Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Google fall out of 20 Most Trusted Companies list, Facebook creeps in.

In 2007, Google featured in the top 10. In 2008, it doesn't make the top 20. As seen on Andy Beal who includes a top 10 comparison with 2007. Truste reckons that influential factors this year were:
  • Importance of privacy continues to rise.
  • Consumers feel they are losing control of personal information.
  • Identity theft is top of mind.
This is a US survey, not global.

2008 Ranking
1 American Express (remained number one)
2 eBay (+6)
3 IBM (no change)
4 Amazon (+1)
5 Johnson & Johnson (+1)
6 Hewlett Packard (+10)
6 U.S. Postal Service (+1)
7 Procter & Gamble (+2)
8 Apple (new to the top 20)
9 Nationwide (remained the same)
10 Charles Schwab (-8)
11 USAA (+4)
12 Intuit (+7)
13 WebMD (-1)
14 Yahoo! (new to the top 20)
15 Facebook (new to the top 20)
16 Disney (-1)
16 AOL (-12)
17 Verizon (new to the top 20)
18 FedEx (new to the top 20)
19 US Bank (-2)
20 Dell (-7)
20 eLoan (-9)

Monday, December 01, 2008

Warning: UK fraudsters target online car sales

I am selling my car and posted on Autotrader last weekend. So far I received no less than 4 scam emails from crooks trying to part me from my cash. Fortunately, I did my research and came across this excellent explanation from Jim at Autoshippers UK. I am trying to summarise it here but please read his comprehensive post.

The typical scam involves a "buyer" purporting to be a garage wanting to pay the price and pay you extra for you to pay his shipping agent directly. Say you sell your car for £5K and shipping costs £500. You accept his offer, receive a cheque for the car plus extra for the shipping (£5.5K). Your bank informs you that the cheque has been paid to your account. You pay the shipping agent as instructed for £500, usually through Moneygram. A few days later, your bank informs you that the cheque has bounced and withdraws the amount from your account. Leaving you with having paid "shipping fees" of £500 to some unknown untraceable "shipping agent".

You have been warned.

Zinio: Search and read over 50,000 international magazines... for free.

Goodbye press-clipping fees! See Zinio Inside. The coverage in Europe seems limited but worth adding to your "PR on the cheap" toolbox.

As read on Micropersuasion.