The expert factoring consultants at Factoring Solutions have made a video explaining how to choose a factoring company and some of the pitfalls awaiting people who pick the wrong factor.
Factoring Solutions
Touch Financial Support | are they ethical or not
The website for Factoring Solutions has fortunately been on page one of Google for the last ten years but one of the downsides is that it makes me a target for others who would like to share in my success by fair means or foul.
A Google search for factoring solutions last week came up with a result in 11th place headed:-
| Benefits Of Using Factoring Solutions | Touch Financial Factoring Solutions – Over 40,000 business in the UK now use factoring and invoice discounting. Read more about how factoring could help your business grow, … |
My website which has been online since 1999 currently starts off with “Factoring and invoice discounting is being used by over 41,000 companies UK wide” and what is more I have used similar phrasing since 2003
It would seem that Touch Financial Support have cleverly manipulated the meta tags on the website in what looks like an attempt to try and lure people there who are actually looking for my Factoring Solutions website
The H1 title on Touch Financial Support’s web page is headed “Benefits of using Factoring Solutions” and as the webbies reading this will know, Google attaches importance to the H1 titles.
Whatever Touch Financial may claim to the contrary “Benefits of using Factoring Solutions” is hardly correct grammatically and the upper case S in Solutions gives the game away anyway.
As if that wasn’t enough there are further references throughout the page as follows:-
The benefits of using Factoring solutions is that cash flow is assured
Businesses seeking Factoring solutions have two options
What’s the cost of using Factoring solutions?
Naturally, one of the key considerations when thinking about Factoring solutions is the amount it will cost
If you believe that Factoring solutions could be for you the next step could be to contact Touch Financial to compare quotes
In my mind there is no doubt what Touch Financial Support are trying to do and whilst it’s quite legal the question that I ask is whether it’s ethical or not.
I know that some of my competitors read this blog so if anyone from Cashflow UK is looking in you might want to have a look at www dot touchfinancial.co.uk/knowledge-centre/guides/factoring/factoring-uk as they have tried the same trick on you with this page deliberately designed to try and lure people searching for Factoring UK as your company used to be called.
I did contact Touch Financial Support asking them if they were finding these tactics fruitful but apart from a standard email thanking me for contacting them they didn’t bother to respond further.
A moral dilemma
I have been approached by a company who complained about the service that they were receiving from their factoring company and who asked me to find them a replacement. It would seem that the factor was being very strict on concentration limits and wouldn’t fund more than £30,000 on their major customer whereas they were trading at £70,000 per month with them. When discussing the creditworthiness of the customer the chap told me that they would never not pay their bills as they were actually silent shareholders in his company.
There were three possible ways to play this as I could have tried to find him another factoring company without disclosing to them that the major debtor was an associate and earned myself a nice commission in the process or else I could have told him that no factoring company would take him on and fund an associated company if he came clean about it or I could have refused to handle the enquiry and have a quiet word with the factoring company.
It is a bit of a moral dilemma as prospective clients discuss their business with me in confidence and expect me to either find them a replacement factor or else to drop it completely but there again I would have a struggle with my conscience if I knew that a company was effectively defrauding a factoring company and I did nothing about it.
I struggled with my conscience for ten minutes then had a quiet word with someone at his factoring company and warned them