I received a call from Worldwide Who's Who trying to sell me a package to list my professional services with them. I was eventually persuaded to sign up for two years at "a special discounted price", which included two free airline tickets. The deal was only $99 so I thought this was a reasonable marketing cost - especially if I could get free flights thrown in!
A few weeks after receiving my welcome pack, I had another phone call from the US. This was very early in the morning my time. The spiel this time was about a personal Press Release and how they needed to check if the information they'd gathered was correct, as this would be the basis on which the release would be "professionally" written. Only at the end of the conversation was a further amount of money mentioned and I confess that as I was hardly awake, I agreed to this being charged to my credit card. Big mistake. I have since paid almost $500 more for this so-called professionally written press release.
I had to almost completely re-write it because it was so poorly constructed (a child in grade school could have done better). They said that I work in Event Management. I do not. It contained spelling mistakes. I asked that they use British English, not American English spelling, but this seems to be beyond them even though I have corrected all the words that I spell differently. After five attempts, I am still waiting for everything to be fixed before this press release goes out. Up to now, I have no idea who will actually see it because I never get answers to direct questions.
Another issue I have is with a list they sent me of people that are deemed appropriate for me to network with. All except two are based in North America and 90% of them work in religious services. I provide civil ceremonies but clearly this concept is foreign to the people who work for WW Who's Who. If you marry people, you must be connected to a church - right? What do they think the word 'civil' means?
I feel extremely foolish for having been sucked into this scam but never again. If they ever try to charge my credit card again I have already notified my card provider to dishonour that charge. I won't even bother to try and get the 'free flights', based on another report on this site.
Caveat Emptor indeed.
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