tell them is beyond me.

Let’s just say I’m looking forward to taking the call at 3pm- that’s if she’s dumb enough to call back.