Tuesday 19 July 2011

Beware of FBG Internet and New Approach Marketing.


FBG Internet called me last month to ask if we wanted to do some facebook advertising with them. I explained that we do this already in house - direct with facebook, and then proceeded to be WOWed by talk of how they are a specialist agency that has huge global buying power and get amazing click through rates. We would be amazed by how much business our own dedicated account manager would get us.

Sadly I fell for it, I trusted them and paid to use their service and in my opinion got ripped off.


What ensues is their farce of a response threatening to sue me after posting a critque of the service from their legal bullys at Law Services Dept. Grounds for the law suit? An incorrect allegation that we had requested a refund on the original fee from our bank (which we did not - that would be a breach of contract by us) and allegations of slander! Well you decide if the following is slanderous. in my opinion people have a write to air their opinions of a service received, still what ensues kind of just shows the care and attention and due diligence Law Services Dept and FBGInternet put into their work.


So, if you are considering FBG Internet, you might want a read of this correspondence between me and them, and judge for your self if they are right for you.

----------------------------------------

From: Mr Bray]
Sent: 15 July 2011 09:43
To: 'Technical'
Subject: RE: FBG Advert

Hey guys lets have the stats then please


From: Technical [mailto:technical@fbg.za.com] On Behalf Of Technical
Sent: 15 July 2011 14:58
To: Mr Bray
Subject: RE: FBG Advert

Hi Oliver,

Please see attached your stats report extracted from your campaign.

The report below is sent directly from Facebook, which shows the activity.

You can see on the report the amount of impressions you’ve had, absolute incredible amount, for the 3 weeks, you’re actually in the top five of clients we have on a continental package, for activity.

In marketing the first month, normally, is the slowest month, it’s the same old adage that people need to see you three times, before they make contact.

Month two increases and then month three should be your optimum, but looking at your campaign I’m really happy, because your impressions are high, crucial for the first month.

Impressions mean that people are seeing your advert etc. so these impressions will turn into clicks when the campaign carries momentum, as mentioned earlier.

Facebook is currently experiencing massive increases in new members and general activity etc, especially with the film “the social network” so you’re really in at the right time.

If there is anything else I can help you with please don’t hesitate to email me.

Kind Regards
Technical Team


FBG Internet
37th Floor
One Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
United Kingdom
E14 5DY

www.fbginternet.com

For technical support please visit : www.the-technical-guys.com

From: Mr Bray
Sent: 15 July 2011 16:12
To: Technical
Subject: RE: FBG Advert

Hello.

I am sorry to say that is a piss poor performance and completely contradicting what I had been promised by your sales guy. The fact that you mention we are in top performing category for the continental package just confirms my fears about the whole campaign and FBG.


Here is why: Our spend with you €350 approx impressions 286, 536. We ran another campaign direct with Facebook in that exact same time period here: Spend? €33.39 impressions 269,680


Hello? I feel ripped off and lied too!
Not only would like to cancel, I would like a refund €310 and I would like the sales to call to personally apologies for being lied to. If you don´t agree thats fine, but I will be taking it up with the advertising standards Authority and posting my findings about dealing with fbginternet on as many forums and the critque centre so people can make an accurate informed decision before choosing to use your service.
We were promised: a dedicated account manager to oversee our campaign to make sure it is running well and then 2 weeks in we are told that the stats could not be retrieved until 3 weeks in. Can you explain how you would tweak adverts, text, and copy to improve the CTR if you don´t look at the stats?
Surely that is what an account manager should do, improve click through rates and conversions, not just post 2 ads and then take 90% of the money that has been paid.
I really feel like we receive exactly that 10% service. Thats another thing, how do know what ads are being successful if you only post one version? This is your job an I am having to tell you this?
Facebook updates this every 24 hours why can´t you get the stats in that time to enable you to do your job correctly?
I would appreciate a response from a manager today, because as you can probably tell, i am furious.
Oliver

From: Technical [mailto:technical@fbg.za.com]
Sent: 15 July 2011 16:47
To: Mr Bray '
Subject: RE: FBG Advert

Hi Oliver,

Im sorry that you feel this way, the difference is that we are targeting people that fit your customer profile.

On the continental package we guarantee 250,000 impressions a month this applies to every continental campaign we run.

Your campaign has already received over this amount. We are a trustworthy and honourable company and we have substantial amount of customers running campaigns on a monthly basis.

We have been advertising you company as per the terms and conditions agreed to, therefore no refund will be provided.

I will cancel your agreement as per the terms and conditions, your campaign will finish at the end of the first month.

I will try and increase the impressions for you for the final week.

Kind Regards
Technical Team


From: Mr Bray
Sent: 15 July 2011 17:46
To: 'Technical'
Subject: RE: FBG Advert

Unlike your good selves I actually deliver on my promises.

Cheerio.

H
ere is a facebook page

Here is a critwue of the services recieved


From: Law Services Dept [mailto:legal@lawservicesdept.com]
Sent: 18 July 2011 12:18
To: Mr Bray
Subject: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Dear Mr Oliver Bray

Law Services Dept has been instructed to contact you regarding your emails below in relation to blogs posted regarding FGB Internet.

Law Services Dept must inform you the blogs made regarding FBG Internet must be removed within 24 hours.

If you do not remove these blogs Law Services Dept will issue immediate legal proceedings in relation to this matter.

Law Services Dept request you advise once these blogs have been removed

If this matter is not resolved within 24 hours Law Services Dept will apply charges in relation to any future correspondence

Yours sincerely


Law Services Dept
www.lawservicesdept.com


Debt Recovery Specialist


________________________________________
From: Mr Bray
Sent: 18 July 2011 16:57
To: 'Law Services Dept'
Subject: RE: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Hello Monkeys.

Nice one. Send me an email from a made up legal website hosted on the same server as FBG Internet, which I note is only registered for one year, which really goes to show what a fly by night bunch of cowboys you really are.

Domain Name: FBGINTERNET.COM
Registrar: WEBFUSION LTD.
Whois Server: whois.123-reg.co.uk
Referral URL: http://www.123-reg.co.uk
Name Server: NS.123-REG.CO.UK
Name Server: NS2.123-REG.CO.UK
Updated Date: 12-apr-2011
Creation Date: 12-apr-2011
Expiration Date: 12-apr-2012

Change the name of the company much do you? Hmm?

Amazing. I am definitely posting this as well. Brilliant.


Of course I will remove the posts, if you refund me the outrageous 90% mark up fees you charged us to post 2 face book ads. Or is that a premium you charge to not actually run a service with any form of professionalism or ethics and send out legal letters to harass the poor individuals that get suckered into you racket?

Oh and as for “If this matter is not resolved within 24 hours Law Services Dept will apply charges in relation to any future correspondence”. Like wise fool. I am charging you €50 to send you this email from out legal services department. It is a whole different department located the otherside of the room, next to the toilet.

Amateurs.


In fact are you a real company i wonder? Couldn´t find you listed in companies house, and New Approach Marketing is dissolved, your registered address 29th Floor One Canada Square London E14 5DY, is highly unlikely as you called me from a Manchester number.

In fact I think I might just report you to the tax authorities. Refund. Now.

Best wishes

Oliver


From: Mr Bray
Sent: 19 July 2011 10:43
To: 'Law Services Dept'
Subject: RE: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Firstly the domain details are for FBG Internet. So much for and I quote your sales guy” we are the worlds biggest facebook advertising agency with massive buying power” it was set up less than 4 months ago.

As you guys, set up last month, wow, you must be a serious legal heavy weight.

Secondly I note you haven´t responded if your “clients” FBG internet a legitimate company? Interesting.

Thirdly you can request all you like, last time I checked it was not against the law to post a critque of a poor service received on the internet. As long as it is completely correct, which it was.

Feel free to start legal proceedings. Just might be wise of your company to stop thinking customers are idiots, AND KNOW EVERYTHING YOU WRITE TO ME IS GOING ON LINE so people can judge for themselves whether to engage in your services. Hell if you have to attempt to take me to court to prove me right GO AHEAD.. I´m up for it.






From: Law Services Dept [mailto:legal@lawservicesdept.com]
Sent: 19 July 2011 12:22
To: 'Mr Bray '
Subject: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Dear Mr Bray

Law Services Dept is independent from FBG Internet and has no connection with FBG Internet apart from dealing with their legal issues.

FBG Internet is a legitimate company and has a worldwide client base.

Law Services Dept is a new company recently set up and you are correct in your findings, however this bears no relevance on the legalities surrounding this matter and has advisors with many years experience within the legal industry.

It would be very naive of you to think Law Services Dept has been set up as a new company without the experience and knowledge required.

This matter has not been resolved as requested by Law Services Dept and we will now take further action in relation to this matter.

Law Services Dept will now start litigation in relation to the chargeback made for payment taken on the 24th June 2011 and for the slanderous blogs.

Writing blogs is not illegal, however writing slanderous blogs which are not accurate is illegal and must be justified by the website with the accused before they appear.

FBG Internet has not been contacted regarding these blogs by the websites concerned and this makes your blogs illegal.

If the chargeback matter is not resolved Law Services Dept will register this debt with the largest credit bureau in the Netherlands and your co will be shown as a default debtor.

If you want to remove the default payment from the credit agency then only Law Services Dept can do this and yes this is Legal.

Again we would much prefer to resolve this matter with the removal of blogs and to resolve the chargeback request but this must now be done within 24 hours or the above action will proceed.

Law Services Dept
www.lawservicesdept.com


Debt Recovery Specialist
________________________________________

________________________________________
From: Mr Bray
Sent: 19 July 2011 12:38
To: 'Law Services Dept'
Subject: RE: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Hello.

Well build your case then. This will involve you actually reading “the blog”, and proving to a judge that I have written slanderous material... because if you had read the critque” – which by the way is the worlds biggest critque site – not a blog, (as I mentioned before have you or your associates actually read the stuff before wading in? I would expect your glorious advisors with many years experience within the legal industry to do the research before making legal threats, that I know are as concrete as a wet sponge. I am not an idiot. I have years of business experience in chasing debts, and legal contracts and I have been to court many times over – to enforce contracts, which is why I am happy to keep up this ridiculous conversation. I know and you know should know, you have no case, and dispite the fact that I have a proper business to run, I also consider ethics to be an important part of business, so I will happily spend some of my time to ensure other with may be a little less knowledge on facebook advertising do not get taken to the cleaners for a very dubious service. For the benefit of the readers online that will be reading this, this was in relation to FBGinterent running a facebook campaign on my behalf, in which we payed about €350. At the same time we ran a test campaign an received approximately as many impressions for a total cost of around €33.

The exact figures are here:

Spend with FBG Internet €350 approx impressions 286, 536.
We ran another campaign direct with Facebook in that exact same time period here: Spend? €33.39 impressions 269,680

This is not made up, I have both reports generated by FBGInterent and our direct Facebook report.

Secondly, why are you taking about debts? We paid the fee and there was no charge back. Certainly not authorised by us. Otherwise why would we would not be requesting a refund? We have contacted our bank to tell them not to allow any further payments from our credit card to FBG internet on the assumption that FBG they would not honour the cancellation of the contract, because quite frankly, we feel FBD internet is a pretty untrust worthy entity in our opinion, and judging by other critques I have found on line, I am not the only person with this opinion of FBG internet. If you have information as to whether this is not the case then send me the proof and we will of course take this back up with the bank.

As for the “slanderous blogs” Seeing how 50% of the blog comes from FBG and the rest is a completely correct honest critque of the services (have you read it by the way? Before wading in?) have fun wasting your own time attempting to build a case. Now I am going to do you a favour and let you in on a little secret.

The more your write your letters and emails to me, the more unique content I have to post online about my experience with FBGinternet. As the “social marketing department” experts would I hope be able to tell you, that is exactly what google loves to read and one of the things that pushes a search term like “with FBGinternet” up the search engine rankings. So the more I write and the more you write the more times the FBG internet keyword will be picked up. As you know, most people shopping online google the product or service they are considering buying, I know I did, sadly i found nothing and that cost me €316.61.

So there you go, please feel free to respond, every time you do you are actually helping further the cause of letting consumers know what kind of service they are signing up to when they buy anything of FBGinternet. I hope you are on a retainer, because at this rate they are going to find it difficult to pay your fees when their sales are going down and down....


Best wishes

Oliver



From: Law Services Dept [mailto:legal@lawservicesdept.com]
Sent: 19 July 2011 14:05
To: 'Mr Bray '
Subject: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Dear Mr Bray

Litigation will now proceed as previously advised.

Law Services Dept
www.lawservicesdept.com


Debt Recovery Specialist

________________________________________
From: Mr Bray
Sent: 19 July 2011 13:28
To: 'Law Services Dept'
Subject: RE: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Can you confirm if their was a charge back?

From: Law Services Dept [mailto:legal@lawservicesdept.com]
Sent: 19 July 2011 14:34
To: 'Mr Bray'
Subject: Law Services Dept - FGB Internet

Dear Mr Bray

No chargeback has been received but it is our understanding you have suggested a chargeback has been made.

Please advise?

Law Services Dept
www.lawservicesdept.com


Debt Recovery Specialist

From: Mr Bray

Incorrect. As I mentioned before.





Ends....


Well there goes their case. Smirk.





Have you been done by these clowns? Write a critque of FBG Internet

The End of FBG Internet? We hope so.

12 comments:

  1. UPdate.

    Shortly after writing this review of FBG Internet they successfully managed to get the review centre site review offline... for a few hours.

    See this below.

    Thank you and thank you for the opportunity of brining these cowboys to light!




    From: Complaints [mailto:complaints@reviewcentre.com]
    Sent: 20 July 2011 12:26
    To: Oliver Bray
    Subject: RE: Your review for New Approach Marketing www.newapproachmarketing.com 1375031

    Hi Oliver,

    Thanks for getting back to me and sending the evidence. The emails are amusing and it seems like you know your legal rights on the matter and refuse to be bullied into taking off a review, clearly your review is important to them. Thanks for sending the new review I have edited the review to this new one – just to let you know the image you included will not show up unfortunately.

    I have put up your review live. Thanks again for using our site to let other consumers know the true reflection of the company.

    Kind regards,

    Review Centre

    Aha ha!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Strangely, they called me this morning too.
    I acted like I knew nothing and listened to the rep go on and on and on and on.

    anyhow...told her I was not interested as I know what I was doing.

    Thanks for the review, it will save a couple of guys some money.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was contacted by FBG to advertise my company. after listening to a sales pitch I accepted based on the fact that I did not have to pay immediately&that its a month to month contract. I said i would check with our accountant and if we could afford would pay on the friday. I then went away on business and upon my return I sent them an email requesting to cancel as we could not afford it. they told me that if i cancel they will take legal action against me. i then tried again to explain that my company cannot afford this and after being threatened i then said i would do it in the new year. we still cannot afford this and now they have sent me a letter of demand and have taken legal action against me. what am i to do?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kea,

      Ignore all their emails, and better still email them to me, I will post them on blogs to beter inform people about his Scam.

      Also send us the link of the website they are trying to sell their services on. We will post it here and SEO it out of business.

      They can not "sue" you or persue you for the money becuase they are engaged in fraud.

      Delete
  4. They have a new fake lawfirm : www.charterhouselaw.com
    Which copied the website of www.harleylegal.co.uk a genuine firm
    Charter House law works for FBG internet/ Facebook Global / New Approach Marketing and/or Finance...

    It's all fake, do not react, it's just a scam

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have been scamed my them to I confirm that they are using charterhouselaw. I have reported them to the police. They are nasty people. I paid them through paypal but still did not get my money back. I paid them 238 euros and they wanted another 238euros and because I wont pay they said they are taking legal action against me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UPdate: The are now operating under

    www.socialnetworkingdepartment.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi There, I have also been scammed by these guys, I have now requested a charge back with my credit card. Holding thumbs this can be reversed.

    Thank you for exposing this.

    ReplyDelete
  8. These kind of post are always inspiring and I prefer to read quality content so I happy to find many good point here in the post, writing is simply great, thank you for the post.
    Internet Marketing uk

    ReplyDelete
  9. They have just attempted to scam me, trading as www.seo4k.com as well as the-technical-guys.com

    Aint falling for their bullshit.

    ReplyDelete
  10. They are now using www.the-techguys.com, they even record their previous conversations with u making the ruse more believable that you signed legally into the contract with them. What a bunch of muppets.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Watch out for anybody phoning your small business offering search engine optimization. It is all disguises for the "FBG Internet Scam". They use the names "The Tech-Guys" , "The Technical Guys" , "SEO7k" , "SEO4K" , law firm "Roberts & Gunn" etc. They record the conversation whereby they lock you into a "verbal contract" & then threaten you with their bogus "law firm". Thank God I didn't fall for their crap!

    ReplyDelete