My interest was aroused a couple of months ago when I received an email from Jasmine Tait at InvoiceBackup.co.uk telling me all about the wonders of factoring and asking whether I would be interested in factoring my debts.
I had a look at their website in which they claimed to be established factoring brokers dealing with such well known factoring companies as Touch Financial and Invoice Finance Village and I bookmarked the site intending to do some further investigations only to find that the website had disappeared.
A couple of weeks ago I received another email, this time purporting to be from Madeline Walters of invoiceadvisors.net again asking if I would like to factor my debts.
Once again I did some research to find that this allegedly well established broker’s website had only been registered two weeks prior to the email being received but the owner must have been a bit shy as the domain was registered in the name of a nominee in Panama.
The website itself looked fairly professional and the company allegedly had relationships with a few factoring companies including Hitachi (which I doubt) but rather than investigate immediately I put it to one side until today.
As with the first site this one has now disappeared and the telephone number is unobtainable.
I’m not sure what is going on here but whatever it is can’t be healthy and it’s difficult enough as it is for the poor prospect to know whether he’s getting sound advice or not from his broker without people like this muddying the waters.
On a slightly related matter I came across someone on an internet forum asking whether anyone could recommend a decent, honest and reliable factoring company and I responded that I could and suggested that he contact me to discuss the various options that might be open to him.
Up popped someone whom I had never heard of who’s forum signature suggested that he offered “Accountancy, Book-keeping, payroll, Specailist Pub Accountant ,IT solutions, Free Factoring Service” (his spelling not mine) saying that he had a relationship with a factoring company that would quote 10% cheaper than anyone else.
I dread to think who this might be but checking again with Nominet shows his domain name to have been registered just one week ago.
At least in this instance I think that the chap is genuine even if a bit of a jack of all trades and the individual who asked for advice said that he would telephone both of us.
I will evaluate the business and introduce him to the most appropriate factoring company for his needs whereas “Jack” has probably already decided that this is one for his discount buddy