The “European City Guide” was supposedly shut down in 2003 by the Office of Fair Trading for misleading advertising.

In the post today, I received an unsolicited scam order form from the “European City Guide” asking for confirmation of my company’s details, which of course had a slight error. In the small print was the little line:

Please return this document with a signature in the appropriate box if you would like to place an order

The European City Guide form is laid out so it might appear that you are actually signing that the corrections are valid, not with the expectation that you will be ordering two successive copies of their “European City Guide” at €987 each, nor that you are signing a continuous re-order, which needs 3 months notice to cancel.
There is a web site called “Stop the European City Guide” and Richard Corbbet, a Yorkshire MEP has written extensively about this, and similar practices.
Richard Corbbet’s Blog suggests that several other scam organisations also have the same owner.

• UK Internet Register
• Construct Data
• Novachannel AG

The European City Guide’s web site has a code of conduct document that states:

In accordance with the legislation governing DISTANCE SALES, our
forms incorporate a coupon for termination of the contract, which is located on the
client’s copy of the form. If the client returns this completed, stamped and signed
coupon to us within the mentioned cooling-off period this will result in automatic
cancellation.

Strangely, the form which they sent to Dragon Thoughts, seems to have this cancellation coupon printed in extremely faint grey very small print, together with a raft of other almost unreadable terms and conditions. I wonder if it might be a printing error?

I received a deceptive notice yesterday from Domain Registry of America (DRoA).

It made me so angry that I had to write this post about DRoA. The notice came by snail mail in an envelope with my correct name and address and included a return envelope for payment, although they expecte me to pay the postsage for their scam.

The notice looks like a bill and was written to scare me into changing my domain name registry: “You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain Registry of America. Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identify…”

I was called today by somebody who gave their web address as w*w.resortvacationsvip.com which is a travel company with no links to enabling booking. I wonder how they could get any legitimate business.
They claimed I was being offered a free holiday from a competition that I or a member of my household had entered.

They couldn’t tell me which competition I had won, but did tell me it was only open to Visa card and Mastercard holder. - I pointed out that this would apply to over 98% of the adult UK population.

They had my correct name and address.

The scammer had a heavy, possibly Indian or Chinese accent.

When I confirmed that I did own appropriate credit cards, they tried to extract my credit card details - when I refused on the basis that this was probably a scam, they kept trying to get my credit card number out of me, assuring me that it was OK - apparently they’re FCCA registered, and because of that the details couldn’t be misused. - I countered that in fact, as my cards are issued on the UK and therefore FSA regulated and that f I was stupid enough to give it to cold callers, they could attempt to misuse it with a card not present transaction.
When I kept asking why they needed the credit card details, at first I was told that it was so that they could verify that I was a credit card holder. I pointed out that they called me so I was the person that needed to verify their credentials. Then he switched tack, and said that the would need my credit card details for a registration fee of around £250. I questioned this, pointing out that I had been offered a completely free holiday competition prize. He said “Nothing is free“.

They gave me a “Toll-free” number that I could call them back on. I pointed out that a phone number in the USA is not toll-free when called from the UK - It is an international call.

When I asked for their FCCA registration number, the caller evaded answering.
I kept leading him on for a while, to keep him from trying to scam others, and to research his web site and comments about the scam company. One particularly enlightening one was on 800notes.com

I asked him if he had heard of Perfect Travel Promotions Orlando - Which appears as the title on w*w.resortvacationsvip.com and has an identical web site at w*w.ptporlando.com. He claimed he hadn’t heard of PTP Orlando. They have the same phone number (1-877-727-7605) and email addresses of CustomerService@PTPorlando.com and sales@PTPorlando.com

When I kept asking him the name of the company he was working for he refused to give it then finally hung up.

In short, it had to be scam. What legitimate company employee would not know their own company’s name?

If you have similar experiences, or wish to comment on this, please do so.