Moving in on the success of Customer Street

Customer Street has always prided itself on being able to achieve great results in respect of customer visibility on the internet. Our customers enjoy the benefits of being able to have a free, all be it templated, website as part of their package to help get their internet presence off to a flying start.

These RapidSites, along with listings on our national directories such as Smile Local, More UK and UFindUs make sure your average businessman on the street can achieve search results which many larger companies will pay a fortune for.

But, and there is always a but! Increased exposure on the internet, a raised business profile, listings in trade specific portals, multiple directory listings all make it easier for new customers to find you. It also makes you a lot easier for other businesses to find you and use your details for their own marketing purposes.

Lately Customer Street and UFindUs have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of customer complaints about other businesses trying to persuade them to cancel their contracts in order to take out new services. It isn’t even as if they are being offered a comparable service, most times they are in fact being offered inferior services which will not help in getting their businesses found.

The reason we can be so certain about this type of sharp practice is because our directories feature seeded numbers which when called are answered  by our staff. Businesses calling our customers have included EMS Internet, Matchmaker Marketing and Free Start.

One typical approach is that these businesses are working in conjunction with Google. This is not the case and Google themselves this week have told us:

“We’d like to assure you that Google doesn’t make unsolicited phone calls or send unsolicited email. A number of unscrupulous businesses have made phone calls and sent out mass mailing that appear to be related to Google. We’re actively pursuing all available legal means to stop these miscreants from abusing our name”

If you have any concerns yourself about any such approaches then please contact us either at ad@customerstreet.com or on 0845 3380 500.

Tags: Abuse, Google, infringement, screen scraping