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Review 4/23/2010
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This company scams businesses by acquiring names of people in your company - the person who purchases office supplies and executives who would be responsible for approving such orders. A person calls, identifying him or herself as an employee of an office supply company - sometimes a different name than South Bay - and claims to have spoken to a company executive, mentioning that person by name and claiming that the person has referred the caller to you. The caller claims that the company is liquidating before moving their business to a new location, and may claim to be a calling from a different location than he/she actually is, making the call difficult to trace if you attempt to cancel the order once you discover that the order has not been pre-approved by a supervisor.
The caller pretends that an order has been pre-arranged by the your company executive he/she has named, sometimes even pretending to be personally acquainted with that individual, and makes statements that the executive supposedly told him/her about your office supply needs. The caller proceeds to run through a list of supplies, asking what you use, and quoting very low prices. South Bay then ships a huge amount of supplies to your business and sends an invoice for an exorbitant amount.
Over a span of about 20 years, South Bay has operated, by the same owner, under various names and re-located several times. They now have a website, but it has no identifying information, other than company name, such as address and telephone number. They do include a telephone number on the boxes they send and call the office repeatedly once the invoice has been sent out. Our company ended up returning the supplies (South Bay sent us return labels).
UPDATE: South Bay Office Products is now operating under the name All States Office Supply. It is still operated by Richie and Linda Holof, with locations in Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach, FL. They are registered in Washington state.
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