Archive for Scam or Not

The British Awards Council: scam or not? You decide

Sep 3 | by Sam Deeks | Scam or Not
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Is The British Awards Council prize claim ‘promotion’ another scam? As always, you decide..

But let our collection of comments about all McIntyre and Dodd Marketing Ltd’s other recent rip-off promotions help you.

If you want to know about McIntyre and Dodd Marketing Ltd, click here.  You’ll see that this kind of promotion is their speciality – and they’re doing it as much and as fast as they can before the OFT manages to shut them down.

** WANT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THESE PEOPLE?? Click HERE **

Since I’ve been tracking their rip-off promotions they’ve gone through several names – all designed to appear credible and worthwhile. They change the name as soon as the general public wakes up to the fact that this is a con. Community Awards Register was the first one I blogged about. Shortly afterwards came PDO Prize Distribution Office. Then there was NB: Notification Bureau. Now – probably speeded up by people like me blogging about these rip-offs – they’ve changed the name again this time to the grand (and trustworthy-sounding) ‘The British Awards Council’.

Please follow the links I’ve put here to see just how systematically exploitative this outfit is.  You’ll also see how lucrative this business is. The group of companies that’s behind this rip off is worth nearly £14m – of your money.

More importantly, read all the various ‘victim’ comments from ordinary, everyday people who have wasted their hard-earned money on these promotions and received little or nothing in return.

The British Awards Council: scam or not? You decide – and please feel free to share your experiences here to help others make up their minds too.

PDO Prize Distribution Office: Scam or not? You decide….

Mar 16 | by Sam Deeks | Scam or Not
42 Comments

Prize Distribution Office letters: another MacIntyre and Dodd Marketing ‘offer’

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Yes, for just £9.00 in text charges, plus your network operator’s costs, plus £5.95 (that’s a minimum of £14.95) you could get either some (apparently  not very useful) vouchers or a bit of silver jewellery! Woo-hoo! Bargain!

This ‘offer’ comes in the form of a letter designed to make vulnerable (or greedy and foolish) people think they’ve won something – deceptive enough for the Office of Fair Trading to think it worth seeking an injunction to try to stop the company behind this ‘promotion’ (MacIntyre and Dodd Marketing) in the High Court.

And the Guardian thinks its pretty shabby too.

MacIntyre and Dodd have a track record of this kind of ‘offer’, most recently with their ‘Community Awards Register‘.  Spot the similarities?  Of course you do.

This kind of ‘promotion’ is big business – the PLC which owns MacIntyre and Dodd Marketing is valued at £13.5 millions of your pounds (see my earlier post about Community Awards Register).

Is this promotion legal? Sadly, until such times as the High Court decides otherwise, the answer is currently ‘yes’.

Scam or not? The OFT seems to think so.  Their case against MacIntyre and Dodd Marketing argues that the company tries to misconstrue what is in fact simply the sale of cheap goods as a prize draw, which it is not.

Whatever the outcome from the high court, one thing’s for sure: that MacIntyre and Dodd will continue to pump out these promotions so long as they’re legal.  Keep your eyes peeled!

Community Awards Register: Scam or not?

Feb 8 | by Sam Deeks | Scam or Not
105 Comments

C.A.R Community Awards Register: Scam or not? You decide..

** Stop Press 10 Feb – Office of Fair Trading is seeking a court order against the company behind the Community Awards Register **

I guess that just about answers the question, don’t it?  Read on for the back story:

Scenario: Letter comes through addressed to you at your home address.  Oh, look, it seems you’ve won a  ‘Community Award’ – one of a range of tasty prizes.

All you have to do to claim your prize is call an expensive premium-rate phone number which (according to the paperwork) will cost you £9.00 plus your network charge for calling or texting that number.  Who knows how much that would be in addition?

I have a depressing feeling that this, like those moronic quizzes on daytime TV, is legal – so long as it delivers some prize to someone, somewhere.  After all, by calling a premium line number of your own free will, you’re clearly entering into the contract, right?  It’s just a form of ‘gaming’ isn’t it?

A quick bit of research leads me down a depressingly long rabbit hole.

Come with me on that jouney for a moment.

Click here to view map

The first thing we learn is that the company behind this is McIntyre & Dodd Marketing ltd whose postcode, incidentally, isn’t what they put on the mailout.

That postcode points to The Recycling People in Ross-on-Wye (right).

The correct postcode should of course be HR9 5PQ (according to an online business directory entry).  Sorry, no, it’s actually this field here, (according to the company’s own website).  Did I say there? I meant here (according to what looks like their own business entry in Google maps).  That’s a bit more like it.

Next we find that the Advertising Standards Authority ruled against this company in 2007.  What for? I hear you cry. Click the link and read for yourself.  Suffice it to say, in the words of the ASA, “The mailing breached CAP Code clause 7.1 (Truthfulness).”

Today, we discover that the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) is seeking a court order to stop McIntyre and Dodd Marketing Ltd stating:

‘Our case is that these promotions encourage people to believe they have won a valuable prize when, we argue, the plain fact of the matter is that people are being sold a low value product. We have been unable to reach agreement with the companies or secure voluntary agreement that distribution will cease. So we think the best thing now is for the High Court to decide the matter.’

McIntyre and Dodd Marketing Ltd are now part of a group of companies called DM Plc.  Scratch the surface of any of these companies and before long you’re looking at a whole end-to-end database building, direct marketing operation designed (clearly very successfully) to collect names, addresses and postcodes from people entering ‘quiz’ sites and ‘prize draws’ online.

And.. yes, you’ve guessed it! This data then pumps out the other end in the form of direct mail ‘prize draws’ – just like the one you received today. The funny part is that you almost certainly gave them permission in the first place.  The one thing these people aren’t is stupid enough to fall foul of the opt-in laws around direct marketing and database building, rest assured.

Here’s how DM Plc’s shares break down and here are most of the people who get the lion’s share of your money.  And this gives you just a tiny idea of how much of your money is involved in just one of the companies in the group.  Market capitalisation (value) of DM Plc is around £13.5 million – a substantial part of it, no doubt, gained from mailing ‘games of skill and chance’ to your door with premium rate phone numbers for you to call.  Take a closer look at Reuters entry for the company and bios of the top 5 people here.

So is the Community Awards Register a scam?  You, the Googling Great British Public – and now the High Court – will decide.

From an online reputation viewpoint, the fact that 500 people visited this post yesterday and today after being spontaneously and independently moved to type the words “community awards register scam” into Google is very revealing.

What would you have to do in your business to send people searching Google for your co. name plus the word ’scam’ at the end?  And would you even know if they were?

And perhaps strangest of all is this full page ad from the online New York Times paid notices section in 2008.  What in the world might be the link between that direct mail marketing company name and this one? Answers on a postcard… :-)

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