A new scam surfaced that kind of caught me off guard since I feel this firm happens to be one of the more quality oriented lead gen firms out there. But without naming names, here is what they are doing …

They tell contractors they will help them get reviews from customers who have not given a review. Sounds nice, except for the fact that they ask the contractor to just provide the emails of all their customers so they can solicit the reviews on your behalf.

I find it highly discouraging to randomly provide your customer emails to a third party. The first is it goes against the grain of providing customer information to another source when you can bet your customers would never agree to give away their contact information to be bombarded with marketing from another firm.

And also, those reviews will not go to a place that can help you with inbound leads, the reviews will go to the third parties website making it even more attractive for them to sell the contractor advertising.

I am sure the Lead Gen firm would not classify this as a scam, but what else do you call it when a company asks for you to give away your client emails? Whether it is legal or not is not the issue, it is unethical to do so against your customers who never agreed to give away their communication information.

Be cautious when a firm says they will do something for Free and all you need to do is download your customer email list.