Competitors - what tricks do yours get up to?

[Claire B]

I'm just wondering if I am the only person on here who gets constant grief from their competitors? Do you have them, and if so what have they done to you (more importantly, what have you done to them :wink: )

So far, I have had silly phone calls, people following me and hanging outside buildings to see what I get up to and other people who phone up and make obviously fake enquiries, just to waste my time (I don't know how they find the time)

Oh I have also had intimidation and threats made against me (unbelievable :shock: )

spill the beans everyone!

[SillyJokes]

What on earth do you do to evoke that response?

I think the worse we have is image nicking, using our name to get their own pages better ranked but it might be worse than that.

I don't think any have followed us about.

[Pebble Communications]

Part of one of my jobs used to be calling round the competitors for quotes once a month or so, so that we could do price comparisons!
V.embarrassing.

[crus]

Had a site cloned, etc, etc,

But the worst was a false aqusation of child porn against us that shut us down for a couple of days and took 3 months to be resolved with the fact the paid link (like adsense) that was on our site went to a site that had been hacked and had nothing to do with us, the ad company or the site owner whose site was hacked.

The reason I know this was a competitor, it was within days of a contract being signed for a franchise that was in direct competition to us. In addition the franchise seller had a history of underhanded tactics and violence against a similar competitor prior to this date.

Yes the site had been hacked but the complaint was placed in a malicous way as to instigate a local police investigation, rather than through the correct channels of the IWF who would have been able to instantly see where the problem was without expending 000's in wasted police resources.

D

[JoyDivision]

None so far but I am a bit worried about upseting one competitor since has been doing it for 10 years.

I am doing things a bit differently though so hopefully I won't upset him too much.

[Rachael]

Joy competition is healthy so he'll just have to deal with it.

I don't have any grief from any of my competitors at all!!

Would be very interested in hearing your business claire!!

[Claire B]

Would be very interested in hearing your business claire!!

One day, I will reveal all :wink: I will introduce myself on here properly, but for now it will have to wait :D

[bwglaw]

She works for the Inland Revenue...;)

[Whistle Ink]

Would be very interested in hearing your business claire!!

One day, I will reveal all :wink: I will introduce myself on here properly, but for now it will have to wait :D

Claire, don't you run a catering company up in 'Bonny' Scotland ??

[Claire B]

not exactly

but now you're putting me on the spot! :oops:

I'm actually involved in the pre-school sector, but currently involved in some legal stuff (Crossguard is 'on the case' thankfully)

When that is all over, I will be able to relax a bit and tell you a bit more, infact it will be nice to properly introduce myself on here.

hope no-one minds too much :cry:

[Claire B]

i did go to bonny scotland once for my honeymoon............

[Claire B]

She works for the Inland Revenue...;)

HA, you wouldn't say that if you'd seen my last tax return! :lol:

[fastfences]

I don't have problems. No-one can compete with me!
Cheers, Nigel

[guylewis0]

Claire, I'm interested in talking with you re. the childrens personalised songs... could you email us here? info@theperfectsong.co.uk? and let us know what you're about.
Thanks.

On the competitors side of things... I don't think we've got any. We are fortunate to own an extremelly uniqiue business that other small companies would find difficult to copy due to the skills and resources we posess and it's something that a huge company would find almost impossible to do eg. it would require the full time employment of a professional singer, musicians and composers- that's not cheap.

Guy
www.theperfectsong.co.uk

[Claire B]

Hi Guy, I'll be in touch tommorow, would definatley like to chat some more!

Claire

[VeryMark]

One of the tricks we have come across in several cases is a competitor registering variations of your domain name and linking it to their website to steal your internet traffic - say if you have alpha-alarms.co.uk, the competitor registers the unhyphenated version of that plus the corresponding .com domain names.

[Pebble Communications]

I'm lucky in that I work in an extremely cooperative line of business. I'm in touch with several of my 'competitiors' regularly and we swap advice, help, support, resources and even pass clients on to each other. So far this year I've passed on a regular client I no longer wished to work with and a one off project to different people, and I'm off for a meeting this week with a prospective client someone I'd never even had any contact with before, has passed to me. A small group of us 'group buy' a certain service we all need and I'm a member of an industry specific forum where we have e-mails for help/advice/gossip flying round all day. Sometimes we team up for larger projects as well.

What goes around comes around, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, type of situation.

Very unusual I know, and I do appreciate how lucky I am, as it was a massive help to me during my first year in business. I had one person in particular take me under their wing right from the point where I was just considering giving up employment and launching out independently.

I imagine things are a bit different in a slump though; at the moment there is plenty of work to share around...

[VeryMark]

That sounds mutually benficial, Fiona, but I'd be interested to know how you 'group buy' - who does the admin and who makes the decision?

[clairemackaness]

I cant say I have any problems at all. I guess they probably dont like me as I am cheaper than them all!

[coxadmin]

I haven't had any problems with competitors and am keen to get together with other VA's to share experiences. A group of us are organising a local monthly VA group meeting and I am a member of two online VA professional groups that share with each other.

I think that competitors needn't be an giant to be overcome, more of a resource and support.

[fastfences]

I guess they probably dont like me as I am cheaper than them all!

Just so I understand this properly, do you mean 'you' or your 'product'? :wink:
Cheers, Nigel