Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Latest Scam: Caveat Emptor


Entrepreneurs, and especially we solopreneurs, have a lot to do. In addition to the work itself, we have to market our businesses, manage them financially, and handle all the other legal and administrative work that has to be done to keep them running. The last thing we need is more of that on our plate.

So imagine my dismay when I received an e-mail this past week from some company called "Newname Net Service Company", informing me that some company named "Bangni Distributors" wanted to buy the URLs of thompsonwriting with several extensions that would be specific to Asia. They warned me that if I didn't buy them all, this other company was going to buy them.

Hmm. Well, in the first place, "Bangni Distributors" doesn't sound like a company that would offer writing and editing services, does it? I'm thinking they probably do more import-export work. So what would they want with a bunch of URLs identical to mine except for the extension? I've spent a lot of years building up my good reputation as a solid ghostwriter and editor. Will this other company be trying to trade on my good reputation and present themselves as me in Asia? I'm thinking not. What could they possibly have to gain from it?

So that leads me to the next conclusion, which is that this "Newname" company is trying to bully me into buying all these URLs from them, just to keep this other company from buying them. They were persistent; every time I told them I wasn't taking the bait, they'd come back with something about how it was perfectly legal and I'd better buy them to keep Bangni from doing it. Sure, it may be legal, I told them, but it's hardly ethical. Suppose I were to try and buy a URL of bangnidistributors.us. Why, other than squatting on that domain name and hoping to sell it to them for big bucks later on, would I possibly want to do that? I just don't think that way, because I do business ethically.

Since I'm not seeking to do a lot of business in Asia, I called Newname's bluff and told them to go ahead and sell those URLs to Bangni. After all, I've had customers in Sweden and Canada find me through my existing website with the .com extension on it. I've had no need to buy extensions for every country in the world in order to do business internationally. And if I find them showing up in my Google Alerts on my company name with sites claiming to be me, I'll cross that legal bridge when I get to it. Yes, Newname, I do monitor those things.

So there's one more administrative headache off my plate. If you see any Asian firms masquerading as Thompson Writing & Editing, using anything other than a .com URL, be aware that they're not me. And if you've got your own business URL, be aware that these snakes are out there, looking to scare you into buying a bunch of URLs you don't need. Don't cave in to their threatening tactics!

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