Just a quick warning about buying from Customlists.net

[Simon Young]

Hi all,

I do a fair bit of email marketing to UK businesses and recently came across a company called Customlists.net - not going to post their actual URL as a link as not wanting to promote their business.

BE VERY CAREFUL and DO NOT BUY from them - their data is a load of rubbish, they claim to have UK Business Data but when you receive the database its absolutely made up, basically they have taken a computer generated list of first names and surnames and then spidered out for a list of websites then combined the two and the result is a ton of garbage WHICH THEY ARE SELLING!!! They then give you a gaurantee that they will give you more data if you have a large percentage of bounced emails - well 50% of it goes though and probably just ends up in black holes or is redirected to actual recipients (but in the case of UK data having checked the authenticity most of the .com companies in there are in the USA) and the other half bounces - what a pile of crap, this company should be banned - trouble is they look legit because they are right at the top of google and take paypal payment plus give you loads of good feeback.

Be careful everyone and dig a little below the surface! Remember if its that cheap then it must be too good to be true - and this is definately on of those scams!

[AciveLite2k]

Hi all,

I do a fair bit of email marketing to UK businesses and recently came across a company called Customlists.net - not going to post their actual URL as a link as not wanting to promote their business.

BE VERY CAREFUL and DO NOT BUY from them - their data is a load of rubbish, they claim to have UK Business Data but when you receive the database its absolutely made up, basically they have taken a computer generated list of first names and surnames and then spidered out for a list of websites then combined the two and the result is a ton of garbage WHICH THEY ARE SELLING!!! They then give you a gaurantee that they will give you more data if you have a large percentage of bounced emails - well 50% of it goes though and probably just ends up in black holes or is redirected to actual recipients (but in the case of UK data having checked the authenticity most of the .com companies in there are in the USA) and the other half bounces - what a pile of crap, this company should be banned - trouble is they look legit because they are right at the top of google and take paypal payment plus give you loads of good feeback.

Be careful everyone and dig a little below the surface! Remember if its that cheap then it must be too good to be true - and this is definately on of those scams!

We know a company that purchased lists from them and used iContact. The second they sent mail using the list, iContact suspended their account. I'm assuming that the email companies such as iContact and MailChimp have known "Flagged" email addresses.

In my opinion, if you get a list that can be flagged by iContact, then it probably would not be a good idea to purchase in the future...

[williamc]

In my opinion, if you get a list that can be flagged by iContact, then it probably would not be a good idea to purchase in the future...

more than likely iContact noticed that they were importing huge lists just to spam. would not matter where the list was purchased from. that is not iContacts function and is against their terms of service.

[lisajones]

Yep this list does have a lot of junk, although did have one of my friends emails in it which i found quite funny. Tried it for B2B for marketing our business energy at our site and got a really high bounce rate.