Business to Business Scams

Just like individuals, businesses get targeted by scam artists as well. A while back, someone called the store and asked what sort of receipt paper we were using for our printer and then asked to confirm our address. Weeks later we received a box of receipt paper. Later we received a phone call from a company called NBS or National Business Supplies. They asked for payment on an overdue invoice for some receipt paper. What wasn't apparent at the time was that no one had ordered this box. The price was outrageous too as it was about 4 times the price despite it not being any different from the product at Office Depot or Staples. The money was paid, because it had originally seemed to be our mistake or miscommunication. However, we told them not to contact us again since we didn't want overpriced product.

About 8 months later the scam was tried again. This time when it got to A/P, we had called NBS and asked that they take back the shipped goods. We told them no one had ordered the product. They produced the name of the girl that was working at the time and claimed she had ordered it. Which was rubbish since none of the girls would ever be in charge of supplies. We told them to take back the product at their cost. It's at this point when it became obvious these guys were scammers. They refused to take back the box and threatened that if we didn't pay we'd be seeing the police. Our A/P guy laughed so hard I can hear it from across the office! When the laughter died, it was obvious the other person on other line was agitated, he started making threats about credit bureaus and stuff. Hmm... they just threatened with police action, how can the credit bureau be worse?!?!

We told them that we would deal with this through the Better Business Bureau arbitration. We went online to register the complaint. Interestingly, the BBB actually lists this type of scam. It wasn't really a lot of money but we were going to fight this on principal. The aftermath of this situation is that they stopped calling us and we have had the box of receipt paper sitting in the back for over a year now.

So watch out for NBS or National Business Supplies out of Montreal Quebec. Their invoices look professional so it's easy to mistake them for being legit. However, they don't have a website and that says a lot right there.