There wasn’t an old conference that lived in a shoe
INVITATIONS to attend scientific conferences are frequent arrivals in our journalists’ inboxes. But those that offer to pay expenses for speakers whose papers are accepted, with registration “free of charge for participants from developing countries”, are not.
So a colleague’s eyebrows were elevated by the invitation to speak at a Climate Change International Conference in London. Oddly, the invitation did not mention a conference website, and a famous search engine could not find one. Even odder, entering the site of the conference, the “London Eco Hotel” at 26 Brook Street, London W1K 5DQ, into a famous web street-view engine showed on the ground floor and a above.
Advertisement
And the “conference” appears on . So how does it work?
Firstly, ScamWarners users say the phone numbers given for the conference and the hotel, with a UK “area code” of 070, redirect calls to West Africa, at a stiff price. Worse, victims were asked to pay in advance for hotel rooms, on promise of later reimbursement.
A website created for the “hotel” at is identical to one at – and nearly convincing, in context of the acquired taste that is “luxury hotel” decor. The image of an example bedroom appears on the website of the very real (offer prices from £255 a night). Other pictures, and the design, are identical to features of the website (list price from £325).
The promised “eco-hotel” price of £99 a night would ring alarm bells for anyone who has ever visited London. Unfortunately, people wrote to ScamWarners saying they were taken in.
While correcting the proofs of this page Feedback received a personal invitation to an equally dubious “Water Resources, Climate & Energy” conference. More next week.
Man fined for selling faulty solar systems,” Australia’s Herald Sun . Steve Wright says that “considering the magnitude of the crime, the A$15,000 fine seems extraordinarily lenient
YOU just can’t trust anybody any more, as the founders of a company called “Black Diamond” have learned the hard way. They hired Sarah Jane Cochrane-Ramsey in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, to collect money for cars offered for sale over the internet. She was to deduct a commission for herself, and forward the remainder to them.
Alas, in Queensland, she kept the A$33,350 she received from two would-be car buyers, and didn’t forward a penny to her employers in Nigeria.
They, of course, were running a scam that involves hiring people overseas to act as sales agents for non-existent products. The agents are then supposed to forward the proceeds to Nigeria before anyone complains about non-delivery.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t the bogus Black Diamond people who got round to filing a complaint about the theft. It was the would-be car buyers who called the cops.
WONDERFUL are the ways of the advertising folk who must promote “health supplements” where the law forbids any actual claims for efficacy. A colleague, snacking in a south London café, couldn’t avoid hearing on the radio a plug for a product containing ginseng. The sales pitch hinged on the assertion that “when your energy returns”, you’ll feel a whole lot better.
So the return of your energy is not necessarily causally related to the product – but you don’t actually have to believe fervently in magic to gain some sort of impression of a connection.
Perhaps wisely, whoever makes the product has avoided making this non-claim visible online. That might encourage documented, textual ridicule. So please read this Feedback entry aloud, only.
Produce of more than one universe?
GETTING around rules demanding that food’s source should be labelled is easy: print “Produce of more than one country” on everything. Unless, that is, you sell jars containing a single vanilla pod.
“Maybe the vanilla tree was on the frontier,” Peter Toye muses, “except that I think that the best vanilla is from the island of Madagascar.” This, he suggests, rather rules out frontier-straddling vanilla vines – which are, other readers point out, orchids.
READER Robert Owen sends us a photo of a can of shaving cream from Asda supermarket. He is intrigued, he says, by the odd juxtaposition of warning, exhortation and guarantee on the side of the can.
First, in very large letters, it says, “Solvent abuse can kill instantly”. Then, directly underneath and in the same black-on-white lettering, it says, “Try me, Love me”. Finally, again without pause, it declares, “We’ll refund and replace if you are not 100 per cent happy”.
Something about this doesn’t feel right. We get the feeling that the Asda marketing department has been rather overworked.
FINALLY, reading , Karen Ashworth was startled to find that its operating temperature is “0° to 35° C” and its non-operating temperature “-20° to 45° C”. So, in human-friendly climes it may, or may not, work?