Webwindows: Spammers and Rip-off Merchants
I’ve just been spammed by a company called Webwindows. It isn’t the first time – I get spam from them regularly, despite asking them not to. Other people suffer in much the same way, and Webwindows have been kicked off at least one ISP for breaking their terms of service. Spam, or Unsolicited Bulk Email to give it its formal title, is a breach of UK advertising regulations under all circumstances and can be illegal in some cases.
In this case, they are trying to sell me space in the Sunday Telegraph magazine for £355. They say that’s a 66% discount on their rate card value of £1,050. If anyone is tempted by that, it might be worth looking at the facts. For a start, although their spam is worded to make it sound as though Webwindows are selling space on behalf of the Sunday Telegraph (or the Sunday Times, or various other newspapers), that’s not really the case. What they do is buy a page themselves, usually in a not particularly prominent location (near the back, usually), and then re-sell spots on it to their punters. You can see an example page here.
If they sold all of those slots (24 spaces on a page) at the full ratecard value, they’d rake in £25,250 a go. Obviously, they’re not going to get that all the time – or even probably any of the time, as it’s a deliberately inflated price to make the discount sound better. But what you’re effectively buying, whatever you spend on it, is a small display classified ad. An advert that you could, if you wanted, place directly with the newspaper. In the Sunday Telegraph magazine, for example, it would cost you around £265 according to their ratecard (based on a classified display advert that’s about the same size as a Webwindows box). Compare that to the Webwindows ratecard price, and it’s immediately clear how much of a rip-off it is. Even with the Webwindows “discount” it’s still more than going direct. And, of course, you could probably get a discount from the newspaper ratecard if you place the ad at the right time.
But there’s another thing, too. Adverts for websites in print magazines are pretty rare. In fact, the only ones I can remember seeing are these Webwindows boxes. And these wouldn’t be there if Webwindows didn’t aggressively market them to small businesses who aren’t sufficiently advertising-savvy to understand print advertising in general. Which tends to suggest that maybe advertising your website in print isn’t really cost-effective anyway – if it were, then more people would be doing it through the usual ad agencies and we’d be seeing lots of competitors to Webwindows. So Webwindows are selling a product of dubious value, at an inflated price, by unethical and borderline illegal means. I think that’s a good enough reason to avoid them like the plague.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:41
Thanks for this info – stopped us making a huge mistake!
October 1st, 2008 at 22:20
Me too!
January 12th, 2009 at 13:35
Me too! Mind you, it did then make me look at the Guardian prices, an advertising slot we had never considered!
January 19th, 2009 at 22:59
As en ex-employee of web windows i can tell you what a rip off it is and the ads very very rarely work.
January 29th, 2009 at 15:27
Thank’s for that, i was interested enough to google thier website and came across your page via a few forums on the topic. A Bargepole, touch,with, don’t!
February 10th, 2009 at 11:19
We paid them for a small advert last year and promptly supplied them the artwork. They ignored our artwork and made up their own advert for us, with the wrong telephone number, and printed this ad instead of the artwork we had designed.
I won’t give details of the battle that followed, but suffice it to say that I’d never deal with them again.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:56
I tried an ad with them after receiving one of their emails (I wasn’t sure if it was spam or not at that time as was not written like the general rubbish) and got very little, if anything, from it.
March 9th, 2010 at 09:48
The spam still comes. This is their latest scam mail as at 09/03/10
Hi there
“Desperate” is the only way of describing the situation I’m in at the moment. The presses roll at 4pm today and there are a couple ads still to sell in the next issue of The Sunday Times Magazine . The rates have fallen through the floor and I can’t stress enough how unusual this is for such a market leading paper.
Here’s the deal:
• Readership: 3.1 million
• Size (Single Panel): 45mm x 50mm
• Publication date: 21st March
• Rate card: £1250
• Offer: £398
The Sunday Times is by far the best response puller of all the weekend papers and this comes down to the massive readership of over 3 million readers. This is the first offer below £400 we’ve been able to offer for nearly a year so I very much hope Xxxxxxxx.Co.Uk will be tempted enough to give it a try.
I look forward to hearing back from you soon.
Regards
Charlotte
020 7649 9712
http://www.webwindows.co.uk
April 29th, 2010 at 13:09
Great article – thank you. They also just contacted one of our clubs, I was wary and it was really helpful to find your article – along with many other forum posts on other websites.
August 24th, 2010 at 15:10
Hi,
After all these years i thought it was time the company actually responded to these allegations.
As their newly appointed webmaster i feel that this page should have been removed ages ago as it is factually incorrect.
The email addresses secured for mail shots are gained legally and b2b emails offering a legitimate business service is not against the law.
All advertising and offers are strictly monitored by the national newspapers concerned and not once has our reputation made it a consideration that we were not able to offer such amazing deals which are not normally available to the average small business.
If you have received an email and do not wish to receive any more then we have implemented a more robust policy of deleting records so this does not happen again. The problem is compounded when the companies in question enter their details in several locations and the email addresses are then re-issued to us. This as I say we are addressing and hope to eradicate.
If you have any complaints or require to be removed after receiving multiple emails please feel free to email me direct at webmaster@webwindows.co.uk and i will assist in this happening asap.
Regards,
Mark Bailey
August 27th, 2010 at 07:56
I was wondering if we’d ever get an official reply!
Just to clarify a couple of things: If it is now the case that all of Webwindows’ mailshots go to legitimately acquired email addresses then that is a definite improvement. I know for certain that it was not always the case – I still have copies of the emails sent to my own private addresses. Having said that, just because something is legal does not make it acceptable – sending unsolicited commercial email is spam no matter whether it’s the illegal (B2C) or legal (B2B) type, and any organisation which engages in spamming deserves all the opprobrium it receives.
However, looking at the Webwindows website, it’s still clear that they engage in practices that are, at the very least, in the grey area of marketing if not over the line into the black. For example, their “SEO Elements” pages offer “Blog commenting” and “Forum posting” in which they boast that “All our forum postings are created and posted by hand to preserve authenticity”. That’s pretty much a tacit admission that they engage in comment spam, an activity which is not only unethical in itself but also often ineffective – if a website is found to be building links via comment spam, then Google will penalise it in the search results. Far from helping clients, Webwindows’ tactics could actually harm them. And, at £99 a month for 100 blog comments, it’s a bit of a rip-off price, too.
So, while I admire Mark Bailey’s chutzpah in posting here (although he has, of course, created a nice little link back to his website in so doing), the situation still hasn’t changed significantly. Webwindows are still a company that I will never use myself, and would not advise anyone else to deal with.
August 27th, 2010 at 18:02
First of all I thank you for allowing us to post a reply, I did think that it may get disallowed.
I think the debate over spam or not spam will continue for years. Most major UK companies having been spamming the mail box in your front door for years and still continue to do it online with opt-ins automatically ticked for you when purchasing products.
As I said previously we are trying to tighten up the email addresses used but like any system there are always a few that slip through the net. I repeat my offer to anyone receiving unwanted mail they can contact me directly.
With regards to the link in the post I would be more than happy for you to remove it. That was not the purpose of the posting.
With regards to the mention of “Blog Commenting” and “Forum Postings” this is perfectly acceptable as long as they are genuinely left and have meaning, substance and relevance to the topic in question. I agree that companies who do use software to spam these types of listings should be penalised and I am 100% against this automatic type of link-building as is Google. With regards to the credibility of such work I too admire your ‘chutzpah’ (I know my Hebrew as well) as I think having over 10 years in the industry allows me the right to make that judgement.
The price comment is where I truly take exception as you are using this to once again have a dig at the company. These are charged at this rate because they are done manually with care and precision so as not to create the spam you hate so much. I do not see you complaining that your 99p McDonalds only cost 3.2p to produce…
It is of course your right to have your own personal opinion and thank god with the freedom of speech allowed in this country your right to air it but surely this should be tempered with the fact that the allegations made are all from years ago and that the company has listened to these comments and responded to the best of its ability and does provide a genuine honest service for those that want press publications and website promotion. (Notice the lack of use of key words so as to gain no benefit from the posting).