General > General Technical Chat
Companies that hide their address... why?
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Halcyon:
There are some valid reasons. For example, I actually have a business of my own (which I operate in addition to my day job). Sure, it's not generating huge turnover, but there are times where I'm asked to do contract work for various things, so I need to operate as a business entity as opposed to "doing a favour for a mate".

Because I'm a sole trader, I don't want my home address exposed. Even my business registration is not registered here, because of security concerns. It's not illegal and it's the way I choose to operate. If you're contacting me for work, it's because you've already met me, or you've been put in contact with me by someone else who knows me personally.

Whether I'm operating a business or not, my home address is private and should not be accessible to anyone other than who I choose to share it with.

If the Australian Taxation Office need to speak to me, they know how to reach me.
mendip_discovery:

--- Quote from: ejeffrey on May 05, 2023, 09:13:44 pm ---
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on May 05, 2023, 08:33:15 pm ---Some use one of these buildings that just acts as an address for others. You will find 1000s registered to this address and it's just just for accounting as they are often just holding companies or there to hide the trail of money.

I find it annoying when I have to go to a customer and they obfuscate the address so it makes it a pain to enter into the satnav and even more fun to find once you are near as are a company within a company and the business name isn't known to anyone nearby.

So yeah I share your annoyance.

--- End quote ---

I'm not sure what you are saying.  You are visiting a customer and they give you a fake address?  Are they expecting you?  Did you schedule the visit?  Because if I am your customer and you have scheduled a meeting, I will make sure you have the correct address, not some PO box or paper address.

--- End quote ---

I get a mix of issues, part of it is my works fault. At times my paperwork will have the address for the head office where the accounts are done. I need to find the site they have in Wilton and that is all I have. At times I am doing a different onsite each day so I don't have the head space to be planning and working out these issues until the night before or the morning of the job. Going to the main website and they don't list the addresses of the other sites just makes it tougher.

I have an address on my paperwork when you put the address into google maps I get the rough area that the firm is located but they could be anywhere on that industrial site or postcode area so I might not be on the right road so takes time to find them. Even worse when it's a company that has a different company in the building as they are doing a Trading As type thing.
jonpaul:
On the web since 1995, any info like email address, phys address, name, can be mined by the bots and added to spam, fraude, and malware databases sold on darknet or by government and terrorist regimes...

We "munged" our site decades ago and have reduced the threats and spam to an extent.

Nowadays the  threat is constant and ever increasing...Russia, China, North Korea, Iran......

In case you need to check a firm's existence or rep, and it is listed on the US stock exchanges, just use the USA SEC EDGAR site,

https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch

search the name for the 10K, 10Q and other required corporate filings that are public info.

Be safe,

Jon

JPortici:

--- Quote from: ejeffrey on May 05, 2023, 06:44:50 pm ---Probably because they don't want unannounced visitors?  Why do you need to know their physical location?

--- End quote ---

Because

--- Quote from: Karel on May 05, 2023, 11:25:21 am ---to check if they are legit
--- End quote ---
If you don't know the address, or the address is not legit you can't send the police in case of a scam. Been there.
hans:

--- Quote from: David Hess on May 05, 2023, 01:57:03 pm ---
--- Quote from: Kjelt on May 05, 2023, 01:35:57 pm ---Or they like to produce and sell stuff not talk to salespeople all day long.
--- End quote ---

If their customers cannot contact them, then they have no customer service problems.

--- End quote ---

And it's a customer problem when they show up with an axe on your front step demanding a fix for some issue. Which may or may not be the shop's fault, at all. A customer can be tech-illiterate. Or as a webshop you rely on a manufacturer doing a proper refurb but still messes up. There are tons of legit reasons, but customers will be (sometimes stupid) customers and find reasons to be pissed off at you.
And then you still have someone with an axe on your door step.

Don't get me wrong. It indeed does sound a bit shady. But say you're an internet-only webshop. What purpose does a physical address have? Do you have a showroom?(internet-only=no) Do you have a service desk?(internet-only=no) Can gov find you?(yes, if need be) Then listing the address will only cause more problems:
- Unsolicited customer visits (legit questions or with an axe)
- Other companies trying to scam you by sending random invoices for "consultancy work" under a registered letter (e.g. claiming to have send you unsolicited advice in some other registered letter)
- etc.

Honestly I think hiding a visitor address isn't the worst. Sure, if a company is ignoring your  issue, then showing up physically can make it very urgent. But that also predisposes the kind of customers you will still find at your doorstep, and since we live in 2023 where many people order crap online (through Amazon or whatever), then as a business it will only cause problems. And here I'm assuming that business is doing legit work and trying their best. It's probably better to hand money back to these kinds of customers anyway, as you don't want to have these people as your customer.

I think companies that hide all human contact information is far worse. E.g. which number to call, or mail address to send,  if you have a problem with your private Facebook, Microsoft or Google account? There is none. They will have some FAQs with dummy tier troubleshooting, and a chatbot that refers to those articles. Yet I'm pretty sure that almost everyone (once had) an account at 1 or multiple of these companies. What a great way of doing business..

Then there are large physical corporations that make contact information unnecessarily hard to find, where I presume they do that to reduce costs (less people finding phone number = less calls = smaller call center). Mediamarkt in NL is a classic where it takes half a dozen 'correct' clicks to find their actual contact information, whereas on the Belgium website its literally 1 click on "contact" (maybe Belgian people like to skip BS?)

Honestly I was amazed that I could call a company like Apple the other day. I'm not trying to make out I'm a fanboy, because Apple in other ways is a horrible corporation. But when I had a problem with my (new) AppleID, they have a human chat service plus a phone agency that called me back the same day.
Yet I think their (only) physical store in NL is a 2hr drive away from me.

E-mail is a bare minimum, phone is nice for urgent questions.
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