Pledgehammer

How to grow your business

We received this email the other day:

Dear CEO,    

We are the department of registration service in China.We formally received an application on Oct 9, 2009, One company which self-styled “Tromite Corporation” are applying to register ” pledgehammer ” as internet brand and Domain names as below :

• pledgehammer.asia
• pledgehammer.cc
• pledgehammer.com.tw
• pledgehammer.hk
• pledgehammer.net.cn
• pledgehammer.org.cn
• pledgehammer.tw

After our initial examination, we found out that “Tromite Corporation” has no trade mark, brand nor patent even similar to that word.As authorized anti-cybersquatting organization we hereby suspect “Tromite Corporation” to be a domain grabber.Hence we hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company and this”Tromite Corporation”as the same company,there is no need reply to us,We will accept their application and will register those for them immediately.         

If your company has no relationships with that company nor do not authorized,please reply to us within 7 workdays,if we can’t get any information from yours over 7 workdays,we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “Tromite Corporation”.Thanks for your cooperation.

Wow, we thought. There are Chinese internet workers out there that are actually the good shepherd kind. We thanked them and let them know that Tromite Corporation is up to no good, thinking this sounds too good to be true.

Which it was. Turns out it’s just a very cunning scheme to win new business. Much less annoying than spam though, so my compliments to the guys from Nanzhan corporation. This is the letter that followed:

/…/ we conclude that company is your emulant, or “Tromite Corporation” is most likely to intend preempting registration of Domain names in advance,to speculate and invest in future,Thus their representative in China submitted this application through our body so we can not get in touch with them full-face,this just our conjecture. But as per the open registration principle as”who is the first who is the owner” in China we do not have any right to reject their application.
/…/
Nevertheless this need you and your company cooperate with us.In addition,please inform us your company’s decision of this issue.If your company do need to register those Domains in China, we will transfer an formal Application Form and fill out finished return to us by Fax or via E-mail. Of course we will esteem your any decision also.Thanks for your cooperation.