Industry Scams, Spam and Scumbags

I must get over a 2000 emails a week, most of them spam offering me everything from pills to personal growth to hormone therapy. I usually just chuckle at the clever names they use in the subject line and delete them.

I have to tell you, the emails coming from so-called industry related firms that turn out to be nothing more than rip-offs really gets to me. To the point that I am going to start calling them out publicly.

I keep getting emails from Mike Richmond who is an Internet marketeer pretending to be a cleaning industry guru in green cleaning. He claims to have the Green Cleaning Institute that certifies green cleaning companies, for a fee and then lists them in on a special Green Institute website.

Mike actually belongs to enom.com which is a business to business networking scheme to suck in vulnerable business owners into believing they are getting real value for their dollar.

They answer some simple questions online, pay the enrollment fee, sign up for the yearly annual fee and presto! They get a cute little seal to display and they get listed in the special directory created by Mike.

Then there is the ultimate directory building scam artist, Matt. Now Matt has been around for years with his various 'Cleaning Directories' that you can get listed on for a monthly fee and he has been out there sucking in people who will pay him that hard earned money just to see their company name in print somewhere but how much business does that really bring in?

It seems not enough to keep Matt awash in cash, he has now started a new scam called Cleaning Service Registry where any schmuck with a broom can send in a few items of proof of existence and suddenly they are Certified and Registered.

Those of us who have been in the industry for any length of time know that just because you registered your trade name does not mean you can tell the difference between a neutral cleaner, a neutralizer and when to use which!

I am willing to bet that neither Mike or Matt would be able to tell you either, without spending 12 hours googling the terms!