Recently my sister was a victim of a quite clever scam which cost her quite a bit of money as you’ll soon find out.

The company is called SheriffRatings.com who has called her several times offering Google Package which basically mean that they create the entry for her business within their directory -- which by they way isn’t easy to find on google anyway.

After several times saying no to their offer, they said that they can offer it to her for only “four ninety nine” -- so to make sure they won’t call her again, she said OK -- if it’s only four ninety nine then ok.

So, what she’s done was to give them her card details plus the address etc (that’s right -- silly girl). Very soon she has realised what it really was.

A few days later she’s checked her account balance on-line -- and what she found out was that there was a payment made to SheriffRatings.com for £499.00. I don’t think I have to tell you how angry she was.

She’s send them an email asking what’s happend, she has even called them and afrer they’ve listened to the recorded conversation they said that the representative said four ninety nine which for them means 499 and that they wont refund the money.

I believe you could argue here, but for me four ninety nine clearly means £4.99 -- if I was about to suggest 499 then I would most probably say four nine nine -- but that’s what I would do and there’s no specific rule for the shortcuts I guess.

After that she went to the bank to tell them to stop any future payments to the SheriffRatings.com, however a week later she’s been charged another £233.83 and she’s found out about it first by receiving an email from them with the invoice for: Google 75 Tariff (75 Leads) + Yahoo + MS -- which she definitely didn’t order.

Again -- phone call, email, but no response. What she had to do was to close her bank account and open new one with other bank to prevent herself from the future charges as the bank didn’t seem to respond to her request.

Just to make sure that you won’t become a victim of this scam, here are the details of the rip off company taken from their invoice:

Sheriff Directories Ltd
Unit K302
Tower Bridge Business Complex
1 0 0 Clements Rd
London
SE16 4DG
VAT Reg No: 877162689

Their website address is: www.sheriffratings.com -- you can check for yourself -- and remember:

DO NOT GIVE YOUR DETAILS TO ANYONE OVER THE PHONE! -- especially when someone calls you, as it might be absolutely anyone.