The folks at National Business Online (NBO) have just rubbed me up the wrong way – completely!
They rang my husband 4 times this morning insisting that he urgently renew his advertising contract with them. He was busy and got annoyed by the 4 calls and caught my attention.
If he had paid to advertise with this company in the past it is reasonable that he would have OK’d it with me first, after all I know about these things 🙂 and I know I wouldn’t have OK’d it.
So, I rang NBO and got an answerphone and then finally Sonia rang me back and helped me find our ad – under
Home :: Building & Maintenance :: Building Repair & Maintenance :: Property Consultants :: NZ
which seems a little odd given that that isn’t what he does. Even odder is the listing
The listing itself rings major alarm bells – we would never have approved it
- Andrew King Ltd is not a currently registered company, and has never been registered to us
- Po should be PO
- The suburb name is spelt wrong
- Andrew would have listed one of his websites rather than gone for a text only listing. The link that is shown refers back to the directory.
Not good on such a short listing…
I asked Sonia for a copy of the original invoice and she said it would take a couple of weeks but that she’d get it for me. An easy out or will she deliver?
So, I did some digging and found
Company: 1219939 NATIONAL BUSINESS DIRECTORY LIMITED
with one director, a Kaur Singh PRITAM
Address: 1/73 Wintere Rd, Papatoetoe, Auckland
and this company had been incorporated on 18-JUN-2002 and struck off on 19-MAR-2004
That’s just over a year ago. So my husband must have been one of the first customers if he bought advertising from the new company and it’s up for renewal today: 30-MAR-2005
I used the Domainz lookup for NBO.co.nz and found the owner is now Shallandra Singh of the same address. The email address given is for nbd.co.nz but that domain is currently available so they may come unstuck when the time comes to renew the domain.
I then went to Google.
- No companies link back to NBO, not even to say “I’m listed there”- example #1, example #2
- Consumer have an article on Pro Forma Invoicing scams
- Ministry of Consumer Affairs: Pro Forma Invoicing or False Billing Scams
- An article in the New Zealand Herald: Commerce watchdog to assess website listings business just before the original company was struck off.
I’ll keep watching these guys and I’ll let you know if they come up squeaky clean or not.
These folks just rang me to let me know that they have sent us 504 clients. Since our website is not listed with them, only our phone no, then there is no way their “traffic meter” can detect any such thing.
Looks like they have been very busy as I have been hit by the calls, fax, deadline etc as well.
After the third call told them to busy and to take our listing off and hung up. Definite scam as we have never registered with them.
They have been at me as well. When they rang back I said that as it was a pro forma scam I wouldn’t be paying. Got an “oh” and then she hung up on me. I hope not to hear back from them.
Phew they have just been in contact with me too. Thank goodness for this blog. I was stupid enough to be sucked in two years ago but this time I was a little wiser. Boy they don’t like it if you don’t want to renew.
Hey atleast they have just started to pay their P>A>Y>E to the government, now theres an improvemnt!
Funnily enough after we asked them to take us off their listings and refused to pay… we’re still there!!! and it’s all old information!
They’re still at it – I have a client they have just put the arm on – My client has never heard of them so the claim of ‘renewing a subscrition’ is quite bogus. Use these people at your own risk !!!
UM HELLO PEOPLE!!!…….Comment 57. read between the lines….. something real to go on
These people stopped calling us for a while but have recently started again, with the latest call coming this morning. i note the caller id is ‘0000’ which is normally what happens if the number is overseas? so im not sure if they are routing their calls through somewhere else – but in any case, they have still not removed us from the list despite being asked/told at least ten times.
Thanks for the comments here. I’ve just spent some time on the phone with a person from NBO, and I am horrified at the techniques used to gain “renewals”.
Got a call from NBO, goggled their name and yeah it’s a scam. Thanks to the valuable information on this blog I will know how to deal with this company.
Was a former employee of NBO. Only for about 2 weeks as I felt I was working for people that Scam customers out of their money.
Some FACTS about the company…
*1st of all, they have NO traffic meters at all. Complete Bulls#*t. They will ring u up and think of a nice soundin number in thr head and convince u that that is how many hits youve had in the last year. Next time, ask them for proof, See what they say. The most common answer for them is…Oh we have a internal traffic meter, its all done internally!..LIES!
*The only proof they will give u is a piece of paper with your company name on it with a nice figure of numbers next to it. Even a child can do that on wordpad! Think about it.
*If u dont ‘RENEW’ right away, U wont b deleted off the database like they say u will. They will just keep contacting u untill u do RENEW!…And as for renewing, Do u even remember signing up with them in the first place? I doubt it. u were put on their Database and called to Renew a listing, And when u tell them u dont recall ever listing with them, Ur response will be “Oh u signed up for a FREE LISTING about a year or 2 ago”. Have u heard that 1 before? Haha…
*Oh and when u tell them to delete u off the database, U probably WONT b deleted, Theres a 10 in 10 chance you’ll b phoned again. Annoying isnt it.
*U probably think the telemarketers read their scripts off computers, NOPE, they have 1 script to read off, so where do the figures for response rates come from? The Internal traffic meter? Hahaha!! And most of the telemarketers know wat to say off by heart! B careful, they can sound very convincing!!!
Sonia who works there (one of the bosses) can sound very demanding over the phone and will tell u u MUST RENEW IMMEDIATLY,as thr is a courier van waiting downstairs and ur the LAST 1 to renew for the year…Dont believe her shit!! There are no Vans. Because the forms u sign and send back dont even go anywhere..Hahahaha!! Whilst writing this n thinkin about it, I cant even believe i stayed at this place for 2weeks!!
Oh and If u ever decide to pay the company a visit, Goodluck. Thr on Albert St, But NO sign in the lobby to say what floor they are on…Hmmmm I wonder Y! And when u do find the right floor, there isnt a sign that says NBO.
So warn ur friends and family about this company!!
No doubt they will ring u! Dont fall for NBOs convincing lies, ur waaaaaaaay better off advertising on the yellow pages or something coz i personally dont think ANY1 goes onto thr site anyway..
Hope this has saved some1 from spending $96 for a years listing for a Bullshit company!! I hope they get shut down soon, and maybe the owners can go bak to the country they came from instead of trying to rip off us Nzers!!
I received a couple of calls from NBO which I had never heard of. They offered me $96.00 for 2 year listing renewal which I had never placed in the first place. If the offer was from a known marketing company/website I would have said yes. But if the name hits of 579 for my business which they claimed is made up, then I would say its unethical and its regarded as a scam.
Check the Companies Office site, i believe they are now registered under NBO NZ Ltd.
BE CAREFUL!
Contact details of NBO for those who want payback for their fraudulent behaviour.
349a Great South Road, Greenlane
Ph: +64 9 3094563
Have fun
Yep….I have just gotten off the phone from Sonya via the cell number on this site. Apparently she has resigned. But she gave me the Directors cell number Shillandra (???) and I gave him a call and ripped ##@@&&^ into him. They too have been trying to RENEW my so called listing. I told him hes a sham and should be ashamed. Fair Go should look into this one. Anyway, call Shilandra and annoy him. 0212353592
I really DOUBT that Sonia had resigned! Probably just more shit that comes out of her mouth!
And if u want to contact them face to face even bitch slap any 1 of them, level 3 87-89 albert st, No sign in the lobby or on the door of the entrance, but theyl b there. You will see the short staff they have too aswell as the owners of the dodgy company. `
This company NEEDS to b shutdown!!
She’s been with them for so long that I couldn’t imagine her leaving. I smelt a rat too!
Yep – Nothings changed – but the price
Todays $ 150 for 2 YEARS! What a bargain.
I’m going to have some fun with them and see how much of their time I can waste whilst pissing them around as much as I can…..
Just for fun, used the NBO ‘Contact Us’ page to send through the Fax number for TVNZ and expressing an interest in listing with them – wonder if they’re dumb enough to fax a renew through to K Milne on the Fair Go fax number….
It gets better – they rang back today and got most affronted when I suggested it was a scam – ethically if not legally.
Eventually I figured out why they were so upset – someone here did pay them for a listing last year!
So , we really were “renewing” – hah, the irony.
Still, the point is that no-one uses their site, they don’t measure it at all and we don’t want to be on it…..
Have just had my third call this month, each time a different person, asking me to renew. Sadly I did pay the 96.00 last year, so when they rang the first time this month I reminded them that I’d paid last year and they acted like it was a genuine mistake, however 2 calls to renew after this in the last 2 weeks, I now realise that I’ve been scammed. When will these people be stopped?
if you really want to expose these guys then former employees like A.G (June 18) and “dm” (April 16) need to call me asap
09 916 7186
I had a call from Andrea at NBO today. She implied they were somehow ‘linked’ to Yellow Pages and told me it was a free listing. I told her I wasn’t interested, but she faxed through anyway. When I read the fax, it indicated there was a charge. When she called back, I told her I wouldn’t be sending back the form, and almost had to hang up on her. Wish I new it was an invoicing scam before I hung up, as I missed the opportunity to wish her a nice day 😉 I’m now going to call all my clients and warn them about NBO.
This really is getting ridiculous.
Yesterday “Cliff” from NBO rang and spoke to my husband and offered the $150 listing and told us we’d had 500 hits from the free listing.
He said he’d like to check it out and could he call Cliff back to give him an answer. Well, that turned into 10 minutes of trying to convince Cliff to give the number. We were told it could be faxed to us, or emailed to us but they couldn’t tell us the number because “there was a problem”. Quite what the problem was was never explained. We even talked to Shawn his colleague/manager but the farce continued.
Andrew also asked for their physical address and was only told, after much persuasion, that they were in Albert St (see comment #68 for the full address).
Andrew tried to explain that if you call any other company and ask them for the same information and it would be given without hesitation.
Even if you knew nothing else about National Business Online why would you want anything to do with them if they won’t let you phone them?
I’ve just had the call to renew our listing. I didn’t even know we had one but we do!
I did actually have the fax they sent 18 months ago “renewing” our listing then. I faxed back telling them that I did not want a listing – but got one anyway – free.
Interestingly, if you enter nationalbusinessonline.co.nz you get a completely different online listing, currently under construction.
I just had these guys phone me and ask if I wanted to renew my listing for two more years. If I did it by the end of the day I could get it for $150, down from $400. They told me I had 487 people view my listing and that they would fax through the renewal forms. I never signed up in the first instance so I guess they just go through other directories and copy all the listings. The supervisor told me they were the second biggest business directory, however didn’t know who number one was and had never heard of UBD. They assumed that the local national telecommnications company would be number one – I think he meant telecom but guess he wasn’t too sure what country I was in. I assumed it was an indian call center as the first girl I was speaking with struggled to understand me or answer simple questions, and had to put on her supervisor to explain how the page view and click through statistics worked. Needless to say I won’t be paying them anything.
I have had four different staff members from NBO in the last two weeks hound me with phone calls, emails and faxes. They are all pushy, ignorant, time wasters with no value proposition apart from some script they read from – word for word. No one can reconcile our previous years advertising nor can they provide me with web metrics for the http://www.nbo.co.nz “New Zealand’s second largest online directory”. So yeah, I love these guys and cant wait to get my check for full payment in the mail to these thieving knuckle draggers. Whaka’s!
Re comments 51 and 65 – Guess what – my site has had 579 hits on the directory in the last year too!
Coincidence anyone? Or or hard-coded number embedded into the fax template?
Interesting summary thanks everyone. Apparently we have had “552 customer visitors” on our listing, but the NBO caller couldn’t explain why I had not heard from any of them. The company number is 1748046 if you like to check them out on the NZ Companies Office http://www.companies.govt.nz/cms/front-page-content/banner_template/AGENT Of interest is the director SINGH, Shallendra and holder of the 1 only share issued.
Why do I think of the old “Invoice Scams” when thinking of NBO
Still active. I just got a Indian woman call me to ‘renew’ a listing we never made.
The ‘nbo.co.nz’ domain name is registered at Domainz (www.domainz.net.nz) and hosted by an ISP called ‘Pacfic StrongNet’ (www.strongnet.co.nz). I am surprised that these two companies would choose to take this scammer’s business, but maybe they are not aware of the activity.
Aaron.
This is definetely a scam. Do not under any circumstances send money to NBO.
NBO is a scam and the staff are all very pushy. If you get rung up by the scam NBO NZ Ltd scam – don’t waste your time – just hang up !!!
I just found this discussion while doing a bit of research as we have just been called and faxed to renew our listing. We had 512 hits, seems like 500+ is the magic number! I was also told we had 1 listing but found 2! Only one with our web details. I won’t be renewing.
Hi there,
I’m pleased to see that all this information about NBO and mr. Singh and family (it must be his extended family because no on else would be bothered working for these idiots).
The same tactics still apply, harassing the people they call (time after time, they must be raking up quite some phone bills) trying you to force you to renew your “subscription”. When I looked at their site it was evidently that this was a hoax and there are remarkable similarities to the Yellow Pages (from which I believe the information was stolen).
Same advice as everyone else, DON’T DO IT!
Just to let you know they are still at it- they have rung myself, my Office Manager, and now my 2 business partners within the last week. They tried the scam about 2 years ago with us and we gave them a fake name, all the documents come through to this name so we know it is the same place. They used to do the scam by fax, and have been at it for some years. Go back to your own country you camel humping currie munchers.
A little update, they approached one of my hosted clients and the client referred it to me, after following up and finding the info here. I sent an email to all my clients.
Three have indicated they were given the hard sell, another informed me that it was too late for them they had forked out the money. Interesting enough I too have been approached by them and asked to pay for a “service” they are providing 🙂
I have told my clients if they wish to list their only do so if it is “free”, the actual use of the directory will be extremely low – try finding them in google with a realistic search e.g. online business directory NZ. They’re not there – so unlikely to be used.
Just phoned this Shilandra turkey (the director of NBO), he is an arrogant person and claims he is doing nothing wrong. Our company has even sent him a lawyers letter to get the listings removed. But alas every couple of month’s they reappear and the phone calls start again, with over 100 employees it is very hard to make sure nobody authorises a re-listing. Perhaps if everybody started phoning him and asking him to renew his listing with XYZ online he might get the picture, his cell number is 0212353592
every 1 is calling frm india when GAVIN was not able to convince me he passed on to executive/manager CAROL but it is all a scam for $150 and people are calling from india
SO GET BEWARE OF IT DO NOT RENIEW
Jason – they have an office in Auckland – why do you think they have staff in India? It’s possible… but I’d be interested to know if you have anything to confirm it.
NBO have been harassing me for years now for renewal on a directory we have never paid for, and I have finally had enough! When I decline their offer, they ring our Directors and hassle them as well. In June they did this 3 times in a week! So I threatened them by fax with contacting the police & commerce commission if they didn’t remove the company from their website and calling list. We have been removed from their directory, but today they started contacting us again via telephone! I have logged a complaint with the Police & with Consumer Affairs. They just keep up with the harassment until someone caves in!
I have since my last comment received a renewal form from one client which indicates their website has 398 visits to their site from the directory.
A check on a years worth of web server data to the site – didn’t yield one referral from an IP or domain name associated with NBO?
Ever better – the client with the visits didn’t have an email or URL in their listing.
Note the company is not actually doing anything illegal – it is a “Buyer Beware” situation, and if some one had paid money to them and can proof they paid the money under false pretence eg.
incorrect info supplied, ie. “you” listed with us.
or/ we have referred “XXX” to you.
You are entitled to your money back, but the cost of employing a lawyer to chase on your behalf ….. well you figure that one out.
The best everyone can do is inform as many people as possible of the situation.
Thanks to Sarah for allowing me to fore warn my other clients.
These buggers are still at it! Just had a call from them to ‘renew’ our listing.
We have never authorised anything with them and the details they had for us included typos.
Lucky for our company I have been here for 4 years, so have a history of all advertising over this period. The ‘rep’ is very persistant and verged on calling me a liar when I asserted we have no history with NBO.
The website is shoddy and obviously a scam as are the ‘hits’ quoted to me on the phone.
I have called Ministry of Consumer Affairs and suggest others do the same.
These people are crooks and give other businesses, with legitimate websites, a bad name.
Buyer Beware!
Be watching TV1 News on Monday 1st September!
They are still at it. First contact was June then came back into the office today and found three copies sent one after the other to renew my company listing. Name was wrong, phone number was wrong and the company had never been listed with them before yet they are asking for a “renewal” Phoned and told them to remove my fax number and any other information they had.
The ‘overseas number 0000’ comes up on caller id if people phone you on Skype. The moron just phoned me and told me it was on overseas call. That’s probably just to stop you calling back.
Aug 28th received both fax & 0000 phone call requesting our Company payment ASAP.I received another phone call this morning & told them what I thought of their scam. I also have placed a written complaint with the Commerce Commission & rang NBO to inform them of our complaint & that they could be sued directly for use of an Intellectual Property name without consent, publishing incorrect information including advertising our business in an area we know nothing about. If we have signed the form or paid, we in turn could be sued over misleading advertising. This is a pure Scam & the Authorities should act on the various complaints laid.
Saw the story about NBO on tonight’s news. Very interesting. I am the Principal of a Primary School and we were subjected to the NBO technique – telling us how valuable the listing had been for our “business” in the past two years. Funny thing is we are in the country serving a rual community 20 kilometres from the nearest (small) town. I was quoted the number 502 visits. The guy asked if I wanted to “renew”, when I told him that I doubt anyone would have paid for it in the first place, he said that SBO had provided the service for free for the past two years. When I declined (for obvious reasons), he became quite defensive wanting to know why I wouldn’t subscribe again. Unbelievable – I’ve been Principal here a while, but I’m wondering if newer people to the job (or BOT members) may fall for NBO’s spin.
While I was overseas last year a caller from NBO tricked my manager into signing a “renewal” for 2 different businesses, claiming that we had paid in the past. A clear case of pro-former invoicing. I discussed this with the Commerce Commission who gave me a contact at the police to call, but no one was really interested. Just don’t pay – as I told the owner – I would be happy to discuss his scam in any court of law – bring it on. He went away eventually. We clearly need some laws to stop this sort of scam.
i worked for nbo for two weeks i left as i was being intimidated for not making enough sales.Their office is in albert st auckland in the james hardie building, not sure what level but they reguraly move floors to avoid detection.cbd.All they do is enter the business details of ads from the yellow pages into their own directory.Yeah mostly indians doing it.
The 3 comments above are in response to a clip on TV1 last night – you can read and see it here: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318360/2050617
I’d really like to thank Owen Poland and TVNZ for taking up the challenge and calling NBO on their scam.
Good on TVNZ. This is a total scam. The Company I work for requested numerous times that we be removed from the listings as they where incomplete incorrect and unauthorised. Phone calls went unanswered and messages where never replied to when left by phone and via their scam website. Eventually we spent $450 on a lawyers letter demanding that the listings be removed this eventually worked. The owner Mr Singh when sent a bill refused to pay for the legals. Alas next thing we know the phone calls start again. this has been ongoing over the last 2 years, I feel sorry for the poor workers at NBO as I am quite abusive to them when they call. I have talked to the owner and he just says “you are an idiot”, “how is this bad for your business” etc. If you work out the numbers, they have probably fleeced millions of $$$ from good hard working NZ Business’s. Thanks again to TVNZ for raising the awareness out there. It is a shame that the Government agencies, Commerce Commission, Police etc are not given laws strong enough to protect us from such unethical scams.