Story posted Thursday, October 22, 2009
'Best Of' Awards May Be Bogus, Local Chamber Warned
The Palatine Area Chamber of Commerce is informing the public of a possible ongoing scam.
One of the latest victims was a Palatine company told it had been selected as "Best of Palatine 2009."
According to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), recent emails notifying businesses they have won awards from a national association appear to be part of a widespread scheme designed to get companies to pay for "vanity" awards and plaques.
The BBB claims the group behind the "awards" program is the U.S. Commerce Association of Washington, D.C. The association has been sending out news releases in recent months to businesses nationwide, telling them they have been selected as "outstanding local businesses" and offering them an opportunity to buy one or more awards to mark the honor.
The BBB urges that area businesses exercise caution when dealing with this group or a related organization called the U.S. Local Business Association.
On its website, the U.S. Commerce Association says the award program was "created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of businesses and organizations in and around whatever targeted community."
According to the BBB, other than the material on its website, there seems to be little publicly available about the U.S. Commerce Association.
The site says its offices are in Washington, D.C., and a representative of the BBB that covers the area said that the office has begun receiving inquiries about the association in the past several days.
A recently updated BBB report says that the association's website is a match to the website of an association with a similar name---U.S. Local Business Association.
Both groups identify Ashley Carter as chair of the associations' selection committees. Also, both groups report virtually identical award programs, the BBB says.
The Washington, D.C. area BBB office gives U.S. Local Business Association an "F" grade and warns that anyone contacted about awards must be sure the recognition is not, "in fact, an attempt to obtain access to a company's information or to elicit funds by an entity that may not be what it represents itself as being."
An email to the office (there is no phone number listed on its website) went unanswered, the BBB said.
The BBB offers several tips to avoid losing money in a "vanity award" program:
* Learn everything about who is giving the award. If it is coming from a mystery company, chances are it simply wants money.
* If there was no application for an award or the group cannot state how the business was nominated, chances are the award is not legitimate.
* Most legitimate awards do not come with costs for the recipient. If there is a cost, scrutinize it even more closely.
* Ask specific questions about how the company or organization was chosen for an award and find out how many similar awards are given each year.
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