Advertising on a...

I almost advertised with Chestnut House on their 'charity' wall planner for Derbyshire, until I found out the following information. There is a lot of history to this company, so please read all of the information before you even consider advertising with them.

The exact same people ran the notorious Liverpool based charity scam company - Barrington House Publishing, it was closed down by the DTI, moved and changed names to Barrington House Corporation Ltd. Closed down by the DTI again and changed names to Hamilton Forbes and moved offices again. Then closed down and have moved again and changed names to Chestnut House. All the previous companies worked for a charity the Children’s Research Fund but Chestnut House work on behalf of the Honeyrose Foundation, which is also a charity. Peter Lyons started the original company (he is a millionaire from charity scamming) and each time the company has closed down and re-opened the directors and people running it were and may still be employees of Peter Lyons. The new directors are again a previous manager of Lyons and her live in partner. All the closures have left large sums of money owing to the VAT and TAX. Each closure and re-opening has had the same workforce (reps)and have taken some of the admin staff too. This company has reps who have travelled with him from company to company, who are also very wealthy. Peter Lyons has been photographed by the Mirror Newspaper at the premises of Chestnut House. Lots of the employees when working for Barrington’s and Hamilton’s' had company cars! And it is known they earn 25-30% commission for their sales. They are telling customers that the charity wall planners are for dying kids all over the country, when in fact the Honeyrose Foundation are a charity for the over 40’s in St Helens and Merseyside. Please note also that a sister company called Mckenzie Campbell which was also closed down and re-opened as Price Chamberlain has since closed down too and was run by Peter Lyons brother. If this business was run correctly why do they keep getting closed down? Why were the DTI ever involved? Why do people get threatening letters if it’s working for a charity? Why is the charity commission board letting companies do this when charities are involved? If you are contacted by this NEW company ask your self WHY should I help someone get rich on the back of a needy cause (the charity).
If you want to know anymore read this http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/investigates/2007/04/05/conman-lyon-back-on-prowl-89520-18861963/

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There are loads of business scams out there if this is one (I guess we need to make clear this is alleged unless this was actually all prove), we all need to be careful.

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I had a scam call today "hello, you thought about advertising on a charity calendar last year and..."
*hang up*

err... no thanks.

Let's all share our scam phone call stories here, see which is the most silly or outrageous

Annoying!

Tim

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People still fall for them... I've heard all sorts of weird scams.

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Had another one today... don't these people think I have anything better to do than get scammed? The most annoying thing is that a genuine client could be trying to get through whilst your busy trying to fob off these scam artists.

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What's so frustrating about these sort of outfits is they can seem to operate completely against fair play and effectively scam people consistently, yet precious little is done about them.

Compare this to 99% of legally operating businesses playing by the rules that are always under extreme pressure to get the right things submitted by the right dates, and any innocent mistake can get clobbered with swingeing penalties - it hardly seems fair does it!

Chris

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Grr... I've had that blo*dy charity calendar rubbish one three times in three weeks - must be because it's towards the end of the year... don't the scammers know these things get produced months in advance though!

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Sounds like your number has been well circulated Tim.

One of the unfortunate side effects of listing for free on popular directories like the yellow pages one (yell) is that your number gets used by all the scammers.

I know quite a few small businesses who simply won't list with yell and similar directories these days because basically all they get is time wasting scammy type calls rather than any customers.

Chris