Safety tips when purchasing training material
Dear Training Providers and developers,
Our company name is SmartScript. We've been in the development business since 2005, and we've had some very unfortunate dealings in the past, as have many of our clients.
It would appear there are some unsavoury characters out there who pretend to be developers and disappear once the provider has paid for their material, or they steal material and sell it as their own.
We would like to assist in pushing these people out of the training and development business so dealings in this industry is always pleasant and more importantly safe for all of us.
In order to do this, we have a few tips for prospective buyers of training material:
- Ask as many questions as you can about who developed the material.
- Check the business credentials of the people you are dealing with.
- Do they have a registered company?
- Do they have a website?
- Do they have a company email address or is it a web address like @yahoo. Despite the best efforts of web mail based companies, it is still easy for these "fly by nighters" to get a quick and disposable email address.
- When purchasing material, ask for a letter of purchase on a company letterhead.
These are just a few things to help you ensure you get good training material, or actually get any material at all in some cases.
It really saddens us to hear all the stories of misfortune in purchasing training material.
Please be vigilant and lets fight this together as providers and developers.
Your comments are most welcome and would love for you to leave suggestions on how else providers can verify who it is they are buying from, and also what we as material developers can do to set your mind at ease when purchasing material.
Regards,
SmartScript team
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Albert Mandizvidza on -
I lost money last week. After paying for material the guy just disappeared.
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Permalink Reply by DuduzileZwane on -
Dear Albert
Hope all is well with you.
Sorry for your loss,I have also experience a situation when the Service provider dissapaered with YMPG Publishers learning material before payment.
YMPG Publishers would like to develop or customise the learning material qualification you have lost for free.
Kindly send us the Qualification ID OR tittle and timeline that you need this qualification to be delivered to you.
Contact Person:Duduzile Zwane
duduzile.zwane@ympg.org or 0733326005
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Permalink Reply by Pamela Huygen on -
Hi Albert,
That's terrible, I'm sorry to hear you lost money to unsavory "developers".
This is exactly why I'm concerned and why I wrote this article. I cannot tell you how many of our clients have gone through this type of experience.
Likewise, people steal our material from colleges and then sell it as their own.
This type of behavior makes me furious and I really feel training providers and developers should start working together to push these people out of business. If there is no market for them to sell to, they cannot make an existence and will have to find something else to do.
Would you mind terribly to send me the details of the person who sold you this bogus material to my inbox? We are in the process of building a database containing names and email addresses of fraudsters so if they do come up, we can warn our clients.
Perhaps we can assist you with the material you need?
Kind regards,
Pam
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Permalink Reply by DuduzileZwane on
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Dear Service Providers
Don't pay for learning material you have'nt evaluated,no matter how urgent it may be,Developers should provide you with the following iterms before the first deposit:
Qualification or Unit standard Alignment matrix
Learning material Sample work
Referances
To get more advises on this contact
Duduzile Zwane
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