A Freakin’ Public Service Warning!

Bookmark and Share

This girl got fooled, hoodwinked and tricked!  I’m not too proud to tell you too, so that what happened to me doesn’t happen to you!

Most companies these days don’t want to support their products; that’s why they contract phone calls out to untrained representatives in India or to companies like Arise Virtual Solutions rather than train people to handle them properly.

But they’d rather you not even get to talk to a poor substitute, so they hide their phone numbers.  You’re often stuck rummaging through support databases of useless outdated files, contacting online chat or sending an email.

If you’re like me though, you really do want a live person, so I had always found that the best way to find that secret company support phone number was to Google something like “Netgear phone support” to get a phone number.

However, turns out that’s a dangerous thing to do, as today’s Blog illustrates!

We already know that Google suspends websites that do advertising for them at the drop of a hat, and steals all the money earned.  However, Google doesn’t care about kicking off fraudulent advertisers who use Google advertising to impersonate the company you are looking to contact.  Google a company and instead of giving you the correct number, you get hit by a barrage of ads with toll free numbers to scammers instead of the real company support line!

So guess what happened to me when I Googled “Netgear phone number” earlier this week?  I reached con-artists pretending to be Netgear support!  They had an automated hold system and phone tree and really played the part.  I even had to wait on hold for a few minutes.

After the imposter Netgear representative connected remotely to my computer he found “backend server viruses and corruption in my network connectivity files.”  In other words, Gobbledygook.

However, the guy put on an impressive light show and I showed me diagnostics proving that my computer was all fucked up.  (It was all phony, of course.)   I suggested I could do a system restore and he became firm and insisted I need a Certified Network Engineer to fix my problem.  He said those “backend server viruses could come back!”

Then he connected me to a “verified 3rd party provider that might incur a fee.”  And of course, that guy wanted my credit card to bill me for God-only-knows how much and  to install God-only-knows how many viruses and spyware.

I disconnected from them, system restored the PC and then virus checked.  When I spoke to the real Netgear, I determined my problem on that (very old) PC was that it needed a lower security setting to connect with the router.  And then everything worked fine.

I’m a pretty savvy Bitch, but what got me here, was that I thought I was talking to Netgear, because I thought I’d called them.  And also the setup man spent almost an hour with me before connecting me over to his partner for the kill.

But the bottom line is that you really do need to go to a company’s website or another trusted source for phone numbers and NOT trust that what you’re going to see on Google.

3 comments

3 pings

  1. I must say that your posts while trying to be whimsical and prove a point, don’t necessarily provide clear information. If you plan on calling out companies, i suggest you do so by discussing the companies that are providing service. Arise does NOT provide service for Google.

    For those clients that have engaged our active pool of over 25,000 work-from-home professionals, we do not let anyone provide service on behalf of our clients until they pass multiple background checks/assessments/and client approved certification. In addition, if any of the client support professionals fail to achieve client performance metrics, they are no longer able to provide service for the client.

    One other point, recognizing that so many companies over the last 10 years made decisions to off-shore customer service to countries including India and the Philippines, I am proud to be leading the work from home teams that represent on-shore jobs that are readily available and provide an option of flexibility for those people that desire to manage their work/life balance. To learn more about Arise please click here: http://partner.arise.com/media/4125/independent_business_guide.pdf

    1. To clarify, Arise has nothing to do with Google. My comments about Arise were in relation to the two types of poor call handling today: contract work from home agents and call centers in India.

      My mention of Google was to point out that they don’t seem to do any vetting on the ads that they allow, and as a result you can’t trust Google searches for phone number look-ups.

      Ken, I appreciate that you took the time to respond, and I would request that you qualify what you meant when you wrote, ” I am proud to be leading the work from home teams that represent on-shore jobs.” This seems in conflict with when you previously wrote, “Arise doesn’t ‘hire’ or ‘fire’. We contract via statements of work.”

      http://readthisshit.com/arise-virtual-solutions/#comment-499

      I have seen Arise brag that they offer American jobs, yet I continue to hear about agents who are working for less than minimum wage and with no employment benefits. The Arise answer to that is that these aren’t jobs, they are “business opportunities.”

      Would you please explain to me how you (and Arise) reconcile your claim that these are “jobs” when you want to take credit for them, but then turn around and say that agents are only participating in “business opportunities” when you want to pay below minimum wage and deny them any benefits?

    • Carolina on June 30, 2017 at 2:19 am

    Hi Mr. Jackowitz,

    What, if anything does your company do with IBO’s who misbehave by breaching their contracts with CSP’s, or by not paying them, or otherwise harassing them? I ask this sarcastically because I received a response on Glassdoor.com, as well as from Arise representatives who blamed me for being lured into a contract with a crooked IBO, and not performing “my due diligence” and the issue at hand does not concern asrise Virtual Solutions in any way, shape or form as they are a civil matter between me and the IBO, which, in this case, is Blue Ribbon Representation, LLC. owned by Patrick Vick, CEO. I believe that Arise should penalize any company who fails to adhere to the IBO Handbook, in this document (http://www.drivecms.com/uploads/arise.com/independent_business_guide.pdf) there are clear directions regarding the behavior of an IBO, however, when these mini-criminal operations misbehave, nothing is done and the blame is placed on the CSP, who, in certain cases, were not even properly informed about the nature of their relationship (or in this case, relationshit), or of any contractual obligations that the CSP has with Arise, and only promote their own contracts, which do not always point specifically toward Arise Virtual Solutions’ policies and/clauses. In my own experience, after 2 months of monetary investment, time allocation, unpaid training and up front costs to work as a customer service professional under various Independent Business Operators for Arise Virtual Solutions, to whom CSR work is outsourced by companies like Staples, Comcast, Disney, etc. I have yet to receive a cent, a check or any form of compensation for any of the work that I performed during the two months that I was contracted to work as a CSP for Comcast. The 1099 contract that I signed with the “IBO” called Blue Ribbon Representation, LLC., owned and operated by Patrick Vick, never mentioned anything to me about an arbitration clause and so I was never made aware of Arise’s arbitration clause, I did not sign anything with Arise and I never received or saw a copy of my SOW either, as my contract was directly with BRRep, LLC. Long story short, there are a group of us who have worked long hours, with unmentioned and unpaid breaks, after a period of unpaid training that was equivalent to a full time job (despite being lured into the position with promises of a flexible schedule), only to be denied compensation by our IBO’s and Arise Virtual Platform. I’m not sure if this is a case of employee misclassification but there is definitely some wage theft going on here. Contrary to an email that I received from Mr. Vick last week letting me know that his company would finally be paying me on 6/30/2017 (today), I have now received an email from Patrick Vick’s personal email account letting me know that instead of making payment, that he would be invoicing me for “damages”. There is no recourse and your company, Arise Virtual Solutions doesn’t even offer the comfort of knowing that they care about how their IBO’s behave with their contractors. I firmly believe that this is a deliberate misleading since most people run into their IBO’s on recruiting websites like Indeed.com and careerbuilder.com, etc. If you take a look at Blue Ribbon LLC.’s website, you will notice what I mean. Their entire process is deliberately misleading and it is disturbing to see how a large company, such as Arise, doesn’t care at all.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.