Faxes That Look Like Invoices...beware

[Samrc]

Today we received yet one more officially looking fax that states:

 

FORWARD TO ACCOUNTS PAYABLE DEPARTMENT for Annual Review

 

This fax has an important looking seal, language that appears to refer to an ongoing arrangement for website monitoring bundle that includes the renewal of our domain. "It's that time of the year again..." The document ends with an electronic (bank routing number) style long 26 digit number on the payment coupon that should be returned with payment. Very real looking. The service is semi-annual payment of $263.97 ($659.34/year).

 

I GUARANTEE that many people do not know what it is and just pay it because it refers to renewal of the domain! In very fine print they state that "...this is a marketing offer and you are under no obligation to pay..."

 

Anyone in business should warn accounts payable departments to be very watchful to capture these phony bills as they are not related to your hosting service, your domain service or any other service you have purchased. They are fishing for new clients in an unethical way. We protect ourselves by having anything to do with phone, internet, website going through ONE person that can weed out the real information from the phony ones.

[TCH-Bruce]

Scammers will try anything. Sad part is, some unsuspecting person will fall for it.

 

I get called from the Internet Yellow pages all the time. They claim they aren't selling anything and only verifying information and then they switch you over to someone that tries to scam money out of you by telling you that you have a free listing and will have to cancel when the bill arrives or be charged for the service. Yeah, right....

[TCH-Tim]

semi-annual payment of $263.97 ($659.34/year)

Is that the 73-year domain renewal special?

[stevevan]

Hackers and scammers

[MacGirl]

They're at it again

 

I used to get snail mail from one (supposedly legit) domain name provider, but it stopped years ago (after they were sued).

 

I wouldn't accept a faxed invoice from anyone unless I knew it was coming. Yes, the scambags have grown more sophisticated (see PayPal scams in email). At least they don't regularly misspell stuff, or put the subject line in all caps (YOUR ACCOUNT IS IN JEPORDY!!!!!!!!!!)

[Deverill]

Sammi, I went to my church last night and the pastor brought me that exact fax and asked "This is a scam, right?" - at that price he'd better hope so!

[Samrc]

Deverill, Since you and I are in Florida, I am not surprised that you got it too!

Just glad he brought it to you, questioning the authenticity.

 

 

Is that the 73-year domain renewal special?

should be!

But no...they BOLDED the fact that they have a 1-year renewal included in the services.

 

When someone falls for the scam and pays the fee, I wonder if they have a fee to release the customer when they finally want to move away for them for domain renewal?

 

 

NOTE: The fax that caused the post came from a site that CLAIMS to be an SEO. I looked at their site and they claim to be a reputable SEO company that offers guarantees of satisfaction, etc. The majority of the faxes that try to get us to pay for domain renewal, domain registration, website listing, etc are from people CLAIMING to be from SEO companies.

 

Please do not take this thread as criticism of SEO companies! That is not the intent! My intent was to warn against scams, not SEO companies! In my experience, it is not the usual business practice for legit SEO companies to send out unsolited faxes (spam) that mascarade as invoices!