Web devs offer to fix w3 compliance for a fee

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hairy1

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#125721 17-Jul-2013 10:57

I am not really sure if this counts as a scam or not...

One of my clients was approached recently with a print out of the w3 validator which had a bunch of errors on their website.

They have been quite persistent that they must get these errors fixed. (For $350)

Anyway, I won't name the company but this is just a heads up that w3 compliance is not a requirement. If you have any doubts then put google.com or even geekzone.co.nz into the validator and see what results you get.

Freatism, I can fix the gz errors for $350 for you.... promise.... ;-)

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freitasm

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#857952 17-Jul-2013 11:00

Thanks. But no, thanks.

It sounds like an evolution of those "We will put your site on Google top results SEO" scam out of India.

There's no reason to "invest" money in these folks.

nate

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#857998 17-Jul-2013 12:49

hairy1: Freatism, I can fix the gz errors for $350 for you.... promise.... ;-)

$350? Make it $35,000 - sounds more enterprisey.

sidefx

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#858009 17-Jul-2013 13:13

Just curious; what was the reasoning they gave for it needing to be fixed?

(I probably wouldn't call it a scam as such.... but I'd certinaly also tell them where they can stick it if someone approached me with an "offer" like this, lol)

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mattwnz

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#858011 17-Jul-2013 13:17

It's likely a scam, and even fixing them is unlikely to do much if anything. Some companies do the same thing for SEO, where they run the website through some SEO engine, or even googles, and send the output to the company. I would say anyone who cold contacts a business pointing out supposed problems (and are usally from places like india) then they are desperate for business.

hairy1

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#858013 17-Jul-2013 13:18

I am not sure. I just got an email from the client and the door knockers were very insistent that it need to be fixed. The clients are not technically inclined so took them at their word. It appears to me to be very much along the lines of the computer support department from India that keeps ringing....

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mattwnz

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#858014 17-Jul-2013 13:20

Where they physical door knockers? Sounds very odd that a professional company would go around door knocking for business, or would even have the need to go around door knocking if they were so good.

sidefx

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#858033 17-Jul-2013 13:33

I was just wondering if they were using accessibility (for people with a disability) or something along those lines as their reasoning.

Definitely sounds even more odd if they were physical door knockers? So literally with a physical printout of w3 validator output? Bizarre!

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hairy1

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#862065 19-Jul-2013 11:37

I never really got to the bottom of what these guys were on about and whether they door knocked or phoned. They got the client to sign up to some sort of service which needed two pins. The client forwarded these pins onto the Boyz. It is not the UDAI so I am not too concerned.

Cheers, Matt.

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