w w w..hu rt zo ne..co..uk

[shelagh]

Hi,

I am helping to promote a charity event which is happening on Saturday the 17th May 2014 in the Bagshot area.

Ideally, if it would be at all possible, for you to be able to participate or support this http://w w w..h u r t z o n e..co..uk Charity Event.

If you are unable to participate, please can you circulate this email to your contacts that might be interested, to help us make this a successful charity event.

[Bendy Ben]

http://www.blatantadvertisingforfree.com

or

http://www.trycontributingbeforeflammingaforum.co.uk

Try FB or Twitter

[Big_Show]

Those are dead links Ben. Did you spell them right?



Sent from the north-east.

[SickBoy]

Fair enough this was a bit of a spam post but not the most welcoming response?

Sent from Canada using my Nexus 4

[Bendy Ben]

Blatant spam. Look at the spaces in the topic headline.

If this person comes back I shall donate £20 to a charity of their choice. I make no apology

[Jack Hughes]

Blatant spam. Look at the spaces in the topic headline.

If this person comes back I shall donate £20 to a charity of their choice. I make no apology

Well, I kind of disagree. The events section is for promoting events. So this is on-topic for that.

However, this is so badly executed, it is actually anti-marketing.

If it was spam, the only point would be to have a perfectly functioning link, the idea being that you improve your google page rank by having sites linking to you. This fails to do that.

I suspect that "Shelagh" is just inept, and shouldn't really be using computers. It's more likely just a cut and paste from something in their email program, to the web site. They probably don't actually understand the difference between web, email, messaging etc.

The web site really does exist, so it does look like a "proper" event, although more of the one-of challenge type events, that don't even both to time people etc. I don't like these, but a lot of people do.

However, if the quality of this "marketing "is anything to go by, the message I would draw from it is that the event is likely to be poorly organised.

Pity really, especially if this a volunteer trying to "do good".

So, not spam, but very inept, and a bit rude as a result.

Shelagh last visited on the 9th - just before you posted the first reply. Of course, they could have visited anonymously since.

[Jack Hughes]

Having dug a bit further, I think that Shelagh is a real person - probably Shelagh Tobin (or someone pretending to be them!), who is the event organiser.


You can see the same message posted here, where it does look like it has come from an email, as it is posted by someone with an account on the board:

http://www.southamptontriclub.co.uk/dis ... rId=148537



being charitable, I would suggest that Shelagh is just trying a bit too hard.

I'll research the charity and see if it is legitimate.

[Jack Hughes]

The Soliders Charity (formerly known as the the Army Benevolent Fund) seems to be legitimate, the hurtzone web site claims that this event is in conjunction with them. On the Soldiers Charity web site, there is no reference to the hurtzone event in their event listings.

The hurtzone.co.uk domain name was first registered in December, so is very new.

They have their own charity number - unfortunately, the charity commission web site seems down at the moment, so I can't check it out.

The name is registered to this guy

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/john-gladwin/16/b46/71b

And in-motion sport seems to have been around for a while. So it maybe that hurtzone.co.uk is just a new thing, and above board....

However, they are not doing a good job at presenting the event or themselves in a way that gives one confidence.

[Jack Hughes]

Hmmm.. The charity number at the bottom of the hurtzone.co.uk web site is 1103669

https://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/S ... ryNumber=0

This is the "Gurkha Welfare Trust".

Quite what the relationship between this, inmotion sport, and hurtzone.co.uk is unclear.

[sonofsammo]

The poor url is down to me, I'm afraid. - I added the spaces to kill SEO opportunity, as it looked like spam.
I assumed if it wasn't spam the person who posted would return, notice it and correct it.