So why re-brand?

Re-branding is a common practice in the marketing world. Usually, it is related to a change of some kind. Often that is a change in the product or the company is trying to attract a different type of customer for a specific product.

However, in the data recovery industry, companies that rebrand are a whole different matter.

Companies that practice fraudulent and scammy business will be the ones that usually resurface with a new brand. This typically happens once their existing reputation falls below a certain threshold. It is easy to accomplish especially if your business is not dependant on organic search engine optimization but does depend on a controlled budget spent only on Google AdWords to bring traffic.

What happens is that once one of this type of business hits that threshold of bad reviews, they bounce back by rebranding. This involves a quick name change and instantly they can start all over again doing whatever they were doing before but as a relatively new entity. Well, until the reputation tanks again.

A good example of one of these types of companies was the one that started as DataRecoveryCorp. It was owned and operated by Dimitry Belkin – DBI Investments (That was also involved in Real Estate industry.) The company cheated customers, charged customers upfront with non-refundable parts fees on cases that they knew were not repairable. They gave clients hope and then would eventually just call all the cases unsuccessful. They also provided false diagnostics on cases that were easily recoverable and actually quoted astronomical prices on those very cases.

After a considerable amount of time, many upset and angry customers started to post bad reviews on the RipOff report website. It led to Fox News sending in undercover journalists to conduct inside investigations on the company. That resulted in this coverage.

Once this story hit the internet, it wasn’t very long afterwards and the DataRecoveryCorp website disappeared. Just a few weeks later a new company appeared online with the name of DataRetrieval and FileRetrieval with completely new domain names. A quick search of the addresses on those websites revealed that they were the same as the ones used for DataRecoveryCorp.

Uh-oh!

This company depended just on AdWords traffic and never on clients coming from organic search engine activity. So, the clients who clicked on their ads would have been desperate for data recovery services and it would not have occurred to them to conduct a little background searching before proceeding.

This is what has happened:

DataRecoveryCorp rebrands as DataRetrieval/FileRetrieval and has not just a new name but also a new website. They pulled new customers through their AdWords campaign and those new customers are none the wiser about the past history of this company and are about to get caught in their web. So far, the company reputation is clean and they can once again engage in fraudulent practices.

However, it didn’t take very long for bad reviews to bury the re-branded DataRecoveryCorp. In fact, the BBB profile for DataRetrieval and FileRetrieval shows very similar reviews as they received when doing business as DataRecoveryCorp. Oddly enough, the rebranded website is now gone.

Should we expect to see yet another rebrand of this company? We’ll just have to wait and see.

What can you do to avoid falling for one of these scam companies and the services they promise to provide but actually don’t?

One word:

Research

I published a blog post some time ago covering the most common scams and tricks used by data recovery companies. So if you find yourself in a desperate situation, you have to refrain from clicking on the first ad you see. Chances are that the website you will be redirected to will look legitimate. It is going to have a slick and fancy look to it and the sales reps will work you every which way in order to get you to send them your failed media.

As soon as you do that, you have taken their bait and your data recovery hopes are gone.

I strongly recommend that you stay away from clicking on data recovery Google Ads. If the company does not appear naturally when you conduct a Google search, that should tell you something. Reputable data recovery companies will have put effort into their SEO practices so that they will come up when you do a search. It’s their most reliable way of getting business – attracting customers for their recovery service.

So, conversely, if you conduct a Google search for a data recovery service and it doesn’t appear, then you know you should do additional research. Check addresses and see if anything matches on BBB site or any other review site. The more you know, the better off you will be and hopefully you will be able to avoid getting scammed by a fraudulent company that doesn’t care about your data loss situation, but only wants to charge you for services they have no intention of providing.