| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||
| This is one of a few examples of
Business Opportunity Watch Reviews which are available for the public to view on the public section of
the website. The reason for making a small sample of the reviews freely available is to help potential
customers decide if they want to subscribe, and also to communicate some matters of general interest arising
in the case of some of the reviews. All the other reviews are available only to subscribers.
A zero score or a low score means that in our opinion the business model or the investment model has flaws and/or that we have found inadequate evidence to back up claims about earnings, sales, profits etc. It doesn't mean this evidence does not exist and it doesn't mean that the opportunity is a scam and it doesn't mean that the promoters are unprofessional or dishonest. Questions arising are normally contained within the body of the review, and readers who are interested should contact the company with these questions and/or questions of their own. |
Good Partners Mailing and Typing Review extract from:
June 2010 Business Opportunity Watch
Issue
No. 40
GOOD PARTNERS MAILING AND TYPING
Unit 8 The Warehouse
7 Park Road
London N14 6HB
Tel: 020 8882 2514
www.mailingortyping.co.uk
Review:
At first sight, this offer sounds rather tempting. Good Partners Mailing and Typing says on their website at www.mailingortyping.co.uk that they provide mailing and typing services to businesses who want to offer their products and services to opportunity seekers. Good Partners say that they send out leaflets on a continual basis.
This is where they say you would come in as a home worker. You would be doing typing and mailing work for Good Partners' clients. Good Partners Mailing and Typing says that you will be paid £1.10 for each envelope you fill, and £8.00 for each page of copy you type.
Good Partners Mailing and Typing also say that they give you everything you need - stamps, stationery, printer etc, "worth around £800".
All they ask you for is a "small REFUNDABLE membership fee" of £30. Sounds pretty good, that - £30 for stamps, stationery and a printer - even if you don't get your £30 back.
The trouble is, though, that if you pay £30 you don't receive anything at all - no stamps, no stationery, no printer and no work.This is no surprise because any company which did actually pay its workers such an incredibly high rate as £1.10 per envelope would soon be insolvent and out of business. The normal rate of pay for stuffing envelopes is between 10p and 15p per envelope, depending on the amount of work involved.
The man behind Good Partners Mailing and Typing is the notorious Ibrahim Shevket, together with his brother Ahmet Shevket.
In my opinion, Ibrahim Shevket and Ahmet Shevket are a national disgrace. They have been operating the same scam for at least 16 years. First it was called IS Trading, then IS Enterprises, then Top Star Mailshare, then 1st Mailing and Typing Services, then A1 Mailing and Typing Services, and now Good Partners Mailing and Typing.
Trading Standards are well aware of Ibrahim Shevket's activities but seem powerless to do anything. No doubt Ibrahim and Ahmet Shevket say that what they do is not a scam because they have every intention of supplying people with work as soon as they get some work. Unfortunately, they seem to get little work - no doubt partly because the pack they send out to any business that enquires about their services is very poor quality according to feedback we had from onereader.
I have been warning readers not to send any money to Ibrahim Shevket's companies for as long as I've been reviewing home business opportunities - that's 16 years.
The rule is simple. To make sure that you don't get scammed, you should never send any money to any company which is promising you work. It doesn't matter how professional the company seems to be or what the company says the money is for - registration fee, start-up pack, deposit, whatever - if you pay, then you'll regret it.
No genuine company looking for workers would ask you for money.
In all of my 16 years of doing reviews, I have never come across any genuine company looking for homeworkers which asks them to pay anything.
Anybody who is reading this rather late in the day and who has already sent £30 to Good Partners Mailing and Typing should ask the company for a refund, since their website says that they will refund anyone who asks.
However, some people have had difficulty obtaining a refund according to posts on Andrew Penman's blog at the Mirror newspaper:
http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2008/01/homeworking-scam-is-trading-be.html
There may be another way for people to get their money back. Shevket previously lived in the London Borough of Haringey, and Haringey Trading Standards were acting as Mr. Shevket's unofficial refund department. Each month, Haringey Trading Standards compiled a list of the people who complained to them and wrote to Ibrahim Shevket with the list, suggesting he refunded them. Mr Shevket then sent Haringey Trading Standards a bunch of cheques, which Haringey then passed on - all at public expense, I suppose.The address of Good Partners Mailing and Typing is in the area covered by Enfield Trading Standards. Whether Enfield Trading Standards will be patiently carrying out a service similar to Haringey's I can't say, but it would nevertheless be worth your while to contact them:
London Borough of Enfield Trading Standards
PO Box 57
Civic Centre
Silver Street
Enfield
Middlesex
EN1 3XH
Tel: 020 837 98515
A further dodgy aspect of the Good Partners Mailing and Typing offer is that you are asked to make your cheque out to a company called Prism Ltd. There is a UK company called Prism Ltd, but this company looks totally genuine and does not seem to be anything to do with Ibrahim Shevket or Ahmet Shevket. Shevket's Prism Ltd may therefore be an offshore company.
If Shevket's Prism Ltd is an offshore company then by law it should nevertheless be registered at Companies House because it is trading in the UK. This means that it should send details of its directors and copies of its accounts to Companies House, similar to the requirements for companies registered in the UK. In addition, under both UK and EU law, the address of the registered office of Prism Ltd and its country of registration and its registration number need to be shown on the website. It seems that Ibrahim Shevket has unfortunately forgotten to do this.
I'm rating this offer at zero out of ten, and I've sent a copy of this review to Ibrahim Shevket to ask him if he would like to comment on it.P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for future changes of name like A to Z Mailing and Typing Services, First Class Mailing and Typing Services etc.
Rating:
○○○○○○○○○○
Your feedback:
Have you tried this opportunity?
Or would you like to comment even if you haven't tried it?
If so, please send us an email. Your feedback will then be posted here anonymously unless you tell us that you want your contact details included.
Feedback August 2010 from Angela:
Hi,
I have just come across your website which I wish I had done before I sent £30 to Good Partners Mailing or Typing. It was only today that I received this email from them and now the website has vanished!
I have sent a notification form to Consumerdirect.gov.uk but doubt they can do anything. I feel like a fool having just been made redundant I thought it looked like a good idea - I was wrong.
My husband spoke to Ibrahim Shevket on the phone and he was quite agressive and sounded foreign.
Is there anyway I can get my £30 back? Can you help me?
Thank you for your time.
Kind regards
Angela
Dear Angela,
You should be able to get your money back, but according to feedback from other customers of this company, it's likely to need more than a simple email or telephone call.
I suggest that you send a letter by Recorded Delivery to the company asking for a refund. If you have not had a refund within 15 days, then contact Enfield Trading Standards, contact details for which are given towards the end of my review (above)
Please note that it is quite possible that this company will re-appear under a different name, so you may want to take good note of my advice never to pay any money to any company promising homework.
Hope this helps
Marian
Marian Owen
Editor of BOW
Dear Marian,
THANKS to you today I received my £30 back in the post from the man himself!
I think it helped that I put his name on the letter I sent asking for a refund.
I received the cheque today and it did have Prism Ltd as his company and has Managing Director under his signature, also along on the top left hand corner it had Hampstead High Street. I wish I had scanned in the cheque now. Let's just hope it doesn't bouce.
Thank you once again.Kind regards
Angela
Update: The cheque cleared with no problems.
Feedback September 2010 from James:
Hi,
I have also just found your website after paying the above company £30.00. this was about 3 months ago and surprise surprise, no work has been forth coming.After reading some of the replies on your website i will also write to the company mentioned a letter asking for a refund.
Could you please recommend to me any GENUINE sites where i could do some part time work from home because being self employed the extra money would be a big help.
Thank You
James
Hi James,To my knowledge, any companies that call themselves homework companies are a myth. They charge fees to people looking for homework, and that's how they make their money i.e. they claim that their business is to sell the services of homeworkers to companies that are their customers, but the truth is that they don't have any companies as customers and their revenue comes only from people looking for homework.
This was the case even 15-20 years ago for companies claiming to offer mailing and typing work, and is even more the case today when not only has direct mail as a whole decreased but also it's largely carried out by machinery.
Of course, companies still need people to do their mailing and typing work, but where this is available on a freelance basis (rather than being carried out by employees) it is so sought after that it is normally filled by word of mouth.
It beggars belief that a company would need to be (continuously) advertising for homeworkers to do work which they say is paid well above the market rate.
Sorry if this is bad news, but the truth is that you would probably be better off trying to build up your own self-employed business. I don't know what kind of business you are in, but perhaps you could consider some additional marketing such as coming up with a news or human interest angle to form the basis of an article in the local newspaper, or carry out more leaflet drops, or join your local business club?
Hope this helps.
Best wishes
Marian
__________________________________
Want to find out about some good home businesses and franchises and avoid scam?
Members Only Area - Free Trial
|
ALPHABETICAL LIST A - F 1st Choice Property Investments
Issue 1 |
G - O Gateway
Direct Issue 8 Iaccino,
Bob Issue 44 Maid2Clean
franchise review Issue 11
| P - Z Pampered
Chef review Issue 21 RAS Partnership Iss 10 Sacco,
Domenico Antonio Issue 10 Tarbuck,
Gerry Issue 1
|
End of review of Good Partners Mailing and Typing, Ibrahim Shevket
|
|
|
|
|
How to avoid scam and find a good home business or franchise
Copyright 2007 to 2014
All Rights ReservedBusiness Opportunity Watch is intended as a starting point for your own enquiries and research. See Terms and Conditions.
Business Opportunity Watch Limited, 2079 Chynoweth House, Trevissome Park, Truro, TR4 8UN, UK