I wanted to claim a triumph, but it is hard to get excited about forcing the recognition of facts on a fellow-company in the information business. Over the past 2 years my company has been receiving notifications from Dun & Bradstreet regarding a California outfit called Global Media Group whose credit paperwork, D&B claimed, was incomplete. I periodically would call the US business rating group and tell them that our firm has no link with GMG. We had a different taxpayer ID and a different state of incorporation and, indeed, a different D&B number. It never worked.
Meanwhile my company’s rating was lowered showing we are risk over the next year of not paying our bills or going bankrupt. Moreover, the D&B entry said that Agorot Ltd d/b/a/ Global Investing was in the stockbroking business, which is untrue, and which we kept trying to correct.
Finally fed up with this state of affairs, I demanded the right to correct my company entry. This resulted in yet another farce, because our CPA (who does our accounts and taxes) works in Long Island’s Massapequa. Inputting this into our file resulted in D&B saying I had used a dirty word. (I could not make up these magic realism episodes if I were writing a novel.)
In disgust I had my lawyer draft a firm letter to the rating agency, at $150 for his time. And I pursued the matter with a series of clerks with ever more exotic accents who actually run the site in the Philippines and Mexico and India, to judge from those whose accents I could guess. I was asked to tell if I knew anything about another company at our accommodation address (the local Mailboxes Etc.) as the Filipina supervisor’s price for sending my company an apology for the ruin of my business rep.
Despite my knowing nothing about the other mailbox, I was promised that my corporate entry would be fixed. I am a believer in globalization but my own theory about D&B is that its data entry personnel are ignorant, ill-trained, and badly-managed. Another great name bites the dust.
