Parish Reviews

Just got their email saying I should renew my listing but I never signed up for the service in the first place There is no info on where they got my data and they have not contacted me to approve them using it Making it look like a it s part of a gov site concerns me and I certainly will never be signing up for their monthly subscription

I received several emails that appeared to be from my local parish council asking me to renew my business listing I was very nearly taken in I couldn t remember listing in my local parish directory so just before paying the invoice I decided to double check My business wasn t listed there which confirmed my suspicion that I had never asked to be listed It was only once I d checked the payee that I realised this outfit had nothing to do with my local parish The website looks very much like a government website only the small-print on the bottom confirms that it isn t I had a look at Companies House records and it appears that Parish Services Ltd is a rebranding of CEDEX Their new USP seems to be to copy business details and reviews from Google and list together as a local directory This may be a legitimate business idea but sending emails that appear to be from a local parish council is suspect

I received one of these invoices I had not created any such listing but they may have added me to their list So in my view it is at least very sloppy practice if not sharp practice I made the mistake of paying but having reflected on this and researched it properly I emailed asking for a refund I got a fairly prompt reply granting my request

Never had a subscription but on checking the Domain Authority on Moz it was a 57 so I thought it would be worth a link Paid for three years but when I altered something in the listing it invoiced me a second time Have requested that this is refunded Refund was granted

It s not actually a scam but bloody cheeky in my view Basically they harvest your organisation s Google Maps entry including star ratings and list it on their site without asking you for a certain period of time then they email you to say that you need to pay to renew the listing Hopefully no one is daft enough to pay for renewal it comes nowhere near the top of search engines so isn t a great service Some nice info on there regarding census and planning application info for your parish though