Consumer Alert: Ads That Look Like Bills

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is conducting a review of Listing Corp., a company whose mailed marketing pitches look like domain-name invoices.

Tom Spring, PC World

When the mail carrier delivered what looked like a Web-domain-related bill for $60 from a company called Listing Corp. last year, the San Diego chapter of the American Society for Industrial Security immediately sent in the money.

"It had our domain name on it, and it looked like an invoice, so we paid it," says Herb Thompson, who chairs the ASIS San Diego chapter.

The document, sent via the U.S. Postal Service, was actually an advertisement for Listing Corp.'s services. For an annual fee of $60, the company said, it would submit the nonprofit's Web site to 20 unspecified major search engines and later e-mail a quarterly "search engine position and ranking report."

But Thompson says ASIS hasn't heard from Listing Corp. since it paid the firm in November 2005. Although Listing Corp. promises on its Web site to help a company improve rankings and visibility in search engines, keyword searches in March for ASIS on nearly a quarter of the search engines mentioned on Listing Corp.'s site didn't produce any links to the group's site. Thompson now says he thinks his association was hoodwinked.

Thompson isn't alone. Complaints about the way Listing Corp. advertises have been filed with various government and private organizations. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service says it has received a "significant" number of complaints regarding Listing Corp., and U.S. Postal Inspection Service spokesperson Paul Krenn says a "review" is under way to determine whether the firm is in violation of federal mail fraud laws.

And while MaxterHost.com, the company that had been hosting Listing Corp.'s Web site, declines to provide figures, a spokesperson says it received so many complaints about Listing Corp. that on March 20 it terminated its relationship with the firm and shut down the site. (Listing Corp.'s site has since reopened with California-based StartLogic as its hosting service.)

Listing Corp.'s Web site as it appeared in early April 2006.

Listing Corp.'s publicly available domain-name registration information lists a box at a New York City branch of UPS-owned Mail Boxes Etc. as the company's mailing address. The Better Business Bureau in New York says it has only two reports on file for Listing Corp. However, a Google search for "Listing Corp." produces links to scores of blogs and forums where people have posted complaints and warnings about the company and its mailings.

Listing Corp. officials did not respond to repeated inquiries e-mailed to addresses in its domain registration information. The telephone number in the same database, "1.3251782," is incomplete.

Several Companies, Similar Mailings

Listing Corp. is just one of several companies that send similar pitches to Internet domain owners via postal mail. Over the past 15 months, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service Fraud Complaint System has recorded 875 complaints related to search engine directory solicitations such as the mailing the San Diego ASIS chapter received from Listing Corp. The losses reported in these complaints total $8161.

The Internet Listing Service(s) Corp. (ilscorp.co.uk) Web site as it appeared in early April 2006.

In researching this article, PC World found more than a dozen sites for companies with similar Web marketing pitches and a history of sending similar postal mailings. Some were no longer functional and were accessible only in the form of Google's cached versions of old Web pages.

The Internet Listing Service Corp. (ilscorp.net) Web site as it appeared in early April 2006.

But other sites were live as of late April. For example, marketing copy on the sites ilscorp.net (Internet Listing Service Corp., which, according to Internet domain registration records, is based in the Netherlands), icls.net (Internet Corporation Listing Service, which declares California as its location), and ilscorp.co.uk (Internet Listing Services--or Service, depending on which of the site's pages you read--Corp., which states its home country is Azerbaijan) were similar in several ways, as were the appearance and wording of their postal solicitations. Like Listing Corp., Internet Listing Service Corp. and Internet Corporation Listing Service accept physical mail at Mail Boxes Etc. branches.

The Internet Corporation Listing Service (icls.net) Web site as it appeared in early April 2006.

The Silicon Valley, California, Better Business Bureau has recorded 90 complaints in which recipients of Internet Corporation Listing Service mailings said the company's solicitations looked like bills. In 20 cases consumers stated that they accidentally made payment to the firm. In only one case did the Silicon Valley BBB confirm that the company sent the complaining individual a refund, according to Zach Vander Meeden, public relations director for the BBB.

Internet Corporation Listing Service didn't respond to e-mail requests for an interview. No one answered the Ontario, Canada, phone number (905/948-0921) noted in the company's Internet domain name registration.

Netherlands Registration, Chicago Location

Repeated e-mail interview requests to the address in Internet Listing Service Corp.'s domain registration information elicited a phone call from a man who identified himself only as Zach. Zach said he worked for the company, and said the business was in Chicago. He gave no explanation for the Netherlands mailing address.

"We take consumer complaints seriously and address any such situations immediately and cooperate fully with the appropriate governmental and consumer advocacy organizations," Zach said. He acknowledged that Internet Listing Service Corp.'s mailings may be confusing to some customers, but said the firm has a no-questions-asked refund policy.

We subsequently checked with Chicago Better Business Bureau spokesperson Tom Joyce, who told us the BBB has received 22 complaints against the company in the past 15 months.

Joyce says Internet Listing Service Corp. has an "unsatisfactory record" for failing to respond and to resolve consumer complaints in a timely manner. As with the other services, most of the people complaining said they mistook the company's solicitation as a bill and paid it.

"Later, when consumers tried to receive a refund, they couldn't," Joyce says. Other complaints stated that the company failed to provide the services that were paid for. With the BBB's assistance, all those who complained eventually received refunds, Joyce says.

We also asked Zach whether Internet Listing Service Corp. was related to any of the look-alike services we found, including Internet Listing Service(s) Corp. (ilscorp.co.uk). He said there was no connection. But software that traces the IP addresses where sent e-mail is received indicated that messages to ilscorp.net and messages to ilscorp.co.uk go to the same IP address, assigned to a computer somewhere in Canada. No one replied to our e-mail query about this apparent link between the companies.

The same tracing software indicated that e-mail sent to icls.net and ilscorp.net were also opened in Canada, but at two different IP addresses.

Search Engine Optimization?

The postal mailers we obtained from Listing Corp. and Internet Corporation Listing Service are typical. They are addressed to domain name owners and reference the recipient's specific domain name. Here are the mailers--both front and back:

Listing Corp. mailer

Internet Corporation Listing Service mailer

The documents describe their services, each saying that the company will submit the recipient's Web site domain name to a number of unspecified search engines--20 in the case of Listing Corp. and 14 for Internet Corporation Listing Service. The first page of each letter also states how to make $35 payments to the firm, and has a perforated tear-away section to be returned with payment in the form of a check. A return envelope is included in the mailing.

On the reverse side of each letter is further description of the services, along with a disclaimer in bold capital letters. In Listing Corp.'s case it reads: "This is not a bill. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer."

Despite the disclaimer, however, these mailings have drawn the attention of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law-enforcement arm of the USPS.

"By the time people have looked over the bill and get to the second page, they are just seeing the payment slip at the bottom," says Cheryl Swyers, a spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Boston.

Warnings

At least some Internet service providers and other private organizations have posted notices advising their customers to be careful when considering doing business with these sites.

For example, after customers of Internet registrar GoDaddy.com began receiving invoice-like mail from Internet Corporation Listing Service last year, GoDaddy.com's then-CEO Bob Parson posted a warning describing the company's mail as "misleading and improper."

Warren Adelman, GoDaddy.com's current president and chief operating officer, says he believes these firms mine public domain-name records to create their mailing lists.

Other types of businesses that promise services for Internet domains have come under investigation for their practices. In 2003 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission barred the Canada-based Domain Registry of America from using advertisements that the FTC called "misleading" to consumers. DRA sent domain name owners e-mail messages saying their domain registrations were expiring, leading many of the recipients to switch to DRA as their domain name registrar based on misinformation, according to the FTC.

How to Complain

If you receive a questionable invoice or invoice-like letter in the mail, check out the sender and consider filing a complaint with government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center or the FTC. You could also complain to your local Better Business Bureau. If your beef relates to items sent by U.S. mail, the U.S. Postal Service accepts complaints online.

"Faux invoices have a long, inglorious place in the history of fraud," says Jason Catlett, founder of Junkbusters, a consumer-privacy Web site.

The mailings sent by Listing Corp. and others may be small potatoes, but that doesn't make them less annoying, says Martin Crook, a New York-based professional photographer who received two letters from Listing Corp. for a couple of domain names he owns. "It really wound me up," says Crook, who did not submit payment. "I'm savvy enough to spot a scam. But this thing really looked like a bill."