Is the World Business Directory a scam? Depends on whether you feel £980 a year to advertise in its ‘directory’ is good value for your money or not.

Like me, you might receive this from World Business Directory.

The email comes with an attached pdf that you’re invited to fill in. For a free listing (yawn, please see my endless posts on the total lack of benefits of free listing in most legit directories!) the form invites you to fill in your company details.

Boxes at the bottom of the form invite your signature & co. stamp – reinforced by the words “please fill in the form completely” in bold.

One small sentence tells you only to sign the form if you want to place an ‘insertion’ – a deliberately uncommon word.

A dense pile of even smaller print tells you that signing the form constitutes a contract to place an ‘insertion’ at £980 per year – minimum period 3 years.

It’s up to you to decide whether you think this is a cynical fraud or not.

This might help you decide. I know where I stand and so do people of many other countries where this occurs (word for word). Click the thumbnail (left) for a detailed look at their form -and a spanish one for comparison.

This also might help you: a letter from MEP Sarah Ludford to one World Business Directory victim.  You might also like to see the letter that same victim then sent to the so-called ‘collections agency’ operating on behalf of WBD.  Nice one, Mary.

One thing’s for sure, if you rush ahead and sign and return this form thinking you’re going to get a Google-boost from this free directory listing, be prepared: you’ll end up with on of these (right)

What gets me is that Barclays Bank are happy to take the money. Nasty.

Here’s another variant of this scam offer.

[Update] Now operating out of Utrecht, Netherlands [Update]