Darren: Well, Simon gave me loads of notice about doing this talk today. He asked me yesterday, “Can you do the talk for the seminar?” I said, “Yeah, why not?” But I’ve got nothing to talk about, so I had to think long and hard about what I’m going to talk to you about.
Now, I could talk about lots of tips about digital marketing, but quite frankly, that is really boring. Nobody wants to hear that because it’s just going to put you all to sleep. So I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few years about why I do what I do—because you’re meant to have a ‘why’ in your business. You’re meant to know what drives you, why you do it. And I’ve never really known. But I’m 48 now—shut up—I’m 48 now, and I have finally worked out why I do what I do. And what I hadn’t realized is that I’ve been doing that all along, just not really been aware of it.
And the reason I do what I do is because I hate to see people getting ripped off. I hate to see people getting victimized, people getting bullied, people getting persecuted, people getting taken advantage of because they don’t know any different, and somebody is basically doing the dirty. And I’ll give you a for instance.
Back in about 2004, 2005, I got into a bit of an online war—I know, it’s impossible to imagine—I got into a bit of an online war because there was a student who I was going out with at the time, living in Leeds, and she told me a story about a student property company. We’ve got some property people in the room right now. A student property company that was ripping off students. And it was well known within Leeds University that this student property company was ripping off the students.
Now, what happened was the students would pay their deposits. They would then move into the student accommodation. Then after 12 months, when they came to move out and get their deposits back, the student property company would say, “Ah, you didn’t pay your deposits to us. You paid it to this separate company which has nothing to do with us. Therefore, we can’t give you your deposits back.” Very, very naughty. Very, very illegal.
Now, I investigated this myself because these two companies appeared to be separate, and because I’m pretty good with the whole digital side and digital investigation, I uncovered proof that these two websites—these two separate websites—were actually related. They were even sharing internal resources, such as images and files, from each other. It was the same company, owned by the same people. And I reported this on my website at the time.
I then got a call from a company you’ve probably heard of called BBC Watchdog. BBC Watchdog was running a story on this company because they had been ripping off students, and Nicky Campbell did not one but two televised investigations on BBC Watchdog for this company. And I provided the digital evidence to show that these two businesses that claimed they were separate were linked.
I then got a phone call from the owner of this company—a guy named TCK. I won’t give his full name because I don’t want to identify too much—a guy named TCK. I recorded the call, obviously, because that’s what I do. He was having a right go at me about why I was trying to destroy his company, why I was putting this stuff out there when it was, quite frankly, nothing to do with me. And he was right—it was nothing to do with me. I don’t know why I was doing it. I just felt students were being ripped off, and it bothered me. It really bothered me. So I did it more. I put that phone call online, and I continued the harassment of this company to make sure more people knew about it. I mean, it had been on Watchdog twice.
I then got a call from a solicitor while I was at work. And it was actually the same solicitor—you’ll probably remember this story—it was the same solicitor that represented Leeds United when they got their points deduction back in 2002, 2003, and were relegated from the Premier League. He lost that case, and he lost the battle with me as well. I was arguing with him on the phone, saying, “Why are you publishing this content about this company? It’s nothing to do with you. Why are you taking this risk? Because if we sue you—me—I don’t have any liability insurance. I’m just me. I worked for a company at the time. If we sue you and you lose, it’s going to cost you tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
And I thought to myself, “Why am I doing this?” Because it’s wrong. Because you’re ripping people off, you bastards. So I’m going to continue doing it. And he lost. There was nothing he could do about it because everything I was putting online was true, and I could prove it.
And I didn’t realize that that is what actually drives me. And I have continued to do that, again and again, with companies that have been ripping people off.
Carphone Warehouse—yeah? Carphone Warehouse ran a big promotion many years ago, back in 2004, I think it was. “16-day money-back guarantee.” Try to take a phone back to Carphone Warehouse within that time period—”That money-back guarantee doesn’t apply to phones.” What the hell does it apply to then? You’re Carphone Warehouse!
And they tried to rip people off. That turned into a series of blog posts online, which got Carphone Warehouse employees masquerading as customers, posting fake reviews about Carphone Warehouse. But they were using their Carphone Warehouse email address when they logged in, which I could see because it was my website. I then put that back online, exposing the fact that they were posing as customers leaving false reviews. I don’t know why I did it. Because they were ripping people off. I wanted to expose it.
And some of you have been asking me this evening about my latest battle with a company called DFS—the sofa company. Now, I ordered a sofa. I’ve just renovated a house. It’s got a parquet wood floor that I paid over £1,300 to have fully restored because it hadn’t been touched since the house was built in the 1950s. DFS came in—massive scratch across the floor, about that big, and pretty deep as well. The guy took a photo of it, said he’d put it on the portal, and someone from DFS would be in touch. They never did.
Luckily for me, I’m me. So I kicked up a massive stink, and they’re paying for the repair. They’re coming on Tuesday. Unfortunately for them, the podcast about it is going live on Friday. And I will continue this campaign because they’re still ripping people off.
The reason I’m telling you this is not to think, “My God, if I do something wrong, this guy’s going to track me down to the ends of the earth and destroy me”—because I will. No, it’s because in my industry—digital marketing—this is rife. People set up SEO agencies with no clue what they’re doing, charging thousands per month.
I am offering businesses a free audit of their SEO. No obligation, no cost. If your SEO provider is doing a great job—fantastic. If not, you might be entitled to a refund.
Thank you. I’ve been Darren from Engage Web. Appreciate it.
