This is a continuation from that very strange e-mail request I posted last time in regards to a request I received to close down my blog for competitive commercial reasons. I have a clear idea of what went on after doing some research and thought it would be an interesting thing to blog about from a business perspective.

Earlier this month a person contacted me through this blog with the following message:

hi,
I need some small help from you regarding your blog. Please reply if you have received this message.

Thanks much!

As always, I like to help people whenever I can and sure enough I replied with a simple acknowledgment saying

Hi there,

What type of help do you need?

The person then responds with something that just left me dumbfounded which said the following:

Hi, Thanks for replying.

This is regarding www.al6400.com/blog/2008/01/28/princeton-premier/
This page comes up in top results when we search “princeton premier” in google.

Now, the princetonpremier.com guys posted an online project and I am working on that to do SEO and remove this type of results from google search. After so much of effort, I am still clueless. And they are not making the payment unless they see some result.

My request to you is please disable this blog of yours for 15 days or so. This will have some effect on the search results and I may receive my fees. You may re-enable this after that period.
Please let me know either-way. I am solely dependent on freelance projects like this and can not afford to lose payments.

Thanks much.

Shocked, I responded by saying

Hi there,

This has got to be some kind of joke correct? I am having a very hard time believing what I am reading here without some kind of authenticity verification about what you have written.

Just some quick background information for those who don’t know, I made a post about a questionable e-mail offer I received from that company which has garnered a lot of attention and considering people from that organization had a perfect opportunity to make their voices heard without bias, as it appeared that a representative of the company did make a reply initially, it just made this whole situation even more unbelievable.

I was thinking too on how even from a business perspective who goes up and asks say a competitor to shutdown for a few days? That’s like two stores competing with each other during the Christmas shopping season and asking if the owner could close his store down for awhile as they are getting too much exposure.

The guy was dead serious though and understandably he didn’t want to give out details. However, that didn’t stop me from getting to the bottom of this. After putting all the pieces together, everything pointed to the fact that the company was using some kind of outsourcing service to perform the service in question. It just so happens that I am very knowledgeable about that particular field/industry and it didn’t take me very long to find this request:

It appeared as if the company was actively seeking to hire people to push down sites such as my blog from showing up for certain keywords to avoid negative exposure of their business/product. This made me really wonder on why the organization didn’t simply reply to the concerns expressed by all those people that commented on that post instead as I’m sure this doesn’t exactly help their cause.

This incident in particular sure demonstrates the importance of making sure that you can do the job before making promises to do something huh? In this case too, it looked the buyer and the service provider didn’t do a thorough enough job in interviewing each other beforehand. So what would you do if you were running that business now?

I guess the traditional method would be that the company would come out and apologize to anyone who feels they were mislead in any way while offering people a refund if they wish to accept full responsibility of the negative publicity that has been generated. At the same time, they would then somehow publicly announce their efforts to correct things if warranted. Of course, this is assuming that they want to continue its operations.

Another thing that this incident made me think about is the power of social media nowadays where a simple opinion or perspective about an issue can manifest into something enormous. This was definitely one of those seeing something new everyday moments for me.

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“What in the world is this?” I thought to myself when I got this e-mail recently. It just sounded so fishy right from the start. Apparently it is a directory type of service that implies that you have been selected for possible inclusion in some prestigious directory. Here is a copy of the e-mail:

Received: from smtp10.resultsmail.com ([216.158.103.77])
by l-daemon (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-7.05 (built Sep 5 2006))
with ESMTP id <0JVB007LBT6G3X50@l-daemon> Sun,
27 Jan 2008 16:27:58 -0700 (MST)
Received: by smtp10.resultsmail.com (PowerMTA(TM) v3.2r23)
id hjk9sg0g7asi ; Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:29:07 -0800
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:29:07 -0800
From: Princeton Premier
Subject: Alan Yu’s Selection Into Princeton Premier

Alan Yu,

It is my pleasure to inform you that you are being considered for inclusion into the 2008-2009 Princeton Premier Business Leaders and Professionals “Honors Edition” section of the Registry.

The 2008-2009 edition of the Registry will include biographies of the world’s most accomplished individuals. Recognition of this kind is an honor shared by thousands of executives and professionals throughout the world each year. Inclusion is considered by many as the single highest mark of achievement.

Upon final confirmation, you will be listed among thousands of accomplished individuals in the Princeton Premier Registry.

For accuracy and publication deadlines, please complete your application form and return it to us within five business days.

You may access the application form using the following link:

http://app.formassembly.com/forms/view/3366

On behalf of the Managing Director, we wish you continued success.

Sincerely,

Jason Harris

Managing Director
Princeton Premier

23-35a Steinway Street
Astoria, NY 11105 United States

If you do not wish to receive future e-mail
from Princeton Premier, please use the link below.

For one thing, I was thinking to myself that if you were nominated for some kind of award shouldn’t the organization already have basic information about you? Kind of silly for you to have to fill out a form and provide information in that sense. It would kind of be like wanting to award someone for a lifetime achievement award and then asking the recipient on what it is exactly that they do.

Just from putting all the pieces together, my guess is that once you fill out the form you are then contacted by a person who tries to sell you say a premium membership fee of some sort to have yourself listed in it. I think I’ll pass and keep my wallet closed.

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