[redacted] is soliciting services for a business he does not own.[redacted] is contacting business across the U.S. claiming he is with Crystal Peak PR. I own Crystal Peak Design and we handle PR work. I have owned my business for 28 years. We are NOT associated with [redacted].[redacted] is not an employee of mine nor has he ever been. I believe he is trying to market himself as an extension of our business and securing business based on our good reputation.
We have been contacted by several businesses over the past month, each trying to verify who we are and if[redacted] works for us. He does NOT.
The phone number[redacted] provided - [redacted] goes to JV Associates.JV Associates Internet Services ([redacted],[redacted]
http://www.[redacted] - Not a working website.
JV Associates is a scam. [redacted] contacted me directly telling me that he had had my product and loved it and he could help me market it to a larger market. I told him I was interested in getting more business in the corporate gift area and private label for high end customers. He assured me he had contacts in those areas and could help me. He initially gave me a list of people at publications and asked me to send samples of my product to those people which I did at my expense. I asked him what he was going to do to follow up with those people and he just hemmed and hawed. I asked him what the next step should be if I heard back from any of these businesses and how he was going to handle taking the next steps and I got no response. He prepared a very poorly written and entirely too lengthy "press release" and sent it out to every daily and weekly newspaper in the country and was extremely proud of himself. I questioned him about that and expressed my dislike of that idea as newspapers are not in the least interested in products, they want news. I asked him not to do that again and to start doing something to market my product to people who would buy it. He got very defensive and resent the press release to the newspapers. The final straw was that he contacted me to send a sample of my product to someone who he claimed was starting a new grocery delivery service type business in the eastern part of my state and my product would be right for his business. I googled the name and address he gave me and found an individual who made wood boxes. The address was a private residence in a rural area. He was unable to provide a business name for this new business or any details about it. I contacted the man [redacted] asked me to send the sample to and asked him about the business, ie, name of the company, address, their customer base, how they were going to find them, where my product was going to be stored and other suck things. The so called owner of this company couldn't answer those questions. In my opinion, [redacted] just wanted a free gift for his friend. I asked a prorated amount of my money back from [redacted] and he claimed to have spent more time than I had paid for working on my company and declined to refund anything. He is a scam. He knows less about marketing than I do and does nothing but irritate the newspapers by spamming them with "press releases". I'm not writing a complaint as it's been so long since I hired JV Associates that it simply doesn't matter to me anymore. I just would like to help other small businesses avoid a similar experience.
[redacted] is soliciting services for a business he does not own.[redacted] is contacting business across the U.S. claiming he is with Crystal Peak PR. I own Crystal Peak Design and we handle PR work. I have owned my business for 28 years. We are NOT associated with [redacted].[redacted] is not an employee of mine nor has he ever been. I believe he is trying to market himself as an extension of our business and securing business based on our good reputation.
We have been contacted by several businesses over the past month, each trying to verify who we are and if[redacted] works for us. He does NOT.
The phone number[redacted] provided - [redacted] goes to JV Associates.JV Associates Internet Services ([redacted],[redacted]
http://www.[redacted] - Not a working website.
JV Associates is a scam. [redacted] contacted me directly telling me that he had had my product and loved it and he could help me market it to a larger market. I told him I was interested in getting more business in the corporate gift area and private label for high end customers. He assured me he had contacts in those areas and could help me. He initially gave me a list of people at publications and asked me to send samples of my product to those people which I did at my expense. I asked him what he was going to do to follow up with those people and he just hemmed and hawed. I asked him what the next step should be if I heard back from any of these businesses and how he was going to handle taking the next steps and I got no response. He prepared a very poorly written and entirely too lengthy "press release" and sent it out to every daily and weekly newspaper in the country and was extremely proud of himself. I questioned him about that and expressed my dislike of that idea as newspapers are not in the least interested in products, they want news. I asked him not to do that again and to start doing something to market my product to people who would buy it. He got very defensive and resent the press release to the newspapers. The final straw was that he contacted me to send a sample of my product to someone who he claimed was starting a new grocery delivery service type business in the eastern part of my state and my product would be right for his business. I googled the name and address he gave me and found an individual who made wood boxes. The address was a private residence in a rural area. He was unable to provide a business name for this new business or any details about it. I contacted the man [redacted] asked me to send the sample to and asked him about the business, ie, name of the company, address, their customer base, how they were going to find them, where my product was going to be stored and other suck things. The so called owner of this company couldn't answer those questions. In my opinion, [redacted] just wanted a free gift for his friend. I asked a prorated amount of my money back from [redacted] and he claimed to have spent more time than I had paid for working on my company and declined to refund anything. He is a scam. He knows less about marketing than I do and does nothing but irritate the newspapers by spamming them with "press releases". I'm not writing a complaint as it's been so long since I hired JV Associates that it simply doesn't matter to me anymore. I just would like to help other small businesses avoid a similar experience.