Competitor Busted – LawFirmSites . com

By Peter Boyd on May 11, 2006 in Internet Marketing 

Over the years, we have had various competitors call up under fake identities trying to get pricing info. I really want to bust on one competitor though, LawFirmSites . com.

Two weeks ago, one of their sales people just wasted their time and ours by trying to get our “super-secret double-probation” pricing information. LawFirmSites . com emailed several times and called once using the fake name “Robert Walter”. If I have ever heard of a fake name, that is one of them. Luckily, we have caller ID and track IP addresses of all incoming sales inquiries, so we were able to give him bogus information about our company and pricing.

Typically fake inquiries like these can be spotted instantly. They always ask for pricing information upfront without any introductions. They always use a free email account from Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL. They cannot provide a legitimate lawyer web site that they use now. They don’t know what practice areas they practice in, or they mix up crazy practice areas (criminal law firm practicing in estate planning too). They never want you to call them and finally they seemingly cannot be found in any Martindale.com, Google, or FindLaw search as a practicing lawyer.

In the LawFirmSites . com inquiry, a quick Martindale.com check indicated there was no Mr. Walters in all of Utah. He wanted us to compare and quote out how much it would take to build two identical sites done by . . . . LawFirmSites . com. He used a GMail account and wanted only email contact. In fact, he was so adamant about email contact, that when asked to call us, he lied and said he had already tried to call us three times, even though our caller ID had no records of any calls from his area code. Since the caller ID came from a small town in Utah called American Fork, I knew something was amiss. We have received about one inquiry in the past five years from any law firm in Utah. I was just a bit surprised at Mr. Walter’s aggressiveness at needing our services.

After calling “Mr. Walters” back using the web site phone number, and asking how much they charge for web sites, he was finally busted.

If you are still reading and want the proof, here it is!
Note, If you do an IP trace for 67.138.240.6 you will see it is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Eventually, I will upload a screenshot of my caller ID.

Related Posts