The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice

Our company registered in Botswana recently received an invitation to attend a Business Initiative Directions (B.I.D) World Congress in Paris, France. I am not quite sure how they got hold of our postal address because we received the invitation through mail. It is also noteworthy that our company has not been operational since 2003. What I find suspicious is the fact that we are supposed to pay 3,700 euros for participation costs. I hence call on your office to help me ascertain how factual this is.

Well, it’s certainly “factual” but it’s still a scam!

This so-called “World Quality Commitment Convention”, run by “Business Initiative Directions” is remarkably similar to the equally ridiculous Bizz Awards scam we exposed some months ago. You receive an invitation to an awards ceremony in some far-flung country, you are offered luxury, celebration and fame and all you have to do to get this is to give them VAST amounts of money. In this case you are right, they need you to give them €3,700 which is over P30,000. Included in this sum is accommodation at a hotel in Paris for two nights, but only for one room. If you go to the hotel where they require you to stay you find that the cost of the rooms will only be €560. The only other things you get for this are the “award” itself, a lapel pin and some photographs.

Don’t forget that this doesn’t include your flights to Paris. I checked the Air France prices for the dates of the “Congress” and if you wanted to stay just the two nights they suggest the cheapest return flight would costs you another P15,000. And there’s Paris itself. Trust me, I’ve been there, Paris is NOT a cheap place to be.

The most telling piece of evidence that this is a scam is your question. How can you have won an award in 2010 when your company hasn’t traded since 2003? Excellent question! This is exactly what happened with the Bizz Awards. They offered their silly awards to companies that hadn’t traded for years, they even offer ME an award when I made up a non-existent company and an assumed name and nominated myself for an award.

When you go to the “Business Initiative Directions” web site there is a lot of information to support their “award”. One section says:

A company that hasn’t traded since 2003 has passed this rigorous voting system? This really is nonsense, isn’t it?

It’s interesting to wonder how they found your details and why in these days of email they wrote to you the old-fashioned way. I think there are two reasons. Firstly I was able to find the details of your company online quite quickly. Your details appear on a web site the lists companies in Botswana that do business with companies in China. Your particular entry only gives your postal address, no email contacts. The second reason is that I think companies that are trying to persuade you that they are legitimate might think that a posted copy of the letter will have more “gravitas” and would be more likely to get you to cough up the cash they are desperate to get.

This is a scam. All they want is your money. Just like “The Bizz Awards” this award is worthless and is just a very good way of separating you from your hard-earned money.

Recruitment scam warnings

Many consumers have been in touch recently asking us to warn their fellow Voice readers to be wary of recruitment scams. There’s no space to go into details of them all but here are some general points.

Recruitment companies do not contact YOU out of the blue offering you a job. They certainly don’t when you’ve never registered with them and have never even heard of them. They most certainly don’t get in touch and offer you a job in a field you know nothing about. One reader was contacted by a company offering him a job in the oil industry despite the fact that he knows nothing about it. He was rightfully suspicious.

This wasn’t the only one we received. In the last few weeks 4 readers have contacted us, each with an “offer” from a different recruitment company. All were fundamentally the same. All you need to do to get a job, in an area where you are totally unqualified, is, yes you’ve guessed it, give them some money.

Here’s a fundamental lesson for Voice readers on recruitment companies. It’s not the recruit who pays for it, it’s the company who want to find employees who pays. Simple as that.

If you are ever contacted by a company offering you the chance of work and they want you to pay just hang up, walk away or delete the email.