Complaints about paypal

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you want to read an incredible list of complaints about Paypal, please check out the hundreds of reader comments on my site

Three years ago I posted ‘How to complain about Paypal in the UK‘ because I knew there was little or no information to help the thousands of furious customers out there unable to get their hands on their own money. I researched as hard as I could, but – apart from the Financial Ombudsman Service and (at the time) the Financial Services Authority, I drew a blank.

Since then, the list of complaints about Paypal has been steadily growing. What’s depressing is that each victim of Paypal’s outrageous behaviour tends to suffer in isolation. The stories are almost unbelievable and the sense of frustration and helplessness is overwhelming.

But recently, there’s been some good news, some really good news. Last September, this UK woman took Paypal to her County Court for holding her ‘frozen’ funds. Wow. What are you all waiting for!?

And not only that, other commentators report the Financial Ombudsman Service taking effective action and forcing Paypal to release their frozen funds. Wow again!

If you’re here because you’re having problems and because Paypal’s dreadful practices and lack of customer service is driving you mad, then please join the new Facebook group and help to put pressure on this monster organisation.

 

Filed Under: how to

Reputation online: it’s how you behave that counts

January 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

All it takes is one careless reaction or outburst to ruin your reputation online

When it comes to online reputation, the single hardest thing for some people to understand is that everything you do online leaves a trace – and that people make up their minds about you and your business from the sum total of what they can find out about you.

As we all know, that sum total includes everything you say about yourself (your website, ads, press-releases and forum posts) and everything that everyone else says (blog comments, reviews, Tweets, Facebook comments) and so on.

Judging by the reputation management services you find online, many people think that preserving a good reputation is all about pushing bad reviews and unhappy (or malicious) customer comments of the first, critical, page of Google and replacing it with glowing comments that talk about how great they are.

This is borne out by the fact that most enquires I get about reputation problems are from people looking for a quick fix. These are the people who will end up paying a technical-sounding company to create a load of content to drown out the bad news in Google.  I don’t work with them for two simple reasons: firstly because you can’t guarantee driving stuff off the front page of Google and secondly (and more importantly) that efforts to do so always say more about you than the negative comments ever could.

Everybody makes mistakes. Most people forgive a business making a mistake and honestly owning up to it and looking to work with the customer to put it right. However, all my experience in online reputation and customer services shows that the one thing that customers won’t forget – that will drive them to actively look for ways to punish you – is not listening to them when things go wrong.

Trying to hire an offshore agency to ‘bury the bad news’ for you is a sure-fire way to communicate to customers that you’re the kind of person who will try to cover up your mistakes rather than face them.

In my experience, the smart move is to be genuinely transparent – and to do everything possible to convert the problem (there almost always IS something that you’ve had a hand in doing wrong) into a victory for you to demonstrate publicly how good you are at putting things right. Remember, your customer wants resolution and for you and him/her to be happy far more than they want to be in conflict with you. The smart way to preserve and build on your online reputation is to keep this fact in mind at all times – and to use it to your advantage.

Filed Under: online reputation management, ORM

Good blogging tips – #1: moderate your comments!

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The fastest way to ruin the good work you put into your business blog is to not moderate comments

Many people start blogs with the idea that they must join the blogging revolution in order to build a social media presence and create online rapport with their customers and prospects. Well, it’s a great, low cost way of doing this. A blog (whether self-hosted or provided by WordPress.com, Blogger.com or similar) is a user-friendly way of generating interest in your business. It offers you an inexpensive way to explore and learn about ‘search engine optimisation’ yourself – without paying expensive consultants.

Blogging can be quick, easy and remarkably powerful for a newcomer. It can also be a minefield for the unwary. Blogging will put your content into Google and sometimes right up there in the search engine results, no problem. But if you put the wrong stuff out there, you’re stuck with it – and before long, that’s what everyone will find when they go looking for your name, your products or your business. Some people seem to lose sight of this fact, choosing to rant and rave on their blog with views that come back to haunt them later on as prospects start doing their ‘due diligence’.

There are many ways to shoot yourself in the foot when you rush to join the social media revolution and get your business blogging. One of the most painful is let your blog fill up with comment spam. These are comments that pretend to be about your content but which, in reality, are just attempts to link from your site to their viagra / porn / fake watches site.

Typical comment spam looks like a vague attempt to massage the writer’s ego:

“Great blog, man. You really got to the heart of this issue in a way that few people do. I’m going to bookmark your site and recommend it to my friends” is a typical comment – designed to stroke your ego without actually saying anything about the post – because, of course, they’ve not actually read it.

More damaging, perhaps, than letting the occasional bit of spam through is the tendency of many new business bloggers to completely miss the ‘moderate comments before publishing’ option in their blog settings. When this is unchecked, the piles of porn / medication spam will build up on your site, and pretty soon it will look like the urine-soaked, rubbish strewn doorway of a shop in the high street that’s gone out of business. You get the picture.

There’s nothing that says “jumped on the social media bandwagon to broadcast my stuff but can’t actually be bothered to engage with it” better than missing that single, tiny check-box. Don’t make that mistake – set comment moderation ON from the start.

Filed Under: Big Marketing Mistakes, blogging technique

SCAF crackdown in Egypt – soldiers’ outrage visible to millions

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Thanks to YouTube, millions worldwide can witness the brutality ordered by SCAF in Egypt

A news headline on the home page of Linked In took me to a report on the burtal oppression of Egypt’s Tahrir Square protesters that took place on Saturday. The story focused around the beating of an unarmed, defenceless woman and the pictures show close-up shots of her, half-naked, in the process of being beaten unconscious by hordes, literally hordes, of soldiers armed with helmets, shields, boots and batons.

For the report’s author, the image of the woman with her black abaya pulled up over her head to reveal her bare midriff and blue bra, is a shocking indictment of the regime now clamping down on the protesters.

I agree – but watching the video was, in my view, more disturbing even than this single image. The video shows something infinitely more awful that a woman being beaten and dragged around: it shows literally dozens of soldiers swarming like crazed insects around her, jostling for position, fired with a grotesque hunger to unleash violence on her. It’s the sheer scale of the violence against her, the hugeness of the cowardice of these frightened, uncontrollable, unconscious idiots in uniforms that is so shocking.

In the middle of that awful melee, I saw something that shocked me even more than the beating of the woman for its cold-blooded inhumanity – a soldier lining up on a man, leaping into the air and delivering a two-footed stamp with his full body weight on his victim’s torso.

Let these images haunt those involved and let them become symbols that catalyse change for the better.

Filed Under: change, GRRRR!!!

Business Directory Scams: how they work

December 13, 2011 By 1 Comment

How do global business directory scams work?

The psychology behind them is very simple – I’ll try to sum it up from the scammer’s point of view.

1) By default you treat people as though they’re like you, not crooks like me. You’re a decent, law-abiding citizen trying to make an honest living and you live in a moral society. Because of that, I can count on you treating me as if I also operate from that place (which of course, I don’t). In short, even while I’m ripping you off, I can depend on you to be polite, tolerant, honest and trusting.

Not only that, you’ll be so scared of being taken to court (now who put that idea in your head??) that you’ll bend over backwards to avoid saying anything that could offend ME, the scammer, or be construed as legal advice to any of my victims. How deliciously convenient: self-policing victims.

2) Shame is a powerful tool. I know you’ll blame yourself for not noticing the small print (in fact, in many of my threatening letters, I’ll be unable to restrain myself from referring to your stupidity and your responsibility for the mess you’re in). Of course you should have seen it! It’s YOUR fault! It’s there in black and white. If you weren’t cautious enough, that’s your look out.

It really helps that you feel stupid and ashamed. That will make sure you don’t share your mistake with anyone. I need you isolated and feeling alone.

3) Now I can frighten you. Yes. I’ll bombard you with emails, letters and calls. Because you haven’t shifted to seeing me as a criminal, you still hold a belief that maybe…just maybe I could take you to court somewhere. You fantasise about the huge cost; the shame; the disruption. Oh, it would be too terrible.

4) I read what you’re REALLY communicating (not what you think you are). The minute you communicate with me, the message I get is that you’re scared. Even when you think you’re being angry, I know you’re being scared. Good. Any reaction tells a) you’re at the address I think you are. Good. b) Mentally, you REALLY don’t think I’m a criminal. Very good. c) You’re scared and/or ashamed and you take me seriously. Even better.

5) You’ll be happy to ‘settle’. At some point, I will have caused you so much stress and worry that you’ll think paying €1,000 to get rid of me – sorry, to ‘settle’ with my client – sounds like a fair exchange.

And that’s all it takes.

Every time I see someone write ‘I’m going to counter-sue’ or ‘Let’s get together and beat them in court’ or ‘I’m going to write them…’ I see why this scam works. As long as you believe, in the back of your mind, that they are somehow legal and that they, somehow, could take you to a court then they’ve got you.
You might SAY you know they’re scammers, but so long as you do the above things, you’re telling me that you don’t really trust yourself. And the saddest thing is to know that they designed it to manipulate you in exactly this way.

Folks. These people are crooks. There IS no debt collector; there IS no court. It never does and never WILL happen.

Please try to understand that it’s THIS mental shift that is the key, here. Not any action or statement you can make.

Filed Under: scam, Scambusters! Tagged With: , , , ,

Peninsula Hotel: attention to detail = great online reputation

November 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A tiny detail this morning motivates me to blog positively about the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong

This morning, in my friends apartment in London, I was ironing my shirt ready for a business meeting later in the day. When I came to the collar, I noticed those little plastic ‘stiffener’ tabs you find in place when you first buy the shirt. ‘Hang on…’ I thought ‘This shirt is a couple of months old. I don’t remember those tabs still being there…’

Of course, they weren’t – at least not until last week when I stayed in the 5* Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong on a business trip. Even before I reached down and pulled out one of the tabs I already knew it would have ‘Peninsula Hotel Hong Kong’ emblazened proudly on it. It did.

When I put my shirts in to be pressed at the Peninsula Hotel, they came back pressed, beautifully presented and equipped with little extra ‘temporary’ cuff-links, just in case I was missing some. And one more little plastic marketing gem, hidden away until this morning. Great customer service = great marketing.

That, folks, is how online reputation works. There is no other way.

Filed Under: marketing, ORM, WOW!

European Trade Register: scam or not? You (as usual) decide…

November 23, 2011 By 22 Comments

Is the European Trade Register just another ‘misleading contract’ business directory scam?

As always, you – the Great Googling General public – will decide.

If you’ve received an invitation from European Trade Register to ‘update your details for free’ in any so-called business directory (particularly if it has a 3 part name in the following format:

[Europe / European / World / Global] [Company / Trade / Business] [Directory / Register]

then just bin it.

It will undoubtedly be one of a growing number of scams which all follow the same formula: make you think you’re getting a free listing then hit you with a demand for payment (usually for 3 years at €980 a year). The pressure then increases to threats of ‘court action’ from people passing themselves off as debt collectors – with the aim of scaring people so much that they’ll settle for paying ‘just’ a single year to get these people off their backs.

That’s €980 for doing nothing but mass mailing a form, sending threatening letters and making some bullying phone calls. Easy money for European Trade Register, no?

If you HAVE fallen for it, don’t give in to the pressure. You’ll start getting demands from people pretending to be ‘debt collectors’ (in this case under the fake name ‘Walberg & Hirsch’) trying to (lols) ‘mediate’ on behalf of their client. Make no mistake – these are the same people as ‘European Trade Register’.

For immediate reassurance, please read all the comments on the following threads on my site:

• EU Business Guide 

• Expo Guide

• World Business Directory 

(…and any number of other sites dealing with every possible variant of these names. Use Google to learn more).

If you’re here because you’ve been hit by the European Trade Register scam, then please consider adding your experience using the comments link below to help to reassure others in future who will arrive here worrying about threats of legal action.

Remember, the power lies with YOU and the truth.

PS – if we’ve saved you €980 or helped end your worries, please support our work by clicking through to our sponsor sites (under our picture on the right there –>). Thank you!

 

Filed Under: scam, scam warning, Scambusters! Tagged With: , , , , ,

First Great Western! Stop putting me in the VOLO TV coach when I ASK FOR the QUIET coach!!!!

November 16, 2011 By 2 Comments

Yes, First Great Western – I’m getting tired of you trying to force me to watch VoloTV

I’ve suspected this for some time. Increasingly, when I try to book my Plymouth to London return journey, First Great Western gives me a reservation in coach D. This is really annoying as I ALWAYS want to be in coach A, the quiet coach. Since I alway choose ‘quiet coach’ when booking, the first thing I do when it comes back with ‘reserved D34 window’ is assume I’ve missed selecting ‘quiet coach’ and go through the whole damn process again.

Then, having wasted my good time, I realise that I DID, in fact, choose ‘quiet coach’ but for some reason First Great Western has decided in it’s wisdom to put me in coach D instead.

I know – since this has happened several times over the last year – that on the day, I will STILL board coach A (the quiet coach) and I will have no problem finding an empty seat. An empty seat that First Great Western wouldn’t allow me to book.

The fact that EVERY time that FGW has done this they’ve given me a seat in coach D (not B, C or E) can only mean one thing: they’re trying to force people into the VoloTV-equipped carriage. And that really pisses me off. I said from the outset that I don’t really see a future for VoloTV given that we’re all quite happy to watch our own entertainment devices. It’s beginning to look like they’re willing to do anything to get people to use that system.

Well, next week, I’m going to sit in coach A and I’m going to leave some feedback for FGW in the form of a yellow Post-It note. And I’m going to do it every time FGW tries to push me in front of one of those annoying screens.

Filed Under: GRRRR!!!

StudioPress WP themes – thank you for great service

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tech support at StudioPress got me back up and running quickly – and threw in a free theme too

Out of the blue this site stopped displaying properly the other day. It was based on a premium theme called ‘Venture’ that I’d bought maybe two years ago. Everything had worked well and I had no complaints – until the other day. The first thing I did was make sure that all my content was still intact. Then I switched to another (free) theme in my WP dashboard which worked fine meaning that it was Venture was somehow broken.

I went on a quick search to try to find who I’d bought Venture from and when. The trail led me to StudioPress – along with the name Brian Gardner. That was strange. I’d used a lot of Brian’s themes (free and paid) but I was sure that ‘Venture’ came from a stable called ‘ModThemes’. To be honest, there have been so many of them I’ve lost track.

It turned out that Venture was now under the StudioPress umbrella. I contact tech support (not expecting much) and was really happy to get back an email offering me another theme plus their ‘Genesis’ platform – for free. True to their word, I got another email back today with a link to a download – ‘Agency’.

I’d like to say that this piece of good customer service has won me back as a StudioPress customer – except it seems that I’ve never actually been away. Nice move Brian and the team! Thanks!

Filed Under: feedback, mukau reputation boost

What’s happened to bbc.co.uk?

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When you can’t get bbc.co.uk your first though is “has the world ended?”

Very occasionally something goes wrong and you can’t get the BBC website. Oh my God, you think, has the world ended? What could possibly take the BBC offline? It’s funny how we think that the BBC’s website should be more robust and resistant to code screw-ups or inexplicable breakdowns than other websites.

Usually, the BBC website shows back up within minutes and all is well. You can relax in the knowledge that a battleship-sized asteroid hasn’t knocked the earth of its magnetic axis and messed up all communications across the planet. Nor has a NASA-covered up brown dwarf star (masquerading as an icy comet) initiated an Extinction Level Event.

Joking aside, it is telling to notice just how destabilising it feels when a website like BBC doesn’t work. Worse yet those times when you can’t connect to the internet at all. I don’t know about you, but I will admit to a sort of nameless panic at being suddenly cut off from…well, you know, the real world. 

Filed Under: smile Tagged With: , , , , ,
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