Vakkotaur

Back in March 2006 I received a postcard thing from K-Designers and posted a bit about it. A bit later in July 2006 someone tried to defend the advertising practice and I posted a response pointing out why it was scammy. Another card showed up in August and I posted scans of it to point out problems. And then, other then the odd reply to those entries, including some blatant astroturfing in 2008, I hadn't heard any more from K-Designers.

Until today when another, different, card showed up in the mail. It's still a "FREE GIFT!" that I am supposed to "Call IMMEDIATELY" to receive and the "FREE is still repeated. It's still AUTO 5-DIGIT which indicates a mass mailing. There are some changes, however. The silly fake-cursive attempt at personalization is gone as is the claim that they have been trying to reach me. The phone number is listed by number and as 1-800-SAVE-902 so it indicates something for sale if only barely. Also, there is nothing indicating just what the "free gift" might be. I suspect it's not free, except in the narrow monetary sense: One would have to endure a sales pitch.

The biggest change is that there is a return address that even has K-Designers' logo on it. They finally admit just who they are and they claim to be a "home remodeling leader" as part of their registered trademark. Curiously there is also a fine print list of states and what appear to be building permit numbers. The one for MN (20138685) appears to be for siding permit in Mountain Lake.

With these change, has my opinion of K-Designers changed? Only slightly if at all. The first impression was made, twice, and the comments on earlier posts only served to confirm my suspicions - especially some of the comments attempting to defend K-Designers' practices. The amazingly poor attempt at astroturfing didn't help, either. This new card does at least identify the sender, but it is still just a ploy to get folks to call them as a means of getting around Do Not Call legislation.

I mentioned the MG2 sleazeballs before. In the followups, it was revealed that these jokers are also Tri-Star and push Tri Star Home Care Products (vacuum cleaners).

Well, another Bingo card arrived in the mail. It's from Orion Systems in Loveland CO with a postmark from Advanced Direct Marketing, Inc. also in Loveland, CO.

This time I scanned the card for folks' entertainment and perhaps enlightenment. The images are 800 pixels wide, so they're hidden behind the cut.

( Everyone is a winner...uh huh. )

Again, everyone is a winner. It says so, "You are guaranteed to win one of the prizes listed on the back of this card." But take a look and you see that:

1 gets $5,000.
51 get an XBox 360. ($399)
223 get an iPod Video. ($249)
25,925 get a nineteen piece cutlery set. ($36)
and...
473,800 get a certificate for 3 days/2 nights accommodation. (Not sold retail, so no monetary equivalent.)

One can only wonder what sort of accommodations that certificate is good for and what hoops must jumped through for it to be honored. That there is no retail value suggests that it is pretty much worthless. That's after the very likely demonstration of the vacuum cleaner. "You may be asked to view Tri Star Home Care Products." is in the fine print. And if you do actually win the $5,000 grand prize, they get to use your likeness in future promotions.

The number to (not) call is: 1-800-667-3548 or 1 800 667 3548 or 18006673548 or 8006673548. There, now search engines can find this entry by phone number.

There is no arithmetic test to serve as a lottery disclaimer with this card. Since every card is a "winner" there is no chance, and so no lottery as such. Again, it's legal though hardly ethical.

This past February borderpilot mentioned he had "Larry, Dell Customer advocate" stalking his LiveJournal. I don't have Larry (though that might change with this post, who knows?) but I have someone else.

Almost a year ago I posted about a couple sleazy advertising gimmicks. Since then, that has been the top Google result for people researching some of the same sleazy advertising. Mainly it was those folks replying, some with thanks and some with more information. Occassionally it was someone working for one of the companies trying to defend the sleazy practices, but it was an anonymous hit-and-run sort of reply.

Not any more. Now there is dazed721 with a shiny new LJ account and the sole interest of MG2. He (or she?) has been defending, or trying to defend, MG2's practices in replies to my original post. I do wonder about the name. "Dazed" just seems too apt. Is this real, or is someone try to game me?

In the Sleaze Factor post back in March I mentioned the postcardiod stunt that K-Designers pulls. Today there was a reply posted to it. The reply is reproduced here:

I work for K-Designers

It's not really a scam it's just an advertisement. Basiclly, if you call the number on that card you'll be connected to an inbound rep at our call center. Then they'll inform you that if you allow a sales rep to come out to your home and show you one of our two promotional products, either, 'Siding' or 'Windows', whichever one you're interested in then you'll receive a free george forman grill whether you decide to buy it or not. So as long as you just take a look at our product then you'll receive the grill. The appointment is very brief and the rep will only stay as long as you're interested and have questions. [And as far as the times go we go to different areas looking for promotional homes to help us advertise. That's why the card probably suggests urgency.]

I assure you K-Designers isn't a scam... we've been in buisness for 27 years and we're the #4 home remodling company in the US.

That card is just a ploy to get people to listen to our sales pitch. That's all. You really CAN get a free George Forman grill if you want one. :p

Take care. Hope this puts your mind at ease!

Oh brother. They may be the #4 home remodeling company, but their advertising methods stinks of #2.

Lets see:

- There is the admission that the card "is just a ploy"

- Neither the name of the company nor its product is listed on the card so the "Awards Coordinator" could be mistaken for some genuine drawing someone might have entered and forgot the details of.

- Googling the phone number didn't reveal the company directly, but the company was revealed by someone warning of the ploy.

- Googling the company name leads to an entry in a Who Called Me Database which suggests if not verifies that the company did engage in telemarketing and is using this ploy to get around Do Not Call legislation.

I'm sure that if someone endured the pitch they would get the grill. But I still call this a scam. It may be (just barely) legal, but that doesn't make it ethical. It depends on tricking people into calling. Scam.

And I rest very assured. Assured in the knowledge that if I ever have any remodeling to do, one place I need not even consider is K-Designers. If they need to trick people into hearing about their product or service rather than advertising it outright, they don't deserve my (or anyone else's) business.

Sleazeball #1: K-Designers

A couple times now I've gotten a bit of advertising that is almost but not quite a postcard. It has a printed note that tries and utterly fails to look like a personal handwritten note, asking me to please call an 800 number in the next five days implying that waiting too long will mean I won't get a free, pardon me, FREE George Foreman Grill. It's from an alleged "Awards Coordinator" and lacks any return address.

Smells like a scam of some kind, doesn't it? It is. Googling for the 800 number reveals the scam. It's a means of getting folks to call them, thus bypassing telemarketing rules. Then they try to sell siding.

What amuses me is that I've gotten two of these, weeks if not months apart. Do they expect I'll be worried about missing another phony five day window?

[UPDATE: 22 AUGUST 2009

They have a new card now. It's still a "free gift, call us" ploy, but at least now the card has K-Designers' return address as an identifying mark.]

Sleazeball #2: MG2

A couple days ago there was a card in the mail and it looked somewhat like a state lottery scratch-off ticket. The gimmick is that if you uncovered numbers that made one of the winning patterns on the bingo cards printed on the thing, you had a chance of winning one of several prizes. There is also a bit of arithmetic to do so that it isn't a lottery as far the law is concerned. There is a number to call if one wins.

So far it's just strange, but there is also the fine print. Unfortunately for sleazeballs I am both suspicious and literate. The catch? If you call the number, you play and players "agree to a demonstration of an MG2 home care product." There is, of course, "no obligation to buy" but really, expect pressure even if it is not stated outright.

These sleazy come-ons are amusing in a sad way. I am amused that someone thinks I'll fall for this crap. I am rather depressed that there are probably enough folks who will fall this crap that it will be considered worth the effort and expense. If someplace must resort to this level of sleazy advertising, doesn't that say something about the value of what they offer?

[UPDATE: I got another card, this time I posted scans of it. (IJ: scans) -- 25 June 2007]

[ADDENDUM: This company (MG2) uses a few names, at least in Canada. Those names are: Tri-Star Vacuum Sales & Service, Star Industries, MG2, Star West, 114225 Alberta Ltd, and Supreme Air. Source. -- 29 July 2009]

[ADDENDUM: Today, 11 August 2009 at 3:37 PM Central Daylight Time, I received a phone call from someone at Supreme Air (according to the Caller ID [IJ: Caller ID photo]), claiming to be a lawyer named Mark Wahlberg representing Tri-Star.[1] He claimed to be calling to confirm my address[2] so he could send a registered letter about a libel action in regard to this post.[3] He insisted that I had posted a claim that the company was acting illegally, but would not say where or how I had done so. He claimed "to be reading the web page" and then claimed he had "read it four times today and didn't need to read it again" yet could not point out the alleged actual claim.

I doubt very much that this is any coincidence with the spate of anonymous replies from IP 75.158.95.1 made by someone claiming to be Bill Duncan.[4] Such replies generally have attacked others here who have posted anything critical of MG2/Tri-Star/Supreme Air/etc. I cannot say for sure that it is the same person, but it is difficult to believe this is coincidence.

When I told a lawyer friend of mine about this call and went into the details there was disbelief that any lawyer would have to call someone to confirm their address. When I pointed out how bogus the name seemed I got the reply, "That's fraud. Possibly wire fraud, if he used the phone." and "If that was a lawyer calling using a false identity...um, bar disciplinary committees tend to take a very dim view of that." Considering the nature of the call, I very much doubt that "Mark Wahlberg" really is a lawyer at all. "Pretending to be a lawyer is arguably the practice of law without a license, which I think is a misdemeanor, but also fraud."

Thus the attempt to intimidate me regarding this post actually is an illegal action. Before that call, everything here only mentioned shady ethics and morals. I even pointed out that the arithmetic on the BINGO card was specifically to comply with legal requirements. But now I can factually state that someone at Supreme Air has committed fraud in an attempt to intimidate me. Obviously, that attempt has backfired with this addendum.

UPDATE: 2011 AUGUST 04 - It has been at least several months since this post has gotten any non-spam comment. I am getting several spam comments each week and am tiring of them. If LJ had a mechanism to restrict comments to registered users that could be used on an individual post basis, I would use it. As LJ does not have such a useful thing (and I have some reason not to disable all unregistered comments for the entire journal) I am now locking this post from further comment, at least until such time as a more refined means of spam-prevention (rather than recovery) becomes available on LJ. Spammers and spambots will not have this particular avenue even if the only one to see the result is me as I delete the offending crap. To any legitimate would-be commenters, there are other, related posts I am not (yet) locking down. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Does anyone recall the gimmick of being mailed or allowed to select a metal key with the idea that if the key you got opened or started a car, you won the car? This weekend I got the new version of that gimmick.

I got home from Sioux Falls on Saturday evening and took in the mail. There were the usual bits of advertising and updates and such. There was also a short tube of thin clear plastic with a bit of paper colorfully proclaiming how urgent it was and a key fob for a car.

The paper screamed advertising gimmick as the urgency was not real. "First Class Presort" isn't Express no matter what the colorful text tries to claim. If the included key openedd the Chrysler Pacifica in the showroom of a dealership in Windom, MN (What, never heard of the place? I'm not surprised. It's even more nowhere than Fairmont.) the car was yours, BUT the code on your paper had to match as well. This same code is also used to get the "pre-approved" credit line for vehicle. If you didn't win the car, well, there were few other prizes. A $500 shopping spree, and couple cash prizes, or a certificate for $2000 - guess towards what.

The odds were interesting. The car, shopping spree, and cash all had odds of 1 in 1,000,000. The certificate had odds of 999,996 in 1,000,000. Yep.

I got this item Saturday evening. Oops. "Act now! Contest ends June 26!" Well, too late. Hrmm, If the advertising is sent late and doesn't arrive until after or almost after the promo and some folks don't read the text on the included paper... Oops, pardon my conspiracy theory moment.

I got curious about the supposed key fob and took it apart, Two buttons (LOCK and open trunk) did nothing. They just had springs so they would move a bit. The UNLOCK button pushed down on a piece of stamped metal to make contact between an LED and a couple small button cells. It's just an LED flashlight, and it's not a very bright LED. I find this funny because had I been home on Saturday or gotten the promo earlier I could have determined if the supposed key had a chance of working without going to the dealer to be further advertised at. This is actually worse for the dealer than the old fashioned metal key.

I briefly pondered dropping the key in a parking lot somewhere and letting someone go nuts trying to find a car, but the things just feels wrong and the LED is a bit of a giveaway that it's not what it claims to be. So I'm keeping it. It's not very bright, which is sometimes a good thing. It's about ideal as a light for reading star charts and not ruining dark adaption.

I didn't get the Pacifica (which I likely would have turned around sold as I really have no desire to drive a Pacifica) but because of poor advertising choices, I did get a free flashlight that is, surprisingly, of some use to me.