I have been marketed by the World Confederation of Businesses for a
Business Excellence Award. They would like me to come to their awards
ceremony to receive this award as well. Only problem, I am not in
business anymore! I thought this was some kind of joke but they are for
real, all I have to do is pay $3030.00 and I can have my award. S ounds
like a scam. After 8 emails and 3 phone calls from someone who can
barely speak English, I have decided to do some research, here is what
I have found out:
First of all, the website looks nice. But the more I read, the more it
became apparent that they are not a US based company as they claim. I
am 99% positive they are based in Lima, Peru, and operate as Calidad de
Impacto. According to Spamhaus.org, the IP address for the emails shows
they are coming from TELMEX in Lima. Spamhaus blocked them because they
are sending out thousands of emails with the same or similar subject
titles. Let me guess, Congratulations blank for the Bizz Awards 2009 or
something to that effect. Here is a blog that I found in Spanish, seems
they started doing this in South America. I used the translator on
Google to read this:
http://rcs-fuzzy.blogspot.com/2009/08/bizz-awards-estafa-al-clienteconsumidor.html
The award. This is a little confusing. What is it for? Business
Excellence. Why? For achieving business excellence. Who determines
this? the World Confederation of Businesses How? We do it internally,
and base it on blah, blah, blah. Okay, so there is no nomination, no
research, no panel of judges, and no real reason this award is
warranted. This is obvious because they are awarding a company that no
longer is in business. I have also found out that they are soliciting a
local Chamber of Commerce for this award too! On the web page,
www.bizzusa.com, they explain who accredits this award. The BBB. Okay,
any business can pay to be a part of the BBB. Maybe WORLDCOB doesn’t
have any complaints because they don’t have any American companies that
have been suckered in by their marketing scheme yet. The UN Global
Compact, again, any company can pay to join this. So there is no
“accredidation” for this award.The “accredidation” is your $3030.00.
This is the second go around for them here in the US. They tried doing
this earlier this year, the Bizz Awards 2008 it was called, and it was
scheduled to happen in March 2009.
By looking at the websites and the video on YouTube it looks as if this
may be something worth having, but websites and photos and press
releases are actually all that I can find that gives this award any
recognition. In fact, anyone can buy a list of company names in a
country and market them for some award, host and event to give it away,
then ride of into the sunset with your $3030.00 claiming they awarded
you with “the most important business award in the world”. Sounds
ridiculous but it is happening.
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