Dotcom Chrome
I’ve had several friends here in Melbourne report bad dealings with a company called Dotcom Chrome.
The company rings businesses offering to get them on the front page of Google for a couple of hundred dollars a month.
Because the word ‘Google’ and ‘chrome’ are used near each other, the victim assume the company is somehow related to Google Chrome, the new browser.
This is obviously a little dodgy but not illegal as the owners of companies like “Suny” and ” Palsonic” will tell you.
Several victims also claim that the the company mislead them about how often their ad would appear on the front page of google.
But when the victims tried to cancel their accounts, realising that the company was simply selling them a google adwords account they could simply buy themselves at a lower price, things got tricky.
Most people have found themselves having to jump through hoops, having to send letters to various parts of the world and fill in forms.
Some victims have reported harassing phone calls, emails and, in one case, an ad was created in Google adwords shortly after they started complaining about the company:
Another showed me emails where they were threatened with a smear campaign if they kept up their complaints including the rumour that they were “sued for touching my friends aunties child at a party”.
Others have reported racial abuse and various threats for trying to cancel their account or complain about the group.
When I mentioned the show on the ABC radio show, several people rang and emailed telling me that they had the same phone calls.
Of the Australian victims I have spoken with, several have been told that the AFP, Scamwatch and ACCC will do nothing as the company is based in the UK.
Google refuse to take down the unauthorised ads because, unless the company is trademarked, they are not breaking any laws.
If you want to read more complaints about this Manchester based outfit, click here.
If you have had your own experiences with the company, please let me know.
19 Comments to
http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/01619764745
please avoid this scam Dotcomchrome is a scam they promise 24/7 exposure on google utter rubbish we canceled due to not being on and customer service issues and recieved threatening phone calls and threats of bad press on internet about our website.Dotcomchrome also say they are google adword professionals they have had this title stripped off them by google
Take a look at their flashy new website http://www.dotcomchrome.co.uk/
They are expanding their scam services in many other directions including:
PR CAMPAIGNS
SEO
FB CAMPAIGNS
PPC CAMPAIGNS
None of which would be legit based on my experience.
They even use my site as an example of a “happy customer”. No. I’m not
DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS COMPANY.
If you have already been scammed by them, cancel your credit card immediately.
When they call you up and make threats, tell them you are going to report them to Australian Securities….they won’t bother you again.
DotCom Chrome contacted my 17 year old son with a proposition costing $56 per month. He asked if he could use my credit card. When they phoned back it has gone up to $260 “as a once off payment to get the thing set up then $56 per month”. Inspite of cancelling the deal they are still charging $260 per month and have delivered nothing. (At least they got that right.) I have just written a complaint to their local trading standards people trading_standards@manchester.gov.uk (see http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/manchester). Maybe if a lot of us complain to Trading Standards they might be able to get these thieves closed down.
Eratta - the appropriate trading standards office is trading.standards@trafford.gov.au
They have lost their status as a reseller of Google AdWords… FINALLY!
https://adwords.google.com/professionals/profile/org?id=06960302566680310613&hl=en_US
We were contacted in September 2009 and are still being chased for money.
We have recieved abusive telephone calls and emails and now we are being sued.
I cannot believe it,l have now left another message with the contact here in Australia and asked that the owners of the company contact me to discuss this matter however after reading all this information l am not hopeful that they will return my call.
Perhaps l should contact Australian Securities as suggested earlier, has anyone got a good result from this company?
Boy, I wish I came accross your website earlier. Yep, I’m a sucker too, purchased their product. Just like you all it sounded ok, I even asked to view the conditions before I signed, something I’ve always done. Naturally they didn’t provide any details, they told me there was no contract easy in, easy out. Well until you signed up and paid the first months bill. Then you are hit with the “Welcome Pack” which is infact a contract. But I haven’t signed anything. So is this contract bound legally? I’ve cancelled but still have no confirmation that this request has been processed. Apparently I’m now a couple of months in aarears of payment and now have to pay or betheatened with credit collection. I’ve changed my credit card details, hence no more payments to them. I didn’t feel right from the start, my search phrases didn’t list my business until I emailed their technical people, about 4 days it took. And on some days my search phrases didn’t even list my business. Always trust your gut! So, what is the best way out of it, threaten them with Australian Securities? Has anyone had any luck with this? What is the feedback?
ASIC, ACCC, Scamwatch and the police will do nothing more than record your complaint. The same goes for all the government agencies set up to combat scams in the UK.
I’ll be posting an extensive report on Dotcom Chrome on my blog in the next week or so.
They have been using a debt collection agency (I believe they sold the “debts” to an agency) however the agency has now decided not to pursue the debts.
As long as you can prove that you attempted to cancel your “contract” with Dotcom Chrome you should be fine.
The bottom line is that Dotcom Chrome promised you one thing, then provide you with something else. They are well aware of the promises their salesmen make to get a sale. As it says on their FAQ page here http://www.dotcomchrome.co.uk/FAQs_dotcom_chrome.htm : “If any of our representatives have offered 24/7 exposure within the sponsored listings please help us to combat miss selling by informing either our customer service team or shift manager”
Of course, you’ll only discover this AFTER you’ve signed up, and the “shift manager” will merely apologise and refuse to refund your money.
Also, did everyone else know it was DOTCOM CHROME they were signing up with, or did the salesman say he was from GOOGLE CHROME or GOOGLE ADWORDS?
Like everyone else I was sucked in by dotcomchrome - I am so glad I’m not alone but I’m so sorry other people are having to go through this.
I sent my letter off last year to cancel their services and I harrassed them until I got an email confirmation that the letter had been received - which I’m grateful for. I owed some further money and so after much negotiation this year I agreed to one further payment as per the ‘contract’. Unfortunately they maxed out my credit card with debits and have further pending debits waiting to be removed from my account. My Bank has suggested I contact dotcomchrome in the first instance (HA!) so I have done that and I’m waiting to hear back from them.
Evidently they have no record of the letter being received so I owe them for the time since then, even though they weren’t providing me any googleadwords whatsoever. I have informed them that I have confirmation of the letter being received and a copy of the sent letter at the time so they are ‘investigating’ what they can do for me. Depending on their response I will challenge their debits from my card and look at getting my card reissued so they can make no further claims to it… ever!
If anyone has managed to resolve this disaster that doesn’t seem to end it’d be good to hear from you.
They cannot stipulate that cancellation must be by letter. Send them an email to compliance@dotcomchrome.co.uk. That appears to be their legal department. The moment that is sent starts the clock for the 30 day notice period. They can protest as much as they like about not receiving it, must be a letter to Sydney, blah blah but it’s all nonsense and has no legal standing.
Next, any money taken after the expiry of the notice period, get straight on to your credit card company and lodge a dispute. They will send you forms and you will include the email cancellation as evidence. Tell Dotcom that you are doing this and remind them that it was cancelled on such and such a date. Do the same for every subsequent charge.
Dotcom will get nasty when the money is taken back. If it wasn’t legal then the banks wouldn’t do it. Just repond by telling them that taking money without authorisation is theft and that the authorisation was removed when the cancellation notice was sent.
I haven’t heard from them since asking for the personall addresses and names of the company directors to enable me to report these acts of theft to the Greater Manchester Police.
I have had all my money refunded by Westpac and haven’t hear a peep out of Dotcom for 5 weeks.
It’s no use calling the “Sydney Branch Office” it’s only a virtual office, they take a message and route it through to the UK. We cancelled our credit card and when they called up threatening us with debt collection and legal we asked for a statement of the amount we were supposed to owe them, which they say they can’t produce. I have threatened to counter sue them for fraud.
Note:
They will not give you any invoice or statement for their services
They will not provide a receipt for amounts paid to them
They will not accept any payment other than by credit card
They say they cannot accept cancellation by email
These people are scam artists; when they last called we asked them for their Australian business and registration numbers and they said they were exempt although we argued that they must be registered if they are carrying out business with Australians. When they last threatened us I told them that the ATO would be very interested in hearing from me.
If you are told to send a letter to cancel a contract then guess what: YOU SEND A LETTER. Seems pretty simple to me! Why send an email or make a call if you were told to send a letter? and it is perfectly legal to instruct a letter you dunce! try cancellign your tenancy agreement with an email! not going ot happen. Now instead of wasting your time with silly legal advice on forums do as you are told to cancel a contract. Seems to me if you want an end to the contract then you do as your told? unless of course you like the confrontation? Gives you somethign to do with your time? BORING!
Peter Jones. Your argument that we, as customers, MUST cancel our contracts as per the terms of the dotcom chrome contract is very clear.
I’d like to ask you if the other side is equally valid. If dotcom chrome do NOT fulfil the terms of their contract, then are they in breach of their contract and must return ALL monies paid to the unhappy customer?
Now I know the basic “loophole” dotcom chrome operates under is the terminology of how frequently the customer’s ads will appear on page 1 of Google.
The salesman says to the customer in the initial call that the customer will receive ads “24/7 every day for a month”.
The contract says ads will appear “every day for a month”, but when they don’t dotcom chrome argues the contract could be interpreted as “once a day, every day for a month”.
Technically that is correct, but it is NOT what the salesman promised the customer.
Dotcom chrome is well aware of this. They even say on their FAQ page:
Q. Will I always be on Google’s front page?
A. While no company including Google can guarantee that your site will appear on Google’s’ front page 24/7, we do guarantee that your listing will be listed every day. If any of our representatives have offered 24/7 exposure within the sponsored listings please help us to combat miss selling by informing either our customer service team or shift manager
If they were serious about combating “miss selling” then, when a customer complained they were misled, they would offer to cancel the contract or give a refund.
But they don’t. They will deny their salesman ever said such a thing as Jamie MacDougall said to me in an email:
“I believe our salesman told you every day for one month, did you take this to mean 24/7? If so perhaps you should have queried it at the time because it could mean once per day for one month.”
So Peter, should dotcom chrome offer to cancel the contract and refund the money if the customer is misled in this way?
Obviously Peter Jones is one of the idiots at Dotcom. There is nothing in the contract stating that cancellation must be by letter. Furthermore, you don’t get the contract until after you have agreed to pay. The remark about cancelling a tenancy is another example of how these idiots work. If I sent an email to my landlord advising him of my desire to quit the tenancy that would be perfectly reasonable and acceptable on both parties. Now apply that to a company that presents itself as being at the forefront of the IT age. Dotcom Chrome are great at presenting these spurious and ridiculous arguments coupled with insults just to scare people into not following our rights. And the threats of legal action are, frankly, laughable. If you show a Court that you sent a cancellation notice in whatever form to a reasonable address (compliance@dotcomchrome.co.uk) and even better, be in a position to show that it was received, then Dotcom would be laughed out of Court. My advice: send them a cancellation in the way most convenient to you. Keep copies. If possible get a receipt of delivery. Check your credit card very carefully and if money is taken after the 30 day notice period expires, dispute it with your bank. Then wait for all the threats and abuse from dotcom. I would suggest you remind them (copy attached) that you cancelled and only if you want to bait them bother getting into any detailed argument. If you’ve done that then all they can do is huff and puff and hope you capitulate. They have no legal standing, and they know it if only they’d wake up to reality. You might have to cancel you credit card to permanently stop them stealing your money though. By the way, my bank had no problem in recognising the email cancellation as evidence that the agreement was cancelled and refunded all my money.
Wow, this is very interesting reading. I was just putting together a dossier of complaints about Dotcom Chrome so I have some ammunition to send to the ACC, ASIC, WA Scamwatch, and found this site. I was looking for contact details of the Sydney office, of which I’m yet to find.
We also were sucked in last November and our story is very similar to the ones related here by our fellow victims. We are now at the stage of being harassed by Dotcom Chrome for being in ‘arrears’, even though we have canceled, verbally and by email starting from the first month when they did not deliver anything that was promised. I’m copying all the comments I can find to send to the relevant departments so that, hopefully, they will be stopped or at least listed as a scam.
Advice is, don’t touch them with a barge pole. They’re thieves. If you have given your credit card details, report it to the bank and get it cancelled immediately. Our bank has reimbursed us as we showed them plenty of evidence of their dishonest dealings.
Thanks to the owners of conman.com.au, I owe you guys a drink. I was approached by dot com chrome about 30 minutes ago and yes, their offer seemed to be too good to be true. Although I was just about to sign up, two things struck me, the sales person had a gmail account, how does that work. Even the smallest of call centers would have a proper email account. And the pay pal terms said $260 AUD for each month… I thought, wait a minute, each month? Then I googled dot com chrome and landed here. As soon as I told him I will make some calls in the morning, the sales guy lost all his interest and arrogance took over.
I am one of the lucky few that have been able to avoid the scam, but if you are considering it, or if the sales people are on the phone as you read, DO NOT SIGN UP.
They do not have a business registered in Australia. They do not have a .com.au website, as a fact it is dotcomchrome.com.au is still available if you wish to buy it
Good luck with your online promotions campaign and be aware of the fraud… my personal advice, go to a company in your town or area, have a look at the people in the flesh, see if they have a proper office then make an informed decision.
Remember, google can give you a lot of FREE publicity if you are willing to do some research and try it yourself.
So Ben,
You were called by a company selling you a service monthly? You then proceeded to their website which continued to tell you that they were offering you a subscription service via paypal and this makes them a scam? Explain to me how exactly that works, im intruiged, you sign up on this companies website via a paypal subscribe button that says $260 per month and the company tried to scam you?
I took out a subscription in April this year. After the first month’s trial, I contacted them to cancel the contract. Unfortunately, I was persuaded t carry on with the campaign. On 13 May, I e-mailed the UK office to find out how to cancel my contract. I was told to send a letter to BT Tower, Level 32, 1 Market Street, Sydney. I sent off the letter of cancellation and also e-mailed, through their contact page, the Sydney operation. I did not get a reply. The next thing I know is that they have taken the next instalment from my credit card - $267.50. I contacted the UK again to see if they could help in cancelling the contract. I was told that their database showed that the contract was still in operation and ‘did I send the letter by registered post’. I resent the letter, registered this time, e-mailed Sydney and the UK plus attached original letter of cancellation to the UK address. I still got no reply but seeing as how no payment for June came out of my account, I thought the contract had been cancelled. Yesterday, 12 July 2 x $267.50 were charged to my credit card. I tried to get to their websites but now they show ‘Under Construction’ on them all. I have contacted my bank to try to recover the money. I have also e-mailed the UK but have not had a response yet.
I should have been suspicious when, you are able to initiate an online contract over the phone, but to cancel it, you have to write a letter. I notice in their welcome pack that Sydney is the only one that does not have a contact number.