Congratulations! You’re Awarded the Right to Send Us Money!
The reason various Who’s Who books never impress me on anyone’s biography is that you simply pay money and “buy” your way into them. I was able to get my dog, Trotsky, into one once until they caught me.
Here’s a notice I received yesterday. They want to give an awar to AlansForums.com, which is private, and closed to the public, and there’s no way these people have been there. I went to their site and, after showing some impressive building that probably belongs to some other operation, they want to sell me plaques and trophies for hundreds of dollars! There are all kinds of hucksters and thieves, but the ones who believe the rest of us are stupid are the worst of all. Note the typos and grammatical errors. How do you get up in the morning and say, “Another fine day to defraud!!”?
On behalf of the AIER, I wanted to let you know that Alan’S Forums has been recognized for a unique distinction.
Our panel of industry executives and consultants oversees a survey commissioned by the AIER on various categories and determines which companies meet and exceed the industry benchmarks that have been set forth. Further details on this selection can be viewed on our website including the press release that was produced for this occasion (which is not distributed till the mutual review is complete)
To review the details and the accompanying press release please go to www.ainst.org and enter the Reference digits AV039 on the top right corner of the homepage. Or the link below will take you to the appropriate page directly
https://ainst.org/award/benefit/b_id/AV039
*Should you prefer to revise the details displayed on the crystal plaque (company name and/or the specific category of recognition), please include such in the designated area post confirming the shipping address on the website and our Media Division will be able to assist with such edits. Please note that though a phone number needs to be included in the shipping address therein since FedEx requires that as part of the shipping label, we will not store the phone number on our end and use it for any purpose nor share it with any outside entity
Regards,
Patricia Cleary – Annual Survey Division
AIER
2580 27th Street NW
Washington 20008
United States
(PS: This is a one time outreach from our end but should you prefer for the AIER to delete all your contact information please reply back with REMOVE in the subject line and we will do so)
AIER Newswire (January Highlight): AIER completes its 120th micro-finance through Kiva. The institute’s Global Incubation Initiative has involved assisting several organizations such as Kiva to further its support to businesses in over 40 countries. More information can be found at http://www.kiva.org/lender/AIER.
John Arnold
Interesting that they give the street address for the American Economic Institute (AEI), a real organization with experts that are routinely quoted in major newspapers, etc. I’m sure that the commonality in the organization’s initials AIER is just a coincidence.
Alan Weiss
Yet people fall for this nonsense.
Duke Merhavy
Beautiful. Yes, I see these “invitations”/”announcements” all the time. They come to me and they go to my clients, who are smart enough to forward to me and ask if these are real.
I also wanted to mention another variation of these to watch for: News “interviews”. I don’t have an actual example to share right now (because I delete them as soon as I get them now), but they go something like this… “I am a producer for _______ (famous ‘has-been’ celebrity name)’s news show and we are very interested in interviewing you about _____ (topic that might or might not be relevant to your expertise)”.
They try to schedule a call about production and travel arrangements etc. These are all also pay-to-play schemes… They just want to produce an enormously expensive video commercial and charge for every little bit of it. If you push hard and ask them when the ‘news’ will be on the air, you will get answers like “twice a week for 3 weeks on Hong Kong’s shopping channel at 3 am local time…” or some such thing…
I guess they wouldn’t put theses things out there (fake awards and news interviews) if there weren’t enough gullible (or desperate) people falling for them…
Alan Weiss
I love the ones where, for about $15,000, they put you together with a propped-up, over-the-hill celebrity or politician as if he or she is endorsing you.