It all begins with a fax, advertising a free listing in the National Printing and Publishing Directory, and can you confirm your company's information. The fine print states that although you want a free copy of the directory, you will have to pay $199 for your listing. But here's the catch: the fine print also says that if payment is not inluded when submitting the info (and how can we fax a check, ehh?) then it will be $249 for the listing.
That is the catch. They know that people cannot fax payments, so the scam is to get you to pay $249. Once you fax the information over, they send an invoice which is payable to the International Directories Corporation at 130 Church Street #365, NY, NY 10007. They even include on the invoice a copy of your signature from the original request to jog your memory I guess.
Well we paid the invoice, and I wouldn't have given this a 2nd thought, until I started receiving faxes stating that the invoice was past due. I checked with our bank and found that the check had been cashed, so I naturally wanted to contact their Accounts Receivable Dept. and clear the matter up. It's at this point I noticed there was no telephone number on the invoice, so I searched for the company in the Yellow Pages. After having no luck, I went to the coworker that originally requested the listing, and submitted the invoice for payment. She didn't have a contact number for the company either, and with the Yellow Pages turning up nothing, I decided to Google the company name.
Then I came across the rip off report website, and the report I read contained the same contact information and invoicing amounts as the company I was trying to find... which made me realize this was a scam. So I checked our accounting records for the past 7 years, and we have never paid this particular vendor before, nor do we have any previous issues of the directory.
This is a scam do not be a victim like my company!!
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