While I was away last week, Lisa received two invoices in the post with the Goole logo on them - for 79.99 each - and wondered what I had been ordering. Nothing - I believe they are a SCAM. Having used the esteemed Google search engine itself to look into these and draing a blank, we have taken it up with Google who are looking into it. Me thinks if it was genuine, they would have known / put us right in touch with the correct department.





Let me give you some key words / text so that you can see if you get a similar invoice.

Google TTP - www.wwmdirectory.com

77 Brambles Chine, Monk Lane, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, PO40 9SU

Advertising subject to adherence to our credit terms. This Pro-forma invoice is a special offer and can be cancelled on request or non-payment without obligation or recourse. More sales or money back offer

I think that latter says - "This isn't an invoice you requested so it's up to you whether you pay or not. And if you don't pay, there's nothing we can do about it". Ah ... I don't think I'll pay. So glad that Lisa has the presence of mind not to be taken in by quite a cleverly worded scam.

I've put an item on the Opentalk forum on this - Please follow up or update me if you know more!

---

An Update. It looks like we're not the only one to have received these invoices. Lisa writes:

Phil Brierley of York House Leisure received an invoice from ATP (Google Adwords) and googled for more information and came across your blog.
 


He [phoned] wanted to discuss your experience...I relayed the fact we've reported them to Google. He actually phoned ATP to query the invoice and was hung up on...the chappy being very evasive.
 


He's very much against this type of scamming and wondered if he could help, or if a combine effort would help, etc. give him a call to discuss if you are interested.

I've been in touch with Phil, and he has posted a follow up on the forum too. We've been in touch with Google and I'm updating this page / item as I hear more so that it becomes prominent. Would love more stories ....

An update - a year later - 12th September 2008.

This Spring, the Advertising Standards Agency upheld a complaint against the wwmdirectory mailing - see here and here. And the wwmdirectory website is no more ...

I had heard, last year, of another site called "tradeorlando" which was - I think - the previous scheme coming from the same team. It appears that in the last few months there's yet another appearance from the same team at Honeytrapagency - that's www . honeytrapagency . com , which I'm not making linkable. But you might want to look at other forums - here and here.


Tradeorlando ... gone ...


Wwmdirectory ... gone ...


Honeytrapagency ... current ... Top links are "Directory Pages", "Order / Cancel Advertising" and "Advertising Rates" ... which seem a very odd choice indeed for a detective agency!
(written 2007-09-09 15:22:56)

Commentator	says ...
Marc:	Hi! Snap just got one myself and was about to contact google when picked up your posting....thx (comment added 2007-09-12 09:24:59)

G502 - Well House Consultants - Business Practice
  [2598] An excuse for making a sales call - (2010-01-26)
  [2465] Melksham Town - asleep or awake? - (2009-10-21)
  [2331] Certification Revisted - Lua - (2009-08-09)
  [2283] Everyone is in the customer relations business - (2009-07-12)
  [2190] How you are (re)presented at an exhibition - (2009-05-19)
  [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17)
  [2161] Get it right ... if it goes wrong, it takes so much effort to sort out! - (2009-05-08)
  [2126] Weeding out old phone numbers - (2009-04-11)
  [2122] Commission Creep - (2009-04-08)
  [2044] Please Trouble me - (2009-02-16)
  [1913] Alastair Darling helps make paperwork and confusion - (2008-11-30)
  [1855] Volunteer v Employee - a skewed balance? (FSB) - (2008-10-25)
  [1713] Ways to accept credit cards - or not! - (2008-07-19)
  [1626] Early May - a short chance to regroup and improve - (2008-05-01)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1453] What makes our courses special? - (2007-12-02)
  [1394] Business to Business Networking - North and West Wilts / Melksham - (2007-10-17)
  [1373] New Month, New Quarter, New Laws - (2007-10-01)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1263] 0800 043 8225 - a new phone number for Well House - (2007-07-10)
  [1260] An inspirational business talk from one of our prospective MPs - (2007-07-06)
  [1243] Heavy duty hole punch - (2007-06-24)
  [1165] Extended Credit request - train in June and be paid in September - (2007-04-27)
  [1157] Speed Networking - a great evening and how we arranged it - (2007-04-21)
  [1133] B-2-B Networking, 20th April. Useful for YOUR business? - (2007-04-03)
  [1084] Writing terms and conditions for conferences and other events - (2007-02-17)
  [1057] Selling by phone and Skype - our policy - (2007-01-30)
  [906] A commitment we won't be making - (2006-10-27)
  [883] Age discrimination law - (2006-10-01)
  [869] UNABLE TO ATTEND - (2006-09-16)
  [849] Staff Meeting - (2006-08-30)
  [766] Discounts and approved supplier lists - (2006-06-17)
  [664] Ruby course - oops - it's not happening - (2006-04-01)
  [652] Morning Post - (2006-03-20)
  [626] Not just a pretty face to answer the phone. - (2006-02-26)
  [536] Cancellations and penalties - (2005-12-21)
  [491] Being atypical is typical - (2005-11-10)
  [487] On line course booking - credit card protection - (2005-11-06)
  [467] Tell them three times - (2005-10-17)
  [457] Do the work and take the risk - a PHP contract to avoid - (2005-10-06)
  [438] Fair system for travel and accommodation expenses - (2005-09-07)
  [399] simplicity hides real size - (2005-07-31)
  [321] Sales - the alternative close - (2005-05-23)
  [297] A reminder that the customer is King - (2005-05-01)
  [226] Growing our systems - (2005-02-24)
  [217] Use of time - (2005-02-16)
  [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12)
  [200] Tips for the top - (2005-02-03)
  [188] Pink elephant and appreciation - (2005-01-24)
  [180] Skunk works - (2005-01-17)
  [157] Automatic service upgrades - (2004-12-19)
  [137] Certification schemes - (2004-12-02)
  [129] Trawling our site to prevent student copying - (2004-11-24)
  [125] Staff theft - (2004-11-21)
  [121] Fair and Simple - (2004-11-17)
  [108] A typical morning - (2004-11-03)
  [95] Five red flags - (2004-10-21)
  [88] Getting the right level of trainer - (2004-10-14)
  [77] Telephone systems - (2004-10-07)
  [68] Get the strategy worked out and the tactics just fall into place. - (2004-09-30)
  [27] Sales technique - (2004-08-25)
  [15] 90 to 10 or 80 to 20 rule - (2004-08-15)

G910 - Well House Consultants - Scams
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  [2373] Translation from Ghanaian to English - (2009-08-23)
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  [1680] Astroturfing - the online definition - (2008-06-17)
  [1313] Tratum Technologies - (2007-08-21)
  [860] Warning - false emails, said to be from Paypal - (2006-09-09)
  [347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
  [178] Calling a spade a spade - (2005-01-15)
  [78] Domain Registry of America - (2004-10-07)

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Evening, Devizes and Sells Green
Perl and Shell coding standards / costs of an IT project
Catching up on indexing our resources
Melksham Laundrette
Google, wwmdirectory, Freshwater, ATP - new scam?
Moving to Melksham? Househunting map.
Tk locks up - 100% c.p.u. on a simple program (Tcl, Perl, Python)
Packages and Namespaces are like Suitcases and Aircraft
Handling Binary data in Tcl (with a note on C)
A series of tyre damages