Yup, they did it. FBG Internet crossed the line. I can´t believe they did it, but it appears that they have. They have broken the law.
You see as you can read on this blog, I Oliver Bray have had a bit of a run in with these people, i have taken them to task on their rip of practices, and given an open honest review of FBG internet, but not written anything that could be considered Libel. Just posted my dealings with them.
But it seems they have responded, in perhaps the only way they know how by writing comments on different sites that are untrue, made up and completely breaking the law.
It seems we are not the only company out there that has been not only threatened with this, but also received this kind of attention, because reading the posts made by the same profile, posted on a review site called hello Peter also lays into aday driving school
Now here is the great part.
One of the persons responsible at FBG internet his name is Ben Gresty by the way, 19 years old and the sales (manager) for FBG. Take a look at this. Can´t be too bright because he has left and electronic paper train back to him posting the illegal slanderous remarks.
Yes we have his email address, his IP address and the contents of his posts:
“<gresty_2k7@hotmail.co.uk> asks:
i beleive you need to take this company of your directory as they are a SCAM and they take people money not taking a clance back at the damage they cause families SCAM
Which our lawyers inform me is more than enough to sue him, quite successfully for damages.
Whoops Ben. Well done there. Of course, as some one such as yourself who is in a telesales operation, I have no idea if you could actually afford the legal fees and damages, which ultimately you would have to pay. If you couldn´t we would also have to prove that the posts came from FBG internet so we could also hold them responsible. Well it is a damn shame for you we have the IP address of the post then and your email and your name and where you work.
You see you have to be very careful what you say on line, as your own law services department told me, because this can result in a lot of legal costs for you. Going by "law services Department" and FBG Internet,s own tariffs that would be the following:
- SMS / Email Correspondence - €300
- Telephone Calls - €450
- Fax Correspondence - €450
- Letter of Demand - €600
- Issue of Summons - €2.500
- Court Fees - €10.000
So Ben, I have already emailed you personally with this:
"It is very unwise to post things online that are untrue and libellous. We know it was you and we know you work for New approach. I will not hesitate to sue you personally if this becomes a problem, and please be aware we have the legal means and people in place to do this. So I suggest you just don´t do it. You can´t hide your actions online I am afraid."
i suggest you take it seriously, fair warning in my opinion, after all you were probably not aware of the implications. Well you are now.FBG Internet. Rip you off, you cancel, you stick a review of the services recieved on line and then they set about slandering your company illegally. You decide if you want to use there services.
He invited me back to the office to meet with him for what I could see as one of three reasons: To pay me off, to threaten me or to argue till he is blue in the face he is providing a valuable service. It turned out to be the 3rd reason with hints of the second.
ReplyDeleteAfter 5 or 10 minutes of him on the attack calling me a d*ck head/ar**hole and relentlessly trying to imagine my “sh*tty flat somewhere” and asking “Whos the millionaire here?” etc etc – We finally (with the odd “d*ck head” here and there through-out) began to discuss the construct of Facebook Global/FB Global. He called a “tech guy” upstairs who was calm through the meeting, whilst Andy kept being a pr**k.
I got his "tech guy" to admit that at their minimum guarantees (1000 impressions for £99 and 7500 impressions for £200) barely anyone would gain a return on their investment. Let alone a profit.
They then said they always "slaughter" their minimum guarantees anyway. So I asked how many impressions someone would typically recieve for £99 and was told by the "tech guy" usually around 20,000.
I then pointed out that 20,000 would still not produce a return. It would statistically only generate 8 click-throughs (not sales) which would in 99.99% of cases not produce a return, let alone a profit.
Then Andy started saying they put £80 from the £99 into the marketing and keep 20% (or £20). However if this was true each customer would recieve on average 666,666 impressions (not the 20,000 they said a few minutes before). And also if this was true, considering that each sales person averages only £100 in sales each day, the company would be losing vast amounts of money for every sales person, every single day.
So (IN MY OPINION ANDY) either Andys company is loosing huge amounts of money daily and has been for a long time and will do for time to come or he is ripping people off.
(IN MY OPINION ANDY) Pretty much every phone call a lie is told. Salespeople rarely use their real name, tell people they are calling from South Africa/Cape town or Canary Wharf London (which makes me laugh), make up figures about demand for a business sector and even go as far as looking up the weather in S/A before making calls. I am pretty sure they dont even have an office in Cape Town, I think its all virtual offices redirected to Altrincham. After calls iv heard the manager say “that was a good pinch”, although I am still unaware of how much all the staff know about it being a rip off. I think some do actually believe they are providing a valuable service.
Also (IN MY OPINION ANDY), and not so important to me as the thousands of people that are getting skanked. Andys company commits thousands of copyright infringements/Intellectual property thefts every day. Every call regarding the social media marketing I heard started with “Im calling from Facebook Global”, or the less popular FB Global, and the impression is often taken by potential customers they are strongly associated with Facebook, and on some occasions that they are Facebook.
To conclude, (IN MY OPINION ANDY), Andy Dryden is ripping people off. Scamming, stealing, rogue. He is the biggest pr**k I have ever met, immoral, deluded, in the worst case of denial I have ever seen. Not only do you scam a lot of your money off inocent people Andy but its pr**ks like you that damage peoples confidence in legit businesses and generally just make the world a sh*tter place. This planet would of been better off if you died at birth.
Anyone wanting to report bad conduct should make use of the following (SO YOU SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT ANDY):
Trading standards manchester: 0161 234 1555 or email trading_standards@manchester.gov.uk
BBC Watchdog/Rogue Traders: email - watchdog@bbc.co.uk
Google: 0845 358 0038
Greater Manchester Police: 0161 872 5050
http://www.bis.gov.uk/insolvency/Companies/company-investigation
http://theinternetwatchdog.com/contact
http://www.actionfraud.org.uk/report_fraud
Good Work! Amazing. Cold not have put it better!
ReplyDelete"Andy Dryden is ripping people off. Scamming, stealing, rogue. He is the biggest pr**k I have ever met, immoral, deluded, in the worst case of denial I have ever seen. Not only do you scam a lot of your money off inocent people Andy but its pr**ks like you that damage peoples confidence in legit businesses and generally just make the world a sh*tter place. This planet would of been better off if you died at birth. "
Hi Oliver. I'm based in Johannesburg, South Africa and run s amall printing company with my partner. I wasn't caught by the FBG crowd, but by "The Technical Guys", who do SEO work, or at least claim to. Same smooth talk, and apparently the same scam. They found my website and guaranteed an increase in business using Google and other search engines by optimising key-words.A month later, and folowing some several beautifully crafted e-mails (spelling errors and typo's aside) saying that they were working on my website along with SEO reports showing the increase in traffic (As in "none"), we decided to pull the plug on them, and also had the same threating e-mails from Charterhouse Law. I can't say we've ever heard of Andy Dryden, but Michael Bond's name pops up often. They have a Cape Town address at the bottom of The Technical Guys invoice which is fictitious. No-one in that building has ever heard of them. Then I tried "whois.com". The-Technical-Guys.com have the same registrant as Charter House, who, by the way list an address in Johannesburg. I actually drove there to have a look. Guess what? Also fictitious. I'd love to get a list of all the companies associated with these jokers and do a paper trail search of their registrations. It could prove interesting. In the meantime, I have laid a criminal charge of Transactional Fraud with the South African Police, and notified Standard Bank South Africa.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Oliver, you mentioned in an earlier blog that a comment written by someone was supposedly written by a South African, judging by the poor English, bad spelling and the use of the word vacation, rather than holiday. We have 11 official languages here, and English is very often taught as a second language. We also have huge American tv influences here, so please don't be too harsh! Thanks for your good work so far.