PARISH Avis 115

Although this might not be legally a scam, it is certainly misleading businesses into subscribing a small amount.

My advice.... think before you sign up.
Do your research.
Listen to BBC you and yours radio 4 - May 3rd 2023.

It's not actually a scam, but bloody cheeky in my view. Basically, they harvest your organisation's Google Maps entry, including star ratings and list it on their site without asking you for a certain period of time, then they email you to say that you need to pay to renew the listing. Hopefully, no one is daft enough to pay for renewal; it comes nowhere near the top of search engines, so isn't a great service. Some nice info on there regarding census and planning application info for your parish though.

Absolute scam. We don't have any kind of listing with them buy they've emailed a reminder to pay to renew our listing.
Absolute red flag scam artists

Well I fell for it! Sadly only found my way to these eye-opening reviews because my daughter said it might be a scam. So now I have an invoice for £19.00, can anyone advise?
I think that the list of businesses for our parish may be taken from the Google map page.
**Thank you Parish for your prompt reply. I will take your advice and request a credit note against the invoice I received.**

This outfit is a scam, they tried to make the website look similar to gov.uk style

Who signed my business up to this site? (I didnt)
Why am I receiving unsolicited emails out of the blue telling me i need to renew (jog on) you cannot renew something you havent signed up for lol

There are at least 2 GDPR breaches on a mass scale here. They need to be very careful

Never signed up for this completely useless listing and they try to scam you out of £19 for a years subscription.

Another company who tries to prey on small business's, no one except bots want to visit the site as confirmed via domain data. Don't bother replying to their spam.

This is a scam, received a renewal notice and inadvertently clicked on it; have never signed up, amended the info and then realised what I had done. Sent them an email and they did respond same day confirming my "listing" which I had never made originally had been cancelled - phew!

Never had a subscription but on checking the Domain Authority (on Moz) it was a 57 so I thought it would be worth a link. Paid for three years but when I altered something in the listing it invoiced me a second time. Have requested that this is refunded. Refund was granted.

Total scam. Looks official but is not. We have never had a paid listing, so to receive a "Renew your Subscription" email was a surprise.

This is a scam, nearly fell for it. Looks authentic for local businesses, so easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. Only £19 - but probably reeling in hundreds of £19.

Nearly fell for this...so glad I checked on here first. I almost got to the point of paying even though I could not remember doing so in the past! Almost paid these con artists as it is really believable at first

Who ever is running this site has taken it upon themselves to ask for £19 to renew your subscriptions to their Parish.uk site. As people have never subscribed in the first place, they are basically conning people, in my opinion, into thinking that they are renewing a listing, which is definitely not the case.

yes clearly a scam!!!

Like many others I received an email saying I had to renew my listing, which was for a non profit club, it then asks for payment. The exact wording of the email is below -
Dear ***** Club,

"Your Warmington Parish Business Directory listing for ***** club expires in 8 days. To renew the listing and confirm the company's contact details are up-to-date, please use the button below. Alternatively you can cancel the listing. Once the listing is cancelled you will not receive any further renewal reminder emails."

This is misleading as I never signed up in the first place so this isn't a renewal at all.

The standard reply from Parish seems to be that they have a good Moz page rank so your listing will rank well, this is also misleading as your listing won't rank at all. Evidence of this can be found by doing a Google search of any business listed on the Parish website listing, once you get past the search results for the businesses own website you'll start to see other websites that mention or link to the the business, you'll see various directories but even after 10 pages of search engine results you won't find the listing from the Parish directory website? Why? Because the listing is as much use as a chocolate tea pot.

Nearly fell for this one. Was emailed with an urgent notice to renew my business listing on what looked to be an official site. Got all the way through to receiving an invoice before I realised I’d never created this listing in the first place. Fortunately decided to do a bit more research before proceeding, and discovered it was a site very much pretending to be something it isn’t, and demanding payment for a service never requested. Looks like business details are harvested to create an official-looking site, then renewal notices and demands for payment sent.

Very clever. Extremely questionable.

I wonder how many busy businesses fall for this.

Scammers! Claimed I had a listing with them and tried to phish further information and/or funds from me via renewal or cancellation. Just ignore these emails!

Got a "renewal" (at cost) for a listing never requested. Clearly scrapes business info from legitimate listings than passes itself off as a government site (sufficiently that it has to include a specific disclaimer to deny it) to look official. May not be a scam, but definitely underhand. In looking at the cancellation page, they ask me to confirm I have the authority, like they understand what that even means...

This is a scam which I nearly fell for! Be warned all business owners!!

Misleading Scam site. Avoid

Copy paste standard responses "we are not a scam" is not going to work for you!

This company needs to be shut down as its impersonating government services.