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Possible scam address found in blueboard and online
Thread poster: Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker United States Local time: 17:02 Spanish to English + ...
Jun 4, 2014
[Reminder: when you can't find a company in the BlueBoard by name, also do a search by the address and/or the phone number and/or contact name]
Today I received a brief e-mail message from an audio-visual & marketing company. The note basically asked "Could you give me your price per word?" Name, Company. That's it. Very suspicious, but perhaps they are short on time and just price shopping.
At any rate, I checked the BlueBoard and there was no entry. I checked the comp... See more
[Reminder: when you can't find a company in the BlueBoard by name, also do a search by the address and/or the phone number and/or contact name]
Today I received a brief e-mail message from an audio-visual & marketing company. The note basically asked "Could you give me your price per word?" Name, Company. That's it. Very suspicious, but perhaps they are short on time and just price shopping.
At any rate, I checked the BlueBoard and there was no entry. I checked the company's website and found their address (145-157 St John Street). When I entered the address into the BlueBoard search bar, a long list of companies (mostly very bad payers) came up - all using the same address. When I did a Google search for that address, I also found a number of non-translated related scams concerning that address.
So, is this address in London some sort of post office box or virtual office? Is its use automatically a red flag?
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jotranslator Israel Local time: 00:02 Russian to English + ...
That address is a "virtual office"
Jun 4, 2014
Jeff Whittaker wrote:
At any rate, I checked the BlueBoard and there was no entry. I checked the company's website and found their address (145-157 St John Street). When I entered the address into the BlueBoard search bar, a long list of companies (mostly very bad payers) came up - all using the same address. When I did a Google search for that address, I also found a number of non-translated related scams concerning that address.
So, is this address in London some sort of post office box or virtual office? Is its use automatically a red flag?
[Edited at 2014-06-04 13:55 GMT]
That address belongs to a company that provides a "virtual office" service - things like mail forwarding, etc. So the translation company who contacted you is not actually at that address, it just uses it to forward its mail.
As one of the testimonials says, "Our central London office will make your business look professional". Great.
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Jeff Whittaker United States Local time: 17:02 Spanish to English + ...
TOPIC STARTER
Virtual office
Jun 4, 2014
Ok. So, its not necessarily a bad thing (although a lot of scam agencies seem to use it), but one should not feel confident that you have a real physical address for the company should something go wrong and you should instead seek out additional contact information before extending them credit.
Things like virtual offices and pre-paid numbers make things more complicated for us.
jotranslator wrote:
That address belongs to a company that provides a "virtual office" service - things like mail forwarding, etc. So the translation company who contacted you is not actually at that address, it just uses it to forward its mail.
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