Tag Archives: advice

Today’s Scams

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Will it ever end?

I need to start by mentioning that I have so much spam protection set up for my e-mail accounts that I get a total of less than 30 unsolicited e-mail messages a day — on 10 e-mail accounts. I think that’s pretty damn good, considering what’s going on out there.

Yet today, I got TWO scam messages before I started my day’s work. I want to take a moment to mention them because I want to help educate people about how scammers are trying to separate unsuspecting people from their money.

I’ll pay you $8000 with my credit card and you give me $4,820 in cash.

The first was a repeat of a scam that I first experienced in May 2007. I wrote about it here. This is a twist on the old scam where you’re selling something and a buyer wants to use a certified check to overpay you and get the excess cash to “an agent” for some other purpose. In my case, what I was selling was helicopter tour services. The “client” was from Germany, planning a vacation in the area, and wanted to prepay for tours around the area for his family. The first time I saw this scam, I got sucked in a bit — until the prepay part, which included money forwarded to a “logistic agent.” Alarm bells went off. You can read all the messages and my accompanying thoughts in the post I linked to above. I highly recommend this post for anyone selling any high-ticket items — goods or services — on the Web.

Today’s message sounded familiar when I read it. A search through my blog using the word “scam” brought it up to refresh my memory. A comparison between today’s e-mail message and the May 2007 message resulted in many identical words and phrases — even the 95-lb weight of the 16-year-old son.

I replied with a link to the post, using TinyURL to mask the URL:

You might want to read the following for more information about how we handle reservations like this:

http://tinyurl.com/5tcryd

Busted!

For security reasons we have sent you this message as an attachment file.

If that doesn’t send off bells and whistles, you deserve to be scammed. The e-mail message in question was supposedly from Barclay’s Bank. I don’t have an account there, so there was no chance that I was going to open the attachment.

The attachment was an innocent-looking HTML file. It could have contained any kind of malicious code or links to a site that would install malware. It could have simply prompted me to enter my Barclay’s account information, which it would then forward to the scammers so they could suck money out of my account.

This might seem simple to everyone — don’t open an attachment. But if you have a Barclay’s account, and the message says the attachment is part of a new security program, and you’re gullible, you might just open it.

Don’t. Open. Any. Attachments. In. Messages. Unless. You. Know. They’re. Safe.

Seven Mistakes to Avoid When Using the Internet to Market Your Products

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Why is it that some companies just don’t get it?

Over the past week or so, I’ve been doing some research into coffee carts. You know what I mean — those movable carts you might see in office building lobbies or airports or malls that sell espresso and other hot and cold beverages. I’m working on a business proposition where I might just need one, so I’m been trying to see what my options are.

Trying is the correct word in the previous sentence. I’ve been trying hard to use the Internet — including Google, of course — to find businesses that manufacture or sell the kind of cart I want. What I’m finding, however, is that very few companies that make or sell this equipment have a clue about how they can use the Internet to make information about their products available to the world 24/7.

Why This Really Irks Me

Putting Your Small Business on the WebYou have to understand my frustration with this. After all, back in 2000, I wrote a slim book for Peachpit Press titled, Putting Your Small Business on the Web. I wrote it primarily to help small business owners understand how the Web could help them so they wouldn’t be victimized by unscrupulous Web developers. Back in those days, the Web was relatively new and people simply didn’t understand how to take advantage of it. My book explained what the Web could and couldn’t do for them and provided advice for making the most of what the Web offered.

Please understand that I’m not trying to sell anyone on this book. It’s old and terribly out of date. One of these days I’ll revise it and release it as a ebook or possibly a print on demand project. If you really want it, you can find used copies of it on Amazon.com. (That’s where I found this picture of the cover; I’d discarded my old scans of it.) My point is, I wrote a book about this eight years ago and I’m still finding people making the same mistakes I told them to avoid.

But They Just Don’t Get It

One of the things I advised was putting all of your product information on the Web. Photos, descriptions, dimensions, and yes, even pricing. This is the information people want when they’re shopping for solutions. Having complete information helps people decide whether to take the next step — which might include buying the product.

Yet in my search for coffee carts — and yes, I did use all kinds of appropriate search phrases in Google — I did not find many companies that provided the information I needed. Instead, the search results included companies that made one or more of the following mistakes.

  • They didn’t sell the product I was searching for. Yes, my search phrase was one of the phrases that appeared in the site’s meta tags or in page content, but that’s not what they sold. They sold vending carts that might or might not be used for coffee. Not what someone serious about building a coffee business wants. In this case, they’d used their meta tags to enhance search engine results in their favor, thus wasting the time of people who pulled up their pages. Just another example of SEO gone bad.
  • Blurry CartThey didn’t include images of their products. In this category, I’ll include companies that included blurry — yes blurry, as shown in this actual image from a site — images of their products and companies with a lot of broken image links. And how about a company with an embedded movie that simply wouldn’t play? I’d say 50% of the sites I brought up had insufficient illustrations of their products. Because I’m very interested in how my coffee business might look, these sites wasted my time.
  • They required you to fill out a form fully describing your business before they’d give you any information at all. WTF? Needless to say, I didn’t waste much time there because I certainly wasn’t going to provide that kind of information just to see what solutions they might have.
  • They provided vague information about some products but required you to contact them by e-mail or phone to learn more. So much for 24/7 information. I’m the kind of person who often does research at 5:00 AM on a Sunday morning. Will someone be answering the phone when I call? I don’t think so.
  • They listed so many products that it was hard to distinguish between them. One site, for example, offered eight different 7-foot coffee carts. I couldn’t tell the difference between them. There wasn’t enough information about any of them. And since the same company listed over 100 vending products, I started wondering whether they had any coffee expertise at all. Surely a coffee cart has different features than a hot dog cart.
  • They forced you to go to a different site — or multiple sites — to get complete information about a product. One site, for example, showed a blurry image of a coffee cart and listed specifications, then listed three individual Web sites where you could get pricing. Why three? Why go elsewhere at all? Of course, when you got to one of those sites, you’d have to search it for the product you were interested in. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time or patience to waste chasing information.
  • They have bad links on the site. For example, “Click here to get manufacturers specifications.” When you click “here,” it takes you to the home page of another site that lists hundreds of products — not the specifications you expected to find. Yes, it’s yet another way to waste my time.

I did find one company that had PDFs online that could be downloaded for specific products. The two-page PDFs had good photos and were relatively clear about the product’s specifications. They did not, however, include pricing. To get pricing, I had to e-mail the company. They responded quickly with yet another PDF. My question: Why wasn’t the pricing PDF also on the Web site?

Good Information Results in Sales

The result of all this is that after spending about two hours searching for a product that might meet my needs, I found only one company that makes a product I’d consider buying. I don’t know about those other companies — there wasn’t enough information on their sites to convince me that they knew the business and made a quality product I could rely on and afford. The company with the good information is the one I’m seriously considering doing business with.

What companies don’t understand is that their Web presence is almost like a storefront. If its shabbily maintained and doesn’t deliver the information people expect, that reflects on them. (I wrote about that in some length in the book, too.) By failing to make the most of their Web presence, they’re just adding more useless information to the Web — branded with their name.

"Don’t Panic!" Footnote

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I’m not the only one saying this.

A quick footnote to my “Don’t Panic!” post earlier today. I was reading the NYTimes online and stumbled upon an article by Alex Berenson titled “Those With a Sense of History May Find It’s Time to Invest.”

Not only does he refer to the tech stock bubble burst of 2000-2001 (as I do), but he claims:

Now investors have again convinced themselves that this time is different, that the credit crisis will push economies worldwide into the deepest recession since the Depression. Fear runs even deeper today than greed did a decade ago.

But in their panic, investors are ignoring 60 years of history. Since the Depression, governments have become far more aggressive about intervening when credit markets seize up or economies struggle. And those interventions have generally succeeded. The recessions since World War II, while hardly easy, have been far less painful than the Depression.

Read the article. It cites experts:

“I think in years to come — I wouldn’t say months to come — we will perceive this as being a great value-buying opportunity,” said David P. Stowell, a finance professor at Northwestern and a former managing director at JPMorgan Chase. “Two and three years from now, it will seem very smart.”

Don’t panic. It might just be the time to go bargain hunting on Wall Street.

Advice to Home Buyers

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A never-published sidebar.

In July, while I was working on the eleventh edition of Quicken 2009: The Official Guide for Quicken Press, I wrote the following sidebar for Chapter 13. But by the time I had completed it I realized that it was probably not a good addition to the book for various liability reasons. So I pulled it out and wrote this post, dating it to appear after the Quicken book was published.

I need to stress that the only thing I’m advising here is for people to be conservative when borrowing money. I don’t want to see the U.S. economy getting any worse, and I certainly don’t want to hear stories about people — especially people with families — losing their homes. Consider my advice and take it with a grain of salt. While there’s no reward without risk, there’s also a lesser chance of loss without it.

Here’s my unpublished sidebar:

Mortgage Options: What Does This Mean To You?

I’m not a financial advisor and I don’t feel comfortable giving financial advice. But here’s one piece of advice I feel I must give in this eleventh edition of my Quicken book: Don’t make unrealistic assumptions.

The mortgage crisis that’s currently going on in this country is due, in part, to unrealistic assumptions made by borrowers. Some people assumed that the home they were buying would quickly rise in value so it would be worth far more than they were paying in just a year or two. They reasoned that they could always sell it at profit if they had trouble making mortgage payments. Other people assumed that rates would continue to stay low or even go lower, so payments on their adjustable rate mortgages would stay the same or be reduced. And most people probably assumed that the economy would stay strong, fuel prices wouldn’t rise, and they’d stay employed.

Hindsight is 20-20. As we saw, the worst combination of economic changes recently hit the U.S. The “housing bubble” burst and home values declined. Soon, many people’s mortgages — some for 90% or 100% of the home’s purchase price! — exceeded the value of their homes. Some homes could only be sold at a loss, with the seller still in debt on a home he no longer owned. Interest rates rose and adjustable rate mortgages rose with them. The cost of living increased, making it difficult for many people to cover their living expenses and pay their mortgage. A rash of layoffs throughout the country left many people unemployed. It was the perfect storm.

When I advise readers not to make assumptions, I’m warning those of you considering a home purchase not to make the same mistakes that other home buyers made over the few years before the housing bubble burst. They assumed best case scenario and they were proven very wrong. It may be better to assume the worst case scenario. If housing values remain flat or decline, mortgage rates rise, the cost of living continues to rise, or you lose your job, can you still afford the home you’ve selected with the mortgage deal you’ve chosen? If not, perhaps you need to find a better deal or choose a more affordable home.

Be smart — not sorry.

Credit Card Stolen?

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But merchandise is being sent to the cardholder’s address?

Here’s a weird thing I’m hoping a reader can shed some light on.

A friend of mine just called me. He said that he was checking his bank account online today and found about 10 transactions for items he did not buy. All the transactions apparently came through on his Debit card.

So his card number was stolen and the thief was on a shopping spree, right?

Well, not so fast. He tracked down a number of the items ordered and discovered that they were being shipped to his address.

It seems that it’s either a bad joke or the thief plans to steal the delivered stuff off his doorstep when it’s delivered.

Has anyone out there ever heard of anything like this happening? Any advice I can pass on to him?

He’s not worried about the money — the bank has already told him they’ll reverse the charges to his account. I’m just trying to understand the scam. This is a new one to me.