If you’ve been in business for more than one week, you have no doubt received an automated call from a voice saying they are Google, or saying they are Google Authorized Representatives. These people do not work for Google, and likely do not have any type of relationship granting them permission to say they are Google Authorized Representatives. The recording goes on to tell you that if you do not take action quickly, your Google listing will be removed! Hurry, hurry hurry, but don’t fear we have something you can buy to fix this!
The Pitch
What these companies are selling, is a listing service, if you are lucky! If you are not lucky, you just paid a bunch of money for nothing! That’s right, we’ve heard horror stories of unfortunate companies who are unaware of how the Google ecosystem really works, and are swindled out of their hard-earned dollars to never receive any type of beneficial service! Then we, at OutBoost Media, have to play psychiatrist, and teach them that not all digital marketing companies are like this and that when you spend your money with a real digital agency, you are going to huge returns on your investment compared to other traditional marketing and advertising methods!
How To Tell If You’re Getting Scammed
These companies do not want to be known because the way they are conducting business starts at unethical and grows in severity to illegal and downright disgusting. OutBoost Media founder, Joseph Tartaglione stated,
It’s a very hard market we are in. It’s highly competitive on the surface, but when you dig deeper, there are very few companies doing high quality work, the caliber work, that most businesses want, expect, and need in order to be successful today. So we as digital marketing consultants play numerous roles, as advisors, marketing directors, project managers and shrinks, helping undo the damage that these scamming companies have done to honest businessmen and women. It’s a shame, but overtime we’ll beat them. I’m a firm believer in you get what you give. And that is why most of our new customers actually come from referrals.
Here are some signs you can tell you’re dealing with a scammer:
- You answer the phone and it is a pre-recorded greeting. Yes, that is exactly the type of customer service you don’t want. Someone who cannot even take the time to dial you themself, they have to call thousands of people, to find the few suckers who will answer. When we answer the phone and its a pre-recorded call, we don’t even wait for the option to be removed from the list. We hang up, go into our office phone system, and block the caller from ever reaching us again. They just get an out-of-order signal, and they’ll remove us from the list eventually. And we’ll never waste our time, or get frustrated ever again. BYE FELICIA!
- You answer the phone, you press 1, (they almost got you), you ask them what company they are from. You’ll get an answer like, we are Authorized Google Representatives. You ask the question again, “What company are you from?” At this point, they’ll repeat the previous answer, and avoid the question, or they’ll hang up. These companies are frauds, chances are you’ll hear them shuffling through their script to look for an answer to that question, they were never expecting and is not in their script. WHY? Because they don’t want you to know their company! It will incriminate them when people start complaining.
- The caller says there is tremendous urgency due to changes in the Google system or algorithm. This is fancy talk. Google never makes a huge change that will dramatically hurt honest businesses. Most of their large changes are to combat unethical and unfair SEO practices, and this allows the honest businesses to make it back to the top of the search results.
- The caller says they are reviewing businesses in [Insert your town here]. All this means is they scraped the web, or telephone book for businesses in a certain area and are calling you all at once so the script can have some more consistencies to it.
- This is the funniest part, these companies call us, and sometimes when we are feeling mischievious we’ll put an intern on the call to entertain them. We let them go through the whole sales pitch, and give them all sorts of questions, and say I don’t know, so they can give their scripted rebuttals, (Oh, they are brutal to listen to, these people can barely read!) But then we ask them, if they researched our company so well, why are they offering US, OutBoost Media, the same services we provide. They sit in silence for a moment, then hang up. It’s really sad the people who get pulled into these scams, as I’m sure some of the call-center people who do pick up, don’t realize what they are involved in.
Regardless, this is a serious problem in the industry, along with other fraudulent SEO companies, and website design companies, who promise to build you a spectacular website for $800.00. Remember you get what you pay for!
We are going to keep a list of the phone numbers who call us, so that if you see these numbers pop-up on your caller ID, you know to avoid them!
Avoid these telemarketing scammers, claiming to be Google. calling from these phone numbers:
- (347) 370-3089
- (517) 641-5330
- (800) 544-7351
- (405) 755-3131
- (504) 517-1062
- (360) 663-9001
- (619) 551-4309
- (855) 229-5561
- (331) 200-7334
- (973) 435-1950
- (715) 304-0324
- (407) 530-0051
- (805) 574-2087
Check back soon as we are keeping this list up to date to help small businesses avoid a costly mistake. Feel free to leave more numbers in the comments below and add your experiences, so other business owners won’t fall for the same hoax.
Leaders in Local Search Marketing
If you are looking for real Local Search Marketing, and Local Search Engine Optimization, contact us for a free consultation. The team at OutBoost Media has over 15 years experience in Digital Marketing and services, startups, incubators, national brands, and Fortune 500 companies. We build brands and online digital marketing campaigns for one-man shops up to 100+ employee businesses, with the ability to scale to meet your needs. When you’re looking for marketing and can’t decide if you want to hire a full time marketing director or communications manager, contact OutBoost Media, we provide top-notch quality outsourced marketing services for small businesses, so that business owners and management can focus on running the business and doing what they do best, while we market the business. From social media management and email marketing to search engine optimization, PPC Advertising and content marketing, OutBoost Media can provide your business the tools and services you need to have your business be seen on Google Search and beyond, delivering you qualified leads that will grow your business in no time at all!
For more information on OutBoost Media’s Full Service – Express Business Listing Service, we can help optimize your Google Business Listing, plus your Bing, Yahoo, Apple Maps, and publish your information to thousands of databases and directories visit our Google Business Listing Service Page. –
Get Listed @ https://www.outboostmedia.com/packages/business-listings/