Offshore Outsourcing & Scammer

Yesterday I got a call from Esperanza Consultancy. They have been calling my New York phone number by using a dialer, which even did not work correct. I have already picked up the phone and their dialer continued dialing. They have tried to open 17 lines at the same time.

Anyway, they asked me to remove my negative comment (I called them to be a scammer) from LinkedIn. They even offered me a project cheaper or for free if I do what they like. I’m not for sale, but I have reviewed their offer.

For the unbelievable case if they are really not a scammer by themselves, then they are getting scammed by themselves. I try to explain my result in detail now.

Someone, who has a real offer or is thinking that he got misunderstood, will not offer something for free or with a big discount. Such a person will explain why he/she feels herself misunderstood and try to solve the issues. On the other side Esperanza Consultancy is a young company. Maybe they have no experience in business and are learning by doing. In any case they have chosen the wrong way.

I’m coming from the technical and programming side to the call center business. For this I made a technical review about their offer. I have attached their offer at the end of this posting that everybody is able to comprehend my review.

The demo data, which Esperanza Consultancy has submitted, are machine readable and have 5 different datasets. Such a dataset can get transformed with tools into a complete resultset for the destination system.

The “Housing Loan Application Form”, which should be the destination, is a simple form consisting of 5 forms, which have a lot of fields. With another tool, the same which is used from forum spammers, you are able to fill out this form with the prepared dataset from the input in less than a second.  The open question is only how many forms can get submitted during one second without flooding the destination system. I have enough Internet bandwidth available, that I’m able to make a destination system unreachable. So I have to build in some waits for not flooding the destination system. We are directly connected to the international Internet backbone in Austria with our systems.

For this I need not waste manual power. I can use machine power, which can make around 10 complete conversions per second and per computer, if their own capacity able to handle this. In compare, they are saying that one agent needs 15 minutes for filling out one destination form set and the full process is planned for 3 years. Additional is an automatized transcoding error free and repeatable.

As the computer based process is up to 9000 times faster than the manual process, the work of an agent from 3 years can be done by using 2.9 machine hours. I have offered them this solution. A few days later I have seen the offer in the groups from LinkedIn again.

So make your own decision if Esperanza Consulting or their client is the scammer?

Demo data.html (524.98 kb)

email from esperanza consulting com.txt (5.16 kb)

Housing_Loan_Form_Details.pdf (62.73 kb)

Sample Form (Open in Firefox Browser).html (275.68 kb)

In each business you need to build up trust. Show yourself and your talents and not others. You are marketing yourself. For this you are at LinkedIn.  A real company even need not to read this, they know how to promote their products and services, but here at LinkedIn are so many amateurs in selling which need a lot of help.

Trust cannot get build up, when you

• are hiding yourself in the anonymity of the Internet
  Do you have something to hide? In such a case you should not open a business. People, which hide something are not trustful
  
  
• are you not showing your real face
  it does not matter if you are young, old, pretty or ugly. It only matters if you are making a bad impression by having no picture, a logo, a picture of someone else, a landscape shot, a graphic, a cartoon or something else, which is not showing your real face
  
  
• are thinking that LinkedIn is the same like Facebook
  If you are proud that you have something produced, which has hand, legs and seems to be functioning, then present your baby at Facebook.
  If you like to present your pet, than post it's picture on Facebook.
  If you are a fan of a movie star or some other celebrity, then post it on Facebook.
  Nobody makes business with a baby or an animal. You like to make business, so post your own picture.
  
  
• are spamming
  There is a golden rule at the Internet: "Don’t buy from spammer, you’ll get scammed". Spammer getting easily identified. They are posting every day or every (few) hour(s)  the same content, have not enough money for buying a full functionally keyboard (mostly they have no keyboard, which has normal letters for typing - the capslock cannot get turned off) or some keys are repeated many times
  
  
• not describe your product or service, which you like to sell, in full
  As better you are describing your product or service as easier it will be to find customers for it. A "genuine" description and a message "contact me for more information" is not really something, what makes your posting interesting
  
  
• promote any fantasy earnings for your reseller
  If you promote what others can earn by selling your product, than you show only that your product or service is not able to sell at the market. Pyramid systems are at the most European countries forbidden by the law already. If someone has a good product, where he can earn a lot, then he will not share it at the Internet, because as more are selling this product as more the price and the earnings are going down
  
  
• only can get contacted by using Skype
  The world is divided into 24 time zones. Don’t waste the time of others, nobody will wait until he can reach you. You like to sell, for this you have to take care that buyers can contact you in a normal way and during you are sleeping too. You are the seller and not the buyer! You need to find a customer, which like to buy from you. The buyer is the king, not you!
  
  
• links and email addresses, which are written at your profile, are not working
  In such a case interested people cannot contact you and are thinking that you even cannot pay the domain and/or hosting fees

Real companies need not hide themselves, they are proud about their name and success. Their name is their trademark and they are not hiding themselves in the crowd.

I found an advertisement a few weeks ago, where something told me there is something wrong. It made me interested and i started with my standard procedure, which I have described at "How to identify scammer by using free tools from the Internet".

The only thing, that I could find is that the guy has used the picture from the author Brad Scott. His domain has been hidden behind an anonymizing service, This has leaded me to my second step in my investigation, which is described in "Using Google for making a background check of your business partner", because only this one are hiding themselves, which have something to hide,

After a few hours I got the result that Kevin Steve from USA is in reality or is working for Kareem Sallam from Egypt. For this I have published my result as an comment to his offer for warning others at LinkedIn:

@Kevin Steve aka Khareem Sallam from Egypt:

As you are not the author Brad Scott, why do you use his picture (http://imagesbybrad.com/about-brad/)?

Why do you hide your domain (streamtelecom.net [2016-02-25: Link removed - Domain already not exists]), which got created on Jan. 9, 2014 behind an anonymizer?

The link on the site https://cpanel.streamtelecom.net/ [2016-02-25: Link removed - Domain already not exists] has no valid certificate. There are a lot free certificating agencies available for getting easy a valid certificate.

You'll find at http://www.betternetworker.com/members/kmsallam a man called Kareem Sallam, which has written there that his websites are http://www.connect2phone.net and http://www.streamtelecom.net.

Kareem Sallam has a LinkedIn Profile too: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ksallam and even there he has written that he is the Managing Director of connect2phone.

The site connect2phone.net is 1.5 years old, and has already a bad reputation. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/BEWARE-TRANSACTING-KAREEM-SALAM-FROM-1925996.S.5861118759661486081

Do you think that this is a trustworthy base for a business?

Update Feb. 25, 2016: Link to streamtelecom.net removed as the domain does already not exist.

Update Jan. 18, 2017: Link to connect2phone.net removed as the domain already does not exist.

Google has few search options, which can help you to find something out about your new business partner. In any way you should start with the procedure described at How to identify scammer by using free tools from the Internet This will save a lot of time for you. The search here takes a lot more time.

Search with an exact phrase:

Put quotation marks around words "[any word]" to search for an exact phrase in an exact order. Keep in mind that searching with quotes might exclude relevant results. For instance, a search for "Alexander Bell" will miss pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.

I use this function for searching names and domain names of my business partner. Especially by searching a specific domain name is it very helpful. Scammer sites are getting very fast documented by others and you are able to review their comments.

Search within a specific site:

Precede your query with site: if you know you want your answer from within a specific site or type of site (.org, .edu). For example: site:edu or site:nytimes.com.

As you can search inside a specific site, you can exclude specific sites, by excluding them. To exclude them from the result set you need only put a dash in front. Example -site:linkedin.com for not listing all the contacts from LinkedIn

Find related pages:

Use the related: operator to find pages that have similar content by typing related: followed by the website address. For instance, if you find a website you like, try using related:[insert URL] to locate similar websites.

In any case, even if you did not find out something bad about your new business partner, you should take the lowest risk as possible for making business. A nostrum for not getting scammed is not available.

A few weeks ago, I found a posting at LinkedIn where call center agents got searched, which even not need to speak with the called person. As I did not understand how it should work, I have been interested in this kind of job, but I did not get any reply.

Three days ago I have found a posting in the group "Campaigns Outbound & Inbound" with the title "Lead Generation with Avatar Technologies":

Lead Generation under $5.00 per hour
No other BPO company can generate as many live transfers or set appointments at the cost or the quality that we can. Avatar's software enables our agents to convert prospects into potential sales, while giving our clients the benefit of cost effective...

I have been thinking that $5/hour are too less for offering call center work. For this I have commented this posting with my opinion:
It is like everywhere in the world you get for what you pay for. The agents are the capital of the call centers. Like it is everywhere usable are getting better agents a higher monthly salary than not so good agents.

My comment:

Call centers at the Philippines, a low wage country, are usually paying for their agents around US$ 1.20 (rural area) and US$ 3.80 (metro area) per hour. Quality centers have agents, which are earning an hourly wage between US$ 3.65 and US$ 6.80 depending on their performance.
Agents, who are earning too less money, are taking a second job to survive. The result is that they are coming already tired to their work and are not able to give their best. Everybody needs even at the Philippines at least US$ 455 per month for living (that is an income of around US$ 3/hour).
Think about it, which quality you’ll get, when you are reading such an unbelievable offer, where even the broker or the consultant likes to earn money. You can be sure, that you are not hiring the best agents for this price.

This time I got a reply from Ted Nehls, he calls himself to be Executive Vice President of Intelligent Virtual Agents from the area of New York City and surroundings:

Rudolf,
Thank you for your reply to Lead Generation under $5.00 per hour. Avatar uses technology to ensure the sales pitch is 100% accurate 100% of the time. Unlike traditional voice agents which you are referring to in your posting, an Avatar agent doesn't need to speak all they simply need to do is press the correct soundboard button at the correct time. 97% of Avatar customers not only have increased their Avatar team size they have also hired more US based agents to handle the leads generated for them.
When it comes to lead generation a small investment in Avatar will go a long way.
Thank you,
Ted

A few years ago we have tried to implement a similar system for an Austrian Satellite TV company, which had the problem of finding agents, which are speaking German, French, Spanish and Polnish. Happily we tried it only and compared the result against the real call center agents. The result has been disastrous. We made with such a system only around 23% from the leads, which have been made by the real agents. Even the telemarketer, which had the worst German pronounciation sold more, then the system with the prerecorded messages from professional speakers.

If you are speaking with somebody, then you are observing their behaviour and their sound during your talk. On the phone you have only the sound and cannot see your behaviour. Good telemarketer are choosing their sales strategy by observing the whim of their customers. They are even able to make the whim of the customer better by making some jokes for making a sale. All situations during a sales pitch cannot get foreseen and for this you cannot make a a prerecording for them.

On the other side, the recordings are getting played from a soundboard, which is getting handled by humans. If the employees are tired, because they need to have an additional job to survive, they will make failures by handling the soundboard. So the system of Avatar seems to have a lot of problems by generating leads.

It is like everywhere in the world: "You get this for what you are paying for".

A very good description about the NEGATIVE IMPACTS from a robot gives Tom Pulmones from Linkedin:

Utilizing a specific number of lines based on a standard script, agents are confined to only a few responses and even fewer ways of conversing with customers over the phone. This limitation to a telecommunicating agent is crippling. The basic skills that an agent develops through experience at a call center are proficient oral communication, conversational spontaneity and call handling skills. Having a few buttons to press cuts down these skill sets to a zero and seals away the chances of an agent to grow and develop himself in the field of communications, which is the no.1 capital of a call center agent. As a result, the agent of a non-voice call center will be stuck with the non-voice skill sets with no opportunity to grow out.
In terms of Operational Costs, paying for non-voice agents who use dual-dialers cuts the BPO’s operational costs by half, at the same time cuts the quality of calls by a larger percentage. Also, this is unfair to the agents who are paid for less than ¼ of what the client is paying for their hours and yet they work for and are paid for as TWO people.

Source: LinkedIn group Call Center & BPO World