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Is Jeftel A Spamming Front?
from the questions,-questions... dept
Earlier this week, we wrote about a new offering from a company named Jeftel for what they claimed to be a P2P mail system that would let individuals send encrypted email directly from PC to PC, without having copies cached on mail servers. The company claimed that this would somehow wipe out spam, though the fine print clearly shows that's only the case if people only used the Jeftel product. In the post, I was a bit skeptical of the claims, but was at least open to the idea that some people might want it. In the comments, however, people started writing slightly odd replies, absolutely praising Jeftel as if it were the answer to all spam problems... something that made no sense. The responses read (as someone else suggested) like people for the company trying to hype it up. A different article on the subject mentioned that the company itself was backed by a mysterious millionaire. Now, we've received an anonymous submission from someone who admits they are a "disgruntled ex-employee" of the company -- but points to a lot of evidence that, rather than being a company trying to get rid of spam, Jeftel might be a front for a spam operation. I have no idea if the claims are true -- but if you follow the leads submitted by whoever this person is, they do raise some questions. In going through the links, there are a few things that could not be easily verified. However, everything that was checkable did agree -- with one exception: the addresses of the two companies do not appear to match exactly. One is listed at 10 Sweet Street, and the other at 11. Also, the fact that this is anonymously submitted, without a way to contact the writer (despite his own suggestions to contact him twice) makes me suspicious as well. Either way, there's enough evidence presented, that it seems worth putting the information out there to see if anyone can provide more background to prove or disprove the allegations. We have not been able to verify enough of the information to stand behind this allegation, but are presenting it so that hopefully others can look into this more thoroughly. You can read the full submission after the jump.
Submitted anonymously:
-------------------------
There has been a lot of talk about a new company called Jeftel. They are not the only ones. It appears that there are a lot of computer related websites referring to this new company owned by a mystery millionaire.
Hopefully, this will shed some light on who the millionaire is and why they wanted it to be kept a secret.
This article claims to be about a company which has developed a system to stop spamming but is in fact owned by the same person who owns one of the countries biggest spammers which has duped a number of British businesses. The people who sign up to these email addresses from Jeftel will then open themselves up to receive spam email from this other company. Please bear with me as I show you the obvious links between these 2 companies and then show you why we know that WWT is a known spammer which has been listed as a spammer at various points by all spamming agencies are has previously had their ISP service terminated for spamming by Pipex. I should point out that I am a disgruntled ex-employee which is why I know all of the company’s secrets but all of the above is true and hopefully the contacts I have listed will help you get the information you need. It really is pretty simple to verify all of this information. If anything needs clarification, let me know via email. (Editor's Note: Despite this point, the submitter did not leave an email address which is a reason to be skeptical.)
Take a quick look at the guardian link above and they look at www.jeftel.com. The thing to note first is that the terms and conditions of Jeftel states:
"3.3 The User by accepting these terms and conditions grants permission for the Company to utilise the processor and bandwidth of the User's computer for the limited purpose of facilitating communication between others within the Jefcom Community."
The above clause basically gives Jeftel the right to send spam to whoever has signed up to the service and given the history of their sister company will undoubtedly do so. This is despite the fact that Jeftel is advertising that it will stop spam and The Guardian article appears to be endorsing this view. In short, it basically means that you are effectively paying 25 pounds and giving your permission to be spammed.
The company referred to in the Guardian advert is Jeftel (Company registration number 04760795) which is owned by Jeffrey C Morris who is also the owner of a company called WWT Media (03839629).
There are a number of other similarities between the two companies. The article refers to Robert Barr as "Robert Barr, head of development at Jeftel". Companies House records show him as having been a director of WWT. (Editor's note: We could not find this info at the Companies House website, but a Google search, does, indeed, suggest that Robert Barr has been, a director of WWT).
BARR, ROBERT ADAM
DIRECTOR
CROW HOUSE FARM
BURTON LEONARD
HARROGATE
NORTH YORKSHIRE
HG3 3SX
Appointed: 13/01/2000
Nationality: BRITISH
Date of Birth: 20/03/1959
Company Appointments: 54
If you check out the whois on the domain name www.jeftel.com you will see that the registrant address is 10 Sweet Street, Leeds which is the same address as WWT and you will see that Andrew Bland is the administrative contact. Andrew Bland is also a director of WWT
Registrant: hakay limited 10 sweet street holbeck leeds ls11 9db UK Domain name: jeftel.com Created on: 2004-02-10 Expires on: 2006-02-10 Administrative contact: andrew bland 10 sweet street holbeck leeds ls11 9db UK +44.1132451460
If you look at the user agreement on https://www.jeftel.com/jeftel/shop/tandc.cfm you will see their registered office as 10 Sweet Street.
It should also be noted that both of the properties (the two listed at companies house) are in fact owned by Jeffrey Morris.
In February of this year, Pipex terminated the service of WWT for spamming. They are currently being offered ISP service by Kingston Communications whose Chairman is an old friend of Jeffrey Morris. They were both directors of a company called Minor Planey where Jeffrey Morris was the CEO and David Abrahams is still Chairman.
Over the past few years, WWT Media, previously known as worldwidetender.com have told clients and prospective clients that they have a list of people who have opted in to receive advertisements via email i.e. not spam. However, their list is primarily a list of names they got hold of from the internet and using call centres.
Here are some details of companies who have been duped:
Holdtime – speak to John Sutton
Richard MacNee – PHVC
Andrew Wright – Transforce
I have contact details for these and other people if needed. (Editor's Note: Again, no contact info was given by this submitter, so there is no way to contact the submitter).
If you view google groups and do searches on worldwidetender or worldwidesalesoffice, you will see details of their spams and see details on some other companies they have duped. They claim to be working for British Telecom, Mercedes and Jaguar but this isn't true.
These client is listed above have received multiple complaints from people moaning about receiving spam. They complained to WWT but WWT had the contract written in such a way that nobody could take them to court for this. .
In addition, by sending unsolicited bulk emails, the client has broken the terms and conditions of their ISP. However, until last year, their ISP was First Net (owned by Minor Planet at the time and Jeffrey Morris was a Director and his friend David Abrahams was the Chief Executive). Pipex bought First Net and promptly got rid of them for spamming in February. However, WWT have since been given safe haven to continue spamming by another ISP known as Kingston Communications. David Abrahams is Chairman there too. Abrahams is actually risking the ability of Kingston to operate as an ISP. Kingston Communications is a listed company whose primary shareholder is Hull City Council (and so ultimately the people of Hull). Kingston Telecommunications do have what are termed as netblocks for this company meaning they are being watched for spamming. (Editor's Note: We have not been able to verify any of this)
Kingston's AUP for their customers is as follows as detailed on their website. This is being broken by WWT.
- You must not use Kingston Communications email system to send unsolicited emails, bulk or otherwise.
- You should only send bulk email where the receiver has "opted in" and has the option to "opt out" at any time or it is legitimate advertising material for your own products or services, and the addresses have been obtained in the course of a sale, and that the receiver has not opted out or raised an objection to this.
- Kingston Communications requires all customers who wish to send emails that consist of exactly the same content to more than 100 users, to contact us first to agree an appropriate schedule and to confirm in writing this activity complies with EU legislation and Kingston Acceptable Use Policy.
-------------- End of Submission
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
jeftel
If jeftel is a spamming front, why is it not being given away for free? Think about it, links to WWT or not. Also, take the time to read the T&Cs on their website; users can't be spammed.
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Re: jeftel
There are two pretty good answers to those rather bland statements:
1)Charging makes this thing look almost like a credible and robust product, and given that there are plenty of people running businesses out there who aren't net-savvy, they might just fall for it, especially if it was backed up by relentless off-line cold-calling and a sales force trained in the right buzzwords.
2)Those T&Cs 'banning' spam actually define spam as "unsolicited email which is sent repetitively (more than five times in a period of 30 days or more)". So you could receive receive unsolicited email, but it isn't "Spam" if it doesn't violate this definition. The terms do state that no user can send more than 200 emails a day without express permission of Jeftel, but I'm sure that WWT as an entirely seperate entity, only sharing the same owner, would get short shrift from Jeftel should it ever dream of making such a request.
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Re: jeftel
Yeah right!!
Jeffrey Morris the mysterious millionaire who owns both WWT Media and Jeftel, contracted out the collection of email addresses to call centres in India.
The script which was given to the call centres to follow was complete garbage and had the call centres promising that only ever one email would be sent to the recipients involved. This is where the supposed database of 'opt-in' contacts comes from - the recipients (or their receptionists in most cases) were duped into giving out their email addresses.
Jef gave the database manager (who now works for jeftel and is featured on their website as a Data Analyst) a target of 1 Million email addresses and the brief that he didn't care how he got them. The call centres were farming email addresses and using other methods
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Re: jeftel
Yeah right!!
Jeffrey Morris the mysterious millionaire who owns both WWT Media and Jeftel, contracted out the collection of email addresses to call centres in India.
The script which was given to the call centres to follow was complete garbage and had the call centres promising that only ever one email would be sent to the recipients involved. This is where the supposed database of 'opt-in' contacts comes from - the recipients (or their receptionists in most cases) were duped into giving out their email addresses.
Jef gave the database manager (who now works for jeftel and is featured on their website as a Data Analyst) a target of 1 Million email addresses and the brief that he didn't care how he got them. The call centres were farming email addresses and using other methods to acheive this target.
I really hope that people aren't duped into signing up with Jeftel - you can almost guarantee that the email addresses gathered from Jeftels signup process will end up on WWT's databases.
Sign up at your own risk!!!
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Re: jeftel
more info - this should give some more info on the depth to which this guy is prepared to plummet. How can they think spamming newsgroups and forums would be a good idea???
http://www.webuser.co.uk/cgi-bin/forums/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=email&Number=112153&page=0&vie w=collapsed&sb=5&o=93
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Re: jeftel
ROTFLMAO! A spammer who launches an anti-spam solution, then chooses to market it by spamming. Looks like they were witless enough to try it on a few other forums too. A genius launch strategy, truly inspired. These guys claim to be a tech company, and they spammed IT-specialist forums with obvious fluff, and from their own connection?? Don't think this is quite the 'buzz' their marketing masterminds were after. Just a thought here, but maybe Jefftel are 'straight up', I'm not sure a genuine spammer would be THAT inept.
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Re: jeftel
I am investigating the activities relating to Jeftel/WWT as part of litigation proceedings. I would be interested in speaking to any of the following:
- anyone from AOL or any other group or ISP that has ever blocked WWT or its affiliates
- any company who has ever used WWT Media for email marketing services
- anyone who has received unsolicited bulk email from WWT Media or its affiliates
Please reply to ukoffice@asiancallcentres.co.uk
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a forum for jeftel's users
Hi, i suggest to create a forum in order to have more explainations about these company and the software.
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Re: jeftel
Hi
We were approached by WWT selling their E Mail marketing services. The gentlemen came to visit it us last week and gave us a professional presentation. All seemed genuine with their explanation that they have people constantly calling all these companies and getting permission to send E Mails offering products. The technical side of being able to follow live the result of the E Mail send out was fascinating.
However once we started investigating the background of the company we discovered these forums about Jeftel and WWT and the spamming and the Asian Call centres.....pretty shocking how companies can misrepresent themselves so well.
Regards
Lizzy Templer
Premier Aviation UK LTD
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Re: jeftel
I had a visit today from a representative of WWT who gave me the same information as Lizzy Templer describes above. I decided to do a bit of background work into this company and found a few forums where the comments on this company were very forthright. I pasted some of the comments I had found into an e mail and sent it to the sales rep for his comments. His e mail address at WWT was blocked and the e mail undeliverable....You will not be surprised to note we will not be pursuing our original enquiry.
Brian McGrath
GBM Solutions Ltd.
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Re: jeftel
Ditto! Had them in yesterday
Shall not be signing up!
Shisters...
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Re: Re: jeftel - ex employee
do beleive it they're idiots!! a bunch of yes men bowing down to a pompous millionaire. by all accounts after seeing the way he works i'm surprised he's got where he's got to. his new venture is Amteus ( secure instant messaging and emails) which would be a good product if it actually worked without the help of a whole IT department trying to get audio out of your Voip handset!!
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Re: jeftel
Jeftel has now been rebranded as Amteus. As the sales man said to me ... We have rebranded because this was a much nicer name.
The moment you register the amteus software you start receiving spam emails from WWT Media, which I was never made aware of. I only had to wait 6 hours before I received the first one.
When you start to install the software it asks you to make sure your outlook or outlook express is not open...with no explanation. If you read the terms and agreement of the use of the software It leaves the end user totally liable for every eventuallity, including financial liability if your computer infects their server with a virus. The T&C obviously leaves no liability for Amteus.
This company cannot be trusted and I would recommend that no one uses their services. It is definately a front for spamming...I've proved it. Try it out yourself.... if you dare.
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Jeftel rebrand as Amteus ?
So Jeftel has become Amteus? There's a first, I've never heard of a company being rebranded 8 months after launch because they'd thought of a 'nicer' name. It does sound less 'ego trip'ish but bad luck picking a name that is a few characters removed from 'Amateurs'. Better luck next time, lads.
Over the last few years I've had to put up a constant campaign of cold calling from numerous businesses connected with Mr Morris, be it Minor Planet, WWT / Worldwide Tender, and now Jeftel / Amteus. From this rebrand, maybe Jeffrey Morris is thinking his name might be a liability, couldn't help but notice that even Minor Planet are distancing themselves from their 'Morris Years' here.
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WWTmedia rebranded as The Media Buzz.
As an addition to all the comments above just though I would let you know what I have learned about WWTmedia. They have decided to change their name to The Media Buzz.
Also they have a habit of claiming customers they don't have. When they say we have customers like...........If you check you will find it is not true.
Oh and the going rate for a e-mail campaign is £0.40 per e-mail. Based on 10,000 emails. A very lucrative profit
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jeftel - WWTmedia rebranded to The Media Buzz
As an addition to all the comments above just though I would let you know what I have learned about WWTmedia. They have decided to change their name to The Media Buzz.
Also they have a habit of claiming customers they don't have. When they say we have customers like...........If you check you will find it is not true.
Oh and the going rate for a e-mail campaign is £0.40 per e-mail. Based on 10,000 emails. A very lucrative profit
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Re: jeftel - WWTmedia rebranded to The Media Buzz
i worked for wwt media in leeds, and was considerign reporting them to somewhere and just happened upon this site whislt scouring the interweb. I was one of the 'cold callers', we'd ring up businesses and 'check' their email addresses, basically tricking them into giving out as many email addresses as possible. the way the system worked was that they'd send out what was called a confirmation email which, when opened, would auto subscribe them to a mailign lsit so they'd receive up to 5 emails a day from companies usign WWT for advertising.
I hated this job, and it made me feel like any soul i had left was crawlign otu of my left ear so all i coudl do to try and make up for it is offer to take people off the mailing lists, i nearly got sacked for this obviously... but the worst bit was when peopel themselves asked to be taken off the list I'd give the name and details to a supervisor who would tell me off, and also we sat next to the people who were responsible for takign the names off of the system. there was a queue of about 10000.
oh yeah, and i met jeffrey morris once i think, and the rest of the directors all look like ex cons.
btw, i was actually promoted from beign a temp because i was gettign the most email addresses, but quit soon after being told what 'really goes on' with the recipients of the emails.
fun days.
hope soem of this has been of interest to someone.
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Re: jeftel - WWTmedia rebranded to The Media Buzz
I own a small business and in my first year I was duped by a fellow Leeds company known as WWT. They led me to believe that using them for email marketing would lead to a vast increase in sales as their database was made up from people who would be interested in my products. Somewhat naively I believed them only to realize very quickly it was a big mistake. I asked them from one Leeds Company to another, from a big company to a small one, if they could please terminate the campaign as no one was interested at all. I even offered a few thousand pounds, which I couldn't really offrd to get out of it. They response was a contract was a contract and they had an unbreakable one. After consulting a solicitor at further cost to myself I realized there was nothing at all to be done. They cost my business £13 - 14.000. For a business with no financial backing this was a real blow and one I have been trying to overcome ever since. It has had major effects on my ability to develop my business.
My advice is to stay away from this company -
Whatever its current name is.
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Re: jeftel - WWTmedia rebranded to The Media Buzz
I apologise if i had anything to do with this, they're a pretty dodgy set up to be honest, i knwo they keep rebranding and jeffrey morris has his chubby money grabbign fingers in a lot of dodgy pies, especially around the leeds area - there's a minorplanet/jeftel office aroudn the corner from my house. they know what they're doing and they WILL screw you over, stay clear of anything to do with jeffrey morris is my advice
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Re: jeftel - WWTmedia rebranded to The Media Buzz
I worked for a call center in Manila whose job it was to gather these email addresses. We were told by a obnoxious guy called Charles who worked for WWT Media/worldwidetender.com/The Media Buzz and also Jeftel to not tell people who we were and to act as though we knew the people. If they wouldnt give us the email address, we would ask for the website. Once we knew that, we guessed the email address and asked if that was right. Once we had the right format such as firstname.surname@domainname.com we would find the names of the other senior people and they would all be on the list. How is this "opt-in"? I also remember that they changed their practice so that we stopped calling sole-traders when the law about spamming came in. Basically, they knew they were spammers and were always trying to by-pass the law. Don't use them. It's a waste of money.
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The Media Buzz
Slightly contradictory to what is said to all your comments, I have used WWT/Tmb for a year now and with very good success and shall continue to do so.
My company targets directors of other companies and this is the ideal (and now proven) way to get fast responses.
I think people forget that marketing is marketing, nothing is guaranteed! The weather can change response levels!
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Re: The Media Buzz
There is a big difference between getting results and the whole thing being one big con. I would argue that any good company would not feel the need to change names quite as often as these people do.
and what company are you from Seamus that is doing so well out of the media buzz?
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Re: The Media Buzz
How much did they not pay you to type that?
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Employees
I don't know about all their illegal business activities, but I do know that my ex tried to get out of paying his childrens's maintenance after telling me that the company (Jeftel) closed down. I heard from him a year later and lo and behold he now works for Amteus - same telephone numbers and addresses.
Seems some of the employees are as immoral as the owners
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amteus
I was interviewed for a development job at Amteus in summer '05 and the moment I stepped into the building it felt 'weird'.
The product did less than a VPN and was entirely proprietary; apart from secure VoIP I couldn't see any merit in the IM/Mail/filesharing aspects of it.
The development team seemed to consist of one manager and three techies (two of whom apparently disappeared a week or so after my interview) and I kept getting calls back from my agent about how they were on the verge of securing a several million dollar contract from something to do with the US Gov't - errrr, the chances of the US Gob't using crypto software developed overseas....? ;)
Things dragged on for a couple of months - the tech director wanted to make me an offer (quite a good one, at the time), but they were 'waiting to secure funding' -- Perhaps fortunately afer most of the development team disappeared (I notice the tech director isn't the guy who interviewed me) my agent called and said they'd frozen recruitment -- seems that these days they're only hiring cold-callers.
The guy in charge of development was a bright bloke with a few good ideas; I'm not sure how rigidly compartmentalised the Morris organisation was - I doubt the techies were directly involved in spamming, but there were other Morris companies in the building...
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It is not a spam house but it is not not a spam house, it is somewhere in between, though it does not run buy the rules. Any company doing business with them does so in the best intentions, it is just a shame that the marketing to promote the said company is indeed, 85% spam, though those who are on the list are on by the most loosest of legal lines between spam and not spam.
I was a long term employee I left the comp well over 2 years ago now, but it was in a desperate shape then, so who knows what depths it will sink too. J Morris is basically an idiot who was lucky once (by backing a good minded businessman) , now he is just what he is.... a clueless fool pumping cash into bad ways to make money...and even doing that badly! Last time I talked to some of the people that still worked their he was doing voip, but still the solution was as poor as ever. Anyway...I came by this page trying to look up some old friends so I shall continue my hunt. J Morris if you read this I would just like to say that you are a total ass and this is why you always fail! you and blind to the fake friends that use or hang on around you just for a wage.....
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AMTEUS
I have worked within the IT channel for quite some time and Amteus is the biggest lie of all time. Please DO NOT purchase any of there equipment!!! They sold the kit to us as a re-seller, promised the earth and delivered nothing. STAY AWAY!!!!!!!
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not directly a technical issue I know ..but perhaps indicative of the company ....I am have been awaiting payment of an invoice from Amteus for five months now. The employees are good guys but one of them actually told me ( in confidence ) on the phone that the only way for me to get payment was to take them to court. He implied that it was basically'Jeffrey's' policy not to sign off payment on anything ....
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The media buzz
Jeff Morris is a crook! and so are most of his senior management at the media buzz and Amteus plc. ( they are one and the same) run from an office on cardigan lane in leeds.
Andy nicholson is his main dogs body and he is full of crap too.
Do not do business with either firm if you do you will regret it.
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Shock
I used to work for the company and WTF i'm shocked 2 see this but always knew hence why I googled jeff. Couldn't understand how they were collecting so much data if they have only 20+ data collectors in-house. So obviously it is all being done in India or elsewhere. I had heard about Minor Planet but not Jeftel the site that I used 2 send sample emails from campaigns that we have done for so called companies in the past was still down as World Wide Tender!! I actually had a complaint call from a company saying that you are sending emails 2 our company 3 times a day with the subject line saying "New employee in your office" and it turned out 2 be and email about office vending machines!!!
In training Andy Nicholson actually said: "we have clever tech geeks that are able to get through spam filters etc by wording on the subject line" and at that moment I thought 2 myself well how is that "opt in" and "uk's largest privately owned opt in membership database" that we were told to say in our script ohh and the last pile of bollocks I learned before leaving was....... We are founders of the DMA (direct marketing association) "founders" so dont that mean we make the rules????????????????
Staff were getting sacked left right and centre hence why I left so soon. I only ever seen jeff a few times but heard him more shouting out of his office at someone
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Re: Shock
I think you are wrong, the media buzz are affiliated with the DMA not founders! Get your facts right
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WWT Media is now called The Media Buzz and if you look at their website you will see it's now cleverly worded. Take a look at http://www.themediabuzz.com/database2.html and you'll see that it talks about their process for collecting data but at no point mentions getting permission to email people (hence it's just bulk spam). I spoke to the call centre in The Philippines who used to collect their email addresses. They weren't paid and took them to court. Jeffrey Morris then did a counterclaim which was a load of bullshit but actually incriminated themselves. What Morris didn't realise was that 20 current and former employees had given the Philippines call centre details of how the WWT scam worked and that if they didn't pay up, they would expose them. Jeffrey Morris paid up....
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COMPLETE RIP OFF
What a bunch of complete idiots run the media buzz and amteus. Jeffrey Morris is a clueless plonker who landed on his feet by chance and now runs two failing companies. He makes rash decisions without giving any consideration to how the office are going to back the idea and make it work. We were told to 'do whatever it takes to get a sale'. We were told to sell email marketing over 12 months for £750 pm - the contract was worth £9000. We were assured that a 'leasing company' was in place who would pay the media buzz in full for the contract and we would then get a tasty bonus upto 10% - a lot of money. They also told me it wasn’t spamming.
What they failed to tell us was that that the 12 month interest free credit was subject to credit status and if the company failed credit they had to pay upto 6 months payments in advance. They also did not tell us that there isn’t a ‘cooling off’ period so if the customer cannot pay make the 6 payments in advance they cannot cancel. To get out of the contract the customer has pay a ridiculous amount of money and in some cases they are suing the clients for the full contract amount! I also found out that they lied to the leasing companies about the product so the leasing companies Genesis and Syscap are suing Jeffrey for all the money they have paid out.
They hoodwink new sales staff to hoodwink poor business people. It’s a complete scam. They have regular sales staff meetings in one of the Andy Booth actually tried to motivate us by telling us that if we didn’t get any sales he would have to send his spanking new sports car back. Well I don’t know about anyone else but that didn’t motivate me. Another director Vicky Roberts also drives around in her new Range Rover and the Jeffreys kids in their expense cars. How do they sleep at night.
They have no idea how to manage people and they are just greedy for money getting what they can out the staff and people they con into signing up to their services.
Check the contract there are no guarantees. They buy data and send out an email that says from now on you will receive marketing material and if you don’t want it you have to reply to the email. People have not opted in. They just haven’t opted out. Its not really the same thing is it.
Don’t do business with these crooks and see other blogs on this site for jeftel which was the previous name of the company.
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Crooks
I worked for the Media Buzz up until 3 weeks ago, and I can tell you that they are the most crooked company I've ever come across. Put short, they made 10 people redundant without warning because they have run out of cash (they sacked one the day before for questioning the accounts department). They changed the pay date of employees without notice, they wouldn't even buy water to fill the water fountain! I was one of those sacked, and I am still waiting on over £1300 wages that they owe me.
But, in terms of being sleazy with customers; the opt out on the e-mails doesn't actually work, it just takes your e-mail address out of the loop for around 3 months, they promise clients that they will get (example) 30,000 e-mail addresses for them and actually get around 10,000, they lie about methods of collection (they even told one prospective client that we run night shifts - who makes calls to other UK numbers during the night to get their e-mail addresses?!), and the most common line used is "we'd just like to take your e-mail address so we can send you an updated newsletter from Jaguar/Porsche/BT etc.".
If anybody questions their morals, the reply is "we've only ever lost one court case and that was only because we turned up on the wrong date"!!! Crooks AND they know it.
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I'm not sure they only lost 1 court case. They lost a case to a Philippines call centre who were collecting their email addresses. The Media Buzz's counterclaim was that the email addresses they collected were spam. How can the email addresses be spam? They only become spam when you send them. When the Philippines company pointed out that they knew how their scam worked and that they had over 20 current and former employees who would testify that the company knew they were defrauding people, they paid up their outstanding debts before going to court.
If you look at the media buzz's website, they now make no mention of being "opt-in" email addresses. Their sales guys say it in person though but they've been told not to write it down.
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Well where to start with these people... they've been conning cutomers and staff alike for a long time now. The sad thing is that the ideas for the products were always sound but the people in charge are not only imcompetent but dangerous. They've recently gotten rid of a hell of a lot of their staff and continue to over promise and deliver nothing.
The chairman is currently attempting to raise money from the city for his Amteus "I'm Jack" product which promises to revolutionise that way schools, parents and pupils communicate with each other within a safe environment. Again, a sound idea in principal. However, the same people are in charge of this "I/m Jack" offering as were in charge of WorldWideTender, WWT Media, The Media Buzz and Amteus with the same idiots running it, developing it, supposedly delivering it. They're definitely trying to sell it but with no success.
Undoubtedly the same problems will occur. Stay clear of The Media Buzz and Im Jack (Amteus) or whatever they want to call it.
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What they also did was another swindle. They had 2 companies running. They dissolved the one company so that everyone who was suing them couldnt claim their money. The second company is still going but used the old company names so they could still sue the people who they claimed owed them money. Both used the name "The Media Buzz Limited" and both used WWT Media Limited except the one company put spaces between the W & The T. Absolute scammers from start to finish...check out companies house for these details.
Name & Registered Office:
W W T MEDIA LIMITED
10 SWEET STREET, HOLBECK
LEEDS
YORKSHIRE
LS11 9DB
Company No. 05357491
Status: Dissolved 14/11/2006
Date of Incorporation: 08/02/2005
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Company Type: Private Limited Company
Nature of Business (SIC(03)):
None Supplied
Accounting Reference Date: 28/02
Last Accounts Made Up To: (NO ACCOUNTS FILED)
Next Accounts Due:
Last Return Made Up To:
Next Return Due:
Previous Names:
Date of change Previous Name
18/05/2005 THE MEDIA BUZZ LIMITED
Branch Details
There are no branches associated with this company.
Oversea Company Info
There are no Oversea Details associated with this company.
Name & Registered Office:
THE MEDIA BUZZ LIMITED
57 CARDIGAN LANE
LEEDS
WEST YORKSHIRE
LS4 2LE
Company No. 03839629
Status: Active
Date of Incorporation: 10/09/1999
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Company Type: Private Limited Company
Nature of Business (SIC(03)):
7240 - Data base activities
Accounting Reference Date: 30/09
Last Accounts Made Up To: 30/09/2006 (FULL)
Next Accounts Due: 30/07/2008 OVERDUE
Last Return Made Up To: 31/08/2008
Next Return Due: 28/09/2009
Last Members List: 31/08/2008
Previous Names:
Date of change Previous Name
13/01/2000 BEAUTIFULMOVERS LIMITED
15/06/2004 W W T (MEDIA) LIMITED
18/05/2005 WWT MEDIA LIMITED
22/10/2003 WORLDWIDETENDER.COM LIMITED
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Jeffrey resigns
Looks like he's put another two stooges in the hot seat while he sidles off into the shadows again.
I wonder where the £750,000 that was allegedly raised in December has gone. I imagine that it's not too far out of his clutch!
As another former employee, I agree with most of the previous criticism. Smoke and Mirrors, flash cars, hangers on with low IQs, little substance and a product that never worked.
I feel sorry for all the small firms and one man bands that Jeff never pays. He would scream and shout and not sign cheques on a weekly basis- terrible.
To the new CEO and his mate. Look around fast. Go with your gut instinct and get out.
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So it's finally ended...
I just hope that the employees get paid. I really feel for them. Jeff has spent the last 6 months at least plowing The Media Buzz gains into his Wamey, Amteus, I'm Jack, set of solutions. He's giving it away for free to get schools nicely tied in.
I just hope that the schools realise who he is, what he's about and why he's "giving away" products.
Potential buyers beware...
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Wamey
Do not, I repeat DO NOT deal with Wamey, Amteus, Im Jack, The Media Buzz or even the new Double Wamey. What a set of absolute idiots run this/these companies! Double Wamey is a rebranded version of what The Media Buzz offered i.e marketing via email to an unresponsive database and getting NO RESULTS! Stay clear of Jeffrey and his stupid scam companies, they clearly have no money and have rebranded to avoid all of the company debts!
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Double Wamey
I have recentley ran a campaign by double wamey and had a great return on investment, will definately be conducting another plan to market with the Wamey team in the run up to Christmas, great work guys
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Wamey
I also have reccomended double wamey to my partners who again have resulted in good results, double wamey is a fatastic sales opportunity as long as you have a genuine offer.
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Sounds like they have one of the insiders putting comments on here, typical! Mmmmmm I wonder who it is? One of the employees?
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pupik
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Re:
Sorry about previous post guys, typing error. Anyway, Jeffrey Morris is at it again. He has re-branded ImJack Plc and is calling it 'Kwercus' Could it be that yet agin people have discovered that he is involved. For those of you who don't know what i'm going on about, let me tell you. This man has re-named the same company/product several times. To the best of my knowledge it started life as jeftel, then amteus, then imjack, and now he is calling it Kwercus. Whats amazing is that he has got this prof tanya byrom involved. Tanya, do you know what you are getting involved with?
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Kwercus has Prof Tanya Byron on Payroll, why else would she advertise this rubbish?
If you go through recent Amteus/IMJack (now Kwercus) announcements, you'll see that Prof Byron is on the payroll. That's why she's putting her weight behind this marketing campaign. Not simply professional interest in the welfare of youngsters, but taking more of Mr Jeffrey Morris' money.
If you know anyone in a school, tell them about this. They are a slick looking company with good marketing, but behind the scenes it's another story. Look at the Facebook group for ex-employees of The Media Buzz (sister company and formerly co-located).
If you know a school governer, teacher or member of the PTA, please warn them about Kwercus and don't just believe them because they paid Prof Byron to use her name.
Read the rest of this forum and dig a bit deeper into the other businesses that Morris runs.
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He is at it again
Yes, you are probably right. Rumour has it that man Morris together with his henchmen have re-branded yet again. I have to agree that after three years of unsuccessfully trying to give it away to schools FREE that it seems at least a little strange all of a sudden that the gov't are endorsing it.
If this deal went through I have a feeling it would possibly lead to a ministerial casualty and one never knows - possible prosecution.
I hear that someone is speaking to the financial press about it and im sure will put pay to this individual, Morris, once and for all.
As the saying goes, If you are no good at something then people tend to compensate for their inefficiencies in other ways - suffice to say Morris is no businessman. I will leave it to you to guess how he compensates for it.
Morris should do what he knows best................................NOTHING!!!!!
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He is at it again
Yes, you are probably right. Rumour has it that man Morris together with his henchmen have re-branded yet again. I have to agree that after three years of unsuccessfully trying to give it away to schools FREE that it seems at least a little strange all of a sudden that the gov't are endorsing it.
If this deal went through I have a feeling it would possibly lead to a ministerial casualty and one never knows - possible prosecution.
I hear that someone is speaking to the financial press about it and im sure will put pay to this individual, Morris, once and for all.
As the saying goes, If you are no good at something then people tend to compensate for their inefficiencies in other ways - suffice to say Morris is no businessman. I will leave it to you to guess how he compensates for it.
Morris should do what he knows best................................NOTHING!!!!!
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Re: He is at it again
Yes, I 've also read today on another site that the financial press are very interested in what Morris is up to. I also read that a letter is being sent to Ed Balls regarding Morris, making sure he is aware of his past and his business practices along with a mention of tanya byrom's agency being on his books. Jeff Morris has to realise that you can't go around screwing people and expect to get away with it, and those people that have been screwed will always be there to remind him. I'm sure once tanya realises what she has got her self involved with, she will be waving' good old jeff tatar', as i am sure how ever much she is being payed, it will not be worth ruining her career for. Having said that, when you read todays announcement, it is unlikley imjack/amteus/kwercus or whatever he is calling it today will be around in the new year.
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KWERCUS
Looks to me as if this spammer Morris has leveraged a relationship who in turn has made a statement of intent and that they will try and raise money on the back of intent - NOTE....NO COMMITMENT
As I understand it and i have it on good authority that they are just using this meaningless statement to try and pull the wool over prospective investors eyes.
DO NOT INVEST - DO NOT BE FOOLED
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How lovely to see this dim wit (so called businessman) highlighted. He doesnt know the first thing about business in fact the the only person who thinks he is a good businessman is HIM.
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