Archive for GRRRR!!!

Erik Erikson and Gospel tv strikes gold

Aug 9 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, scam warning
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Erik Erikson, founder of Gospel TV uses the lure of gold to secure donations in a distinctly ungodly way

Gospel TV is not a good channel for me to watch.

A few weeks ago, I came across Peter Popoff ripping off the faithful with his ludicrous (but hugely lucrative) ‘Supernatural Debt Cancellation Miracle Water’ scam.  No, I’m not joking. Read that post and weep.

Last week, I came across Erik Erikson, founder of the Gospel Channel, talking to (surely be-wigged?) Welshman Robin Rees. They were talking about gold, not god. That struck me as odd – on a religious channel.

According to Erik, God told him to ask his viewers for donations for the Gospel TV channel. But not just a straightforward donation of the kind we’re familiar with. No, this was different. Special. Valuable. Different. According to Erik, this donation isn’t just a donation, it’s an investment.

If this was the Dragon’s Den, you’d see Deborah Meaden suddenly sit up and start paying attention. An investment? That sounds more promising. The numbers, Erik, what about the numbers?

‘Well, it works like this’ he’d say ‘you send us $1000 and we’ll keep half of it as a donation to Gospel TV and invest the other half in pure, 24 carat gold and send it to you’

WOW, you can hear the old folks thinking

‘Then over the years, that $500 worth of gold will be worth more than the original investment’

They then launch into a long and confused ramble about the massive rate of growth in the price of gold year on year.

A fellow outraged internet scam-baiter, who recorded, the show wrote to me afterwards to say:

Despite waffling, Erikson said that gold increased against the pound at 32% a year over the past ten years and at 45% over the last five which Rees described as ‘threefold’.  According to my reckoning if it increased at 45% a year over five years that amounts to an increased of 6.4 fold so he underestimated the increase that would have happened if Erikson’s statement was true; the ten year increase I estimate would have been 16.1.

After the strange statistics Erikson then went on to say that some people have said the increase will be even greater in future. He’s clearly using this as a selling point, all the while smiling benignly like a dodgy salesman.

You can almost see Deborah Meaden shaking her head and Duncan Bannatyne looking at the floor in disgust.

All that’s happening here is that Erik Erikson is using a shiny ‘gift’ (er… purchase) with the promise of a great future value as a crude device to lower the critical faculties of the gullible viewer so they’ll part with the money.

It would be laughable if it were not going on night after night – and lining the pockets of BSkyB in the process.

And as for Gospel TV – the new home of religious fraud Peter Popoff? A quick check this morning revealed that at least 6 of the channel’s listed celebrity preachers have scandalous past or present lives.  More to follow soon.

Volo TV: in-your-face TV oversteps the mark

May 11 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, what do you think?
7 Comments

First Great Western’s Volo TV oversteps the mark and invades my personal space

Click to enlarge

**WED MAY 12th UPDATE**

As a result of our feedback and this post, Paul Soor, MD of Volo TV contacted me today to tell me that the company is abandoning the ‘can’t switch it off’ policy that I complained about in this post. The reprogramming will take 1 – 2 days but Paul assures me that it is definitely going ahead.

He has also invited me to stop by the office to discuss my feedback and to try out the system for free on my trip to Plymouth tomorrow.

Paul’s getting in touch is an example of good social media monitoring and a willingness to hear and act on feedback -to his and the company’s credit.

****************************************************

ORIGINAL POST

Introducing ‘Volo TV’, a personal TV built into the back of the seat in front of you on the train. A nice idea? Well, no.

With more and more of us owning portable media players loaded with all the content we want, this screen-in-the-back-of-the-seat idea with it’s £3.50 per trip monetisation model misses the…ah, train.

Everything about it is unwanted and unwelcome. And it’s way too close to my face, leaving me feeling claustrophobic and trapped. Worse yet, it’s also permanently on. ‘Since this TV replaces the Safety Card’ says the touch-screen blurb ‘it is not possible to switch the screen off’. Unbelievable. So it sits there, running through its promotional videos and pumping out heat – and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. Well, almost nothing.  The woman in front of me had hung her coat over her screen. Good idea. A quick scan up and down the packed carriage showed nobody watching their VoloTV.

Currently, there’s no advertising – but it IS on its way, and judging by the complete lack of paying punters on our journey today, you’ll be seeing it pretty damn soon. So that’s advertising pumping out of a screen you can’t switch off 8 inches from your face? No f*****g way, First Great Western!

Few things create such a universal and instantly negative reaction as Volo TV did today – and that fact alone marks it out as a stunningly bad move. In fact the invasion of my personal space was so unpleasant that I found myself wanting to break the screen.

Instead, my colleagues and I staged a peaceful protest, sticking king sized post-it notes over the screens and leaving First Great Western in no doubt whatsoever as to our feelings.

User reviews into Adwords??

May 1 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media, culture, feedback
1 Comment

What’s Google doing adding reviews to Adwords listings in search results?

For some time I’ve been thinking that the anonymous user review + the competitive environment of Google search = a disastrous formula for all concerned.  Why? Because anonymity pretty much guarantees that reviews end up being used to ‘game’ the market. This isn’t me being negative about human nature, this is just pragmatism.  If 97% of all email sent everyday is spam…well, you get what I’m saying.

Now, Google is going to put user reviews into the search results beneath paying advertiser’s ads. But which reviews? Apparently, those that come from a ‘closed’ system provided by a partner,  Bazaarvoice.com.  According to this report, review information will only be added from a review system if the organisation using it agrees.

(picture from Earthblog News)

So who’s going to want truly open and potentially critical reviews turning up in the search results next to their carefully crafted, paid-for Google ads?  Er, no-one. They’re going to want nice reviews that will make their ads look more attractive. Bye bye transparency.

All of which continues to make a mockery of the noble ideas about feedback and transparency that social media pundits like to talk about. The true value of feedback in business (as in life) is its role in driving learning, development and change but Google – like every other business dealing in ‘user generated reviews’ – is only interested in feedback as a commodity it can trade to businesses seeking competitive advantage.

So what’s Google doing adding reviews to paid ads in the search results? Just more of what it’s always been doing from the start: converting human knowledge into cash via the technology of the ‘keyword’.

Don’t be evil? Don’t make me laugh. I can’t help think that Google has been nothing but – and that we’ve colluded with it every step of the way ;-)

Action Fraud: The UK’s national fraud reporting centre

Apr 4 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, scam
2 Comments

No wonder people get away with the business directory scams with a reporting system as bad as this

Each time I find a new ‘fraud helpline’ I’m disgusted to find there’s never any mention of any of the business directory scams that has cost these people so much in time and money.

What is it about our Government and police that makes them incapable of taking a stand against a crime that many of us online have been reporting for years – and which is still going strong? These people are still bullying hard cash out of people all over the world – cash happily banked by upstanding establishments like Barclays.

This evening, I found ‘Action Fraud‘  which calls itself the ‘UK’s national fraud reporting centre’. Now, I treat ALL such sites as inherently suspicious.  Why? Because there are plenty of scamming sites out there pretending to help – but just waiting to rip you off again with premium rate ‘help lines’.  Given that environement, Action Fraud doesn’t exactly reassure me on first impression.

I first had to Google ‘0300′ call rates to make sure this site wasn’t also a scam. How many of you reading this know that ‘0300′ isn’t some kind of premium rate?  Action Fraud could make this clear – it would go some way to reassuring people.  Then I tried to report the Expo Guide business directory scam using the online ‘Report a fraud’ tool.

I have to say, it was a complete waste of time.  By the second click, I got a ‘call the police now message’.  So I went back and avoided the answer that prompted that, in the hope of being able to report Expo Guide and the fact that I get people every day posting on this site about being ripped off.

Sorry to have to say this, Action Fraud, but it was a pointless exercise. You should try reporting Expo Guide, World Business Directory, European City Guide or any one of the numerous versions of this scam yourself using the ‘tool’.  Then you’ll see why those scammers are laughing their heads off, out there in sunny Cyprus (or wherever).

I guess that leaves the ‘0300′ number.  I’ll let you know what I find out.

How to complain…. about PayPal or eBay?

Apr 2 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media
4 Comments

Look at how PayPal and eBay deal with this question online.

Then look at how other ‘real world’ companies deal with it.

A little over a year ago, following my brother’s experience of a ‘buyer dispute scam’ (buyer receives goods, claims they’re faulty or not as described, gets refund from PayPal, keeps what you sent them and returns whatever they feel like returning) I tried to research who regulates PayPal.

I spent the best part of a day talking to people at the Financial Services Authority and the Financial Ombudsman Service and posted their best advice (which frankly didn’t amount to much) in the form of a step-by-step guide for readers to follow if they needed to complain about PayPal’s conduct.

Continue Reading…

Chinese Communist Party Paranoia: The Great Firewall of China

Mar 23 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!
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You don’t need to be a web expert to smell the paranoia behind The Great Firewall of China

It’s there in the language.

The erection of the so-called ‘Great Firewall of China’ is a pre-emptive strike against possible potential destabilising factors getting worse

Possibly, maybe, potentially… maybe if…
From where I stand, the real issue here isn’t what it pretends to be (‘good’ Google facing off  ‘Evil’ China), it’s two information superpowers fighting over control of information – each in pursuit of its own interests.

That self-interest also explains Google’s apparently ‘amoral’ stance throughout its years of collusion in the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship of its peoples’ access to information online (and it’s ongoing collusion to do the same in India).

Mind you, while UK lawyers seem to think they can gag the British press to stop them reporting the heinous crimes of Trafigura, the sexual infidelities of football stars and golfers or stifle the publication of books and documentaries about the Maddy McCann case, who the hell are we to preach about the freedom of information?

James Belvoir – get yourself a new agent :-)

Feb 27 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media
No Comments

If you’re going to fake testimonials, at least try to make them stand up to 10 seconds of Googling..

I really dislike Facebook and its advertisers.  Facebook ads are generally exploitative and very often fall apart with the slightest critical inspection.

Occasionally I click one just to remind myself just how much I dislike them.  This one made me chuckle this evening – featuring a ‘testimonial’ from a rather miserable-looking young male model.

A quick Google search shows no-one by that name, anywhere.  Either James Belvoir has a really rubbish agent or this is an example of yet another FB advertiser faking testimonials.

Call me old-fashioned, but I find the cynicism of a business that fakes testimonials to sell junk to youngsters struggling with hair loss revolting.

Non-existent Ecademy profile gets #1 Google spot

Feb 7 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, networking, what do you think?
2 Comments

And what the hell is ‘unwired-ecademy’?

I deleted my Ecademy account about two months ago since I wasn’t using it and didn’t really like the way Ecademy was developing.

First thing I noticed when I came to close it down was… that I couldn’t.  No instructions anywhere.  I emailed a couple of times to Ecademy tech support, but got no answer.

I blogged a couple of times; nobody picked it up.

Finally, I found a link (via an angry ex-Ecademist’s blog) to an option that seemed to offer the possibility of deleting my account.

Amusing, then to see this strange Ecademy listing (above) appear at #1 in Google for a search on my own name just now.  It leads to this page.

Firstly what the hell is ‘unwired-Ecademy’??  Secondly, why is it connected with my name?  And why does my name keep turning up in Ecademy’s foreign databases?  Seems to me that they’re holding on to my information.  What else am I supposed to think? Surely the Spiders From Google would have updated the indexes by now if I had successfully deleted my details from their system?

Worse, I just discovered something else. I’ve created an Ecademy account for a client and have just noticed that I can’t log out from my client’s account.  For some reason, Firefox (or Ecademy) just won’t let me.

What is going on here? And what exactly is ‘unwired-ecademy’?

Rule #1 for retaining your credibility in business…

Jan 31 | by Sam Deeks | Big Marketing Mistakes, GRRRR!!!, how to
1 Comment

At least be good at what you’re supposed to be good at! :-)

I’ve lost count of the number of ‘web design / internet marketing’ agency sites I’ve visited only to be astonished to find that they seem to have overlooked the absolute basics of search engine optimisation.

Let’s get something clear here: we’re not talking about clever, complicated nerdy stuff.  We’re talking about the absolute basics you need to be doing if you’re to stand even the slightest chance of being found in Google by your prospects.

How can you tell a when a web design company won’t give you that?  Well, you don’t have to be an expert. It’s easy to spot when you know what you’re looking for and it’s a fun, if slightly depressing, game you can play right here and right now from the comfort of your own browser.

Here are the rules:

  1. Go find a web design / internet marketing company online
  2. Look at the page titles that appear at the top of your browser window when you click on different parts of their site.  Do they have the same title on every page? What are the keywords? Does it look like they will help their services get found by their prospects using Google? (Hint: things like “MyCompanyName: Our portfolio” are practically useless)

You’ll be amazed – and eventually bloody annoyed.  I only wish more people played this game before they went ahead and contracted someone to develop their website.  All too often people end up playing this game after – when it’s too late.

Here’s one I found today.  Click on the thumbnail (above right) to zoom in.

“We design online strategy and build software” says the title on every page.  Absolutely useless as far as Google is concerned – except in the highly unlikely (frankly bizarre) eventuality that someone out there types the exact words “we design online strategy and build software” into Google in the hope of finding a web designer in their area.

Rather depressingly, this company has also broken Rule # 2 which is if you’re going to showcase something, at least showcase someting YOU’VE made, not someone else – doh!?!)

If you’ve already paid for a website that Google can’t find because the page titles are all something like “We design online strategy and build software” or “Pickled Onion Designs: My portfolio” then all I can say is I hope you won’t make that mistake again.  Basic SEO is an elementary part of a basic site – not some exotic luxury!

If on the other hand, you’re still looking around for a company to make your site I hope you’ll play this little game before you hand over your hard-earned money.

Google and China. Stop and think about it

Jan 31 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, what do you think?
2 Comments

I have to confess I haven’t really stopped to give this any thought – until now

Clare and I were discussing the relationship between Google, Twitter and Facebook when the conversation turned to China.  It occurred to me I didn’t really know what the situation was with Google and China and decided to dedicate at least half an hour to find out.

I knew that Google had cut some kind of deal in which it colluded with the Chinese government to provide a part-censored search engine and it made me feel uneasy – particularly with Google’s ‘do no evil’ corporate slogan ringing in my ears.

“I guarantee this will be far dirtier and more complex than it looks” I said to Clare and sat down to shed some light on my ignorance.

The first thing I learned was that Google and other US companies have recently been attacked by Chinese hackers. Second, that these attacks were aimed at the accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  Third, that the Google accounts of a number of non-Chinese critics of China’s human rights record have also been hacked.

Ok. Pause. Think.

Over to Google’s blog. According to Google, these attacks have led Google to review the “feasibility of our business operations in China”. In a post, revealingly titled “A new approach to China”, Google justifies its collusion with the Chinese government so far like this:

“We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

So – we can only capitalise this market if we collude with the Chinese government to censor what its citizens can access. But that’s ok, because some information for the people is better than none, right?  Now, with the Chinese hacks, the ‘do no evil’ mega Corp is lining up to throw away that whole market in a noble stand in defense of human rights, right?  Well, that’s how Google wants it to appear, certainly.

But hold on.

Closer inspection reveals that Google’s market share of web search is far lower in China than it is in India – with whose government it also colludes to censor the content that its citizens can access.  Whoa-aa.

Let that sink in.  No longer one, but two,  major boom economies where Google colludes to censor in return for access to the market.  ‘Do no evil’ starts to wear thin.

Add to this the astonishing claim in the last week that these hacks were achieved via an architecture specifically designed by Google to enable the US Governments (among others?) a means to monitor its own dissidents… and the story begins to smell of hypocrisy.

So let’s review the story so far.  Google agrees to help the Chinese government censor its citizens’ access to information in return for a share of the market. Google defends this by arguing that some information is better than none and by the deception that this has a role in opening up freedom of information in China.  Meantime, Google does the same in India with more profitable and less controversial results since the Indian government isn’t under the microscope for human rights violations in the same way China is.

Then Google gets embarrassed as Chinese hackers access the accounts of Chinese human rights activists, doing so by means of an architecture created by Google to allow the US to do the same to its own dissidents.

Response?  Make a big show of taking a stand against ‘evil’.  This from and excellent piece in the online Asia Times:

“Google took an important and inflammatory step of escalating its conflict with China by using the e-mail hack against democracy advocates to wrap itself in a human-rights flag. As a result, its threat to stop censoring its Google.cn search engine in retaliation for the hacks has become a cause celebre for free speech and Internet-rights activists.

This cause has been taken up by the US government”

It’s a win-win for Google: if they ‘win’, the Chinese market is fully open for their exploitation.  If they ‘lose’ and withdraw from China in protest, they lose that market but win a priceless ‘moral’ victory which will may help people overlook the idea that censorship only really matters to Google when it limits the scale of the opportunity open to it.

One thing’s for certain – I know more than I did an hour ago :-)

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