Conka Visualisation playing dirty

[olly]

Just wanted to give people a heads up about Conka Visualisation's business ethics.

We received a call on Wednesday from a company claiming to have a new job that needed a quote. A man called James Davies from Jimmy Marketing called far too familiar with terms/processes than the average client. We thought this and the company name sounded a bit fishy but played along.

We have since done a bit of digging and found that the domain name www.jimmymarketing.co.uk was registered by someone at Conka the day of the phone call.

This is the second time they have approached us for a price, the first time they didn't hide their identity but made up some shizzle about not knowing how to do animation in Vray and could we price to do it for them.

We have no problem with competitors trying to get info or hi-res work out of us, in fact we take at as a form of flattery. We just wondered what the rest of you in the viz world thought about this sort of practice?

Cheers,
Olly

[percydaman]

Its, funny, and a little distasteful, but I wouldn't call it dirty really. Even grocery stores do it.

[jacksc02]

funny situation isnt it!
I cant get on to any of their websites at the moment.......

[jamesf73]

dirty bastards

[Da_elf]

my friend calls other computer stores to find out the price on their inks and toners so that she can get a better price than her competitors

[tigerX]

Olly, same chap, same job, same domain name etc.. we did a price for him yesterday. Idiots.

[glorybound]

Price

it is called secrete shoppers. It is a very common practice. I wouldn't do it, but companies like Wal-mart and Best Buy advertise this practice letting their customers know that they are getting a very competitive price.

[jamesf73]

not really the same thing as secret shopper as viz companies aren't selling the same quality services, so you can't compare like with like. i should imagine that getting some visuals done by tiger x would be more expensive than conka, but at least you know you're going to get a good image at the end of it

conka are supposed to be a professional company. they should have the skills to be able to quote jobs on their own. and going to the trouble of setting up your own fake website is just dumb. conka have made themselves look like a bunch of arseholes.

[olly]

Good to see most people think this is underhand.

I'm not sure about using grocery stores/supermarkets to condone this; they are some of the biggest corporate low-lives going.

I agree with James, you can't compare 2 visualisation companies like for like. We're selling a creative service not a box of cornflakes. We all approach jobs with differing amounts of skill, experience & overheads and therefore our rates must reflect this.

Olly, same chap, same job, same domain name etc.. we did a price for him yesterday. Idiots.

Did you let them know the game was up?

Cheers,
Olly

[tigerX]

Yeah I did Olly. Stupid stuff from Conka, it'll bite them on the ass.

[chrisjacks21]

No way, we supplied a quote for the same cowboy outfit yesterday!

[Neilg]

I've heard about this happening to someone I know but the quote given was about 1/10th what it would be with a completley straight face.

[olly]

We'd already smelled a rat so doubled ours...

[dapeter]

I took some entrepreneur/self employment classes through unemployment earlier in the year. They actually taught us to do this and wanted us to call up competitors and pretend to be a client as research. It -is- standard practice in business, and is usually just called 'market research.' Maybe most on the forums are self-employed and don't want to do it? I know I don't personally, but I could see the value and wouldn't be against doing it in certain instances. I think a lot of people just look at it as 'it's business, not personal.' And it really is just business, as a business to be competitive you have to be aware of what you're competition is charging or offering... or you could start losing clients and not know why.

[Sawyer]

Yeah I guess I am not quite sure what is wrong with this practice. Yea its a bit sleazy but if you do business seems like you need to know exactly what your competition is doing. Isn't that the number 1 thing you need on a business plan? Am I missing something?