As a business owner, one has many different kinds of struggles and lessons to go through.
It's a great tool to learn from one's mistakes and improve one's self. In the last few months, however, I have started getting phone calls from angry customers that I've never done any work for, nor ever met before!!!
I even started getting bad reviews on my facebook page from total strangers!
The worst part is the angry voicemail messages from people angry and making threats. People I have never met before.
Well it turns out a SCAM company has started up doing IT Remote tech support and they call themselves "America Geeks" which is just slightly different from MY NAME "American Geek Computers"
They are NOT in the USA, so they used a name that would generate favor with US customers, except they're just out to rip them off!!! This is very difficult to fix folks.
I've spent 6+ years building up my company name and reputation and these guys have come along and given my integrity a huge blow. A google search for any variation of the name gets massive fraud hits and I'm pretty sure this has affected my local small business too as calls for new customers has really dropped off over the last 9 months.
The question is "What can be done?"
Changing my name won't wipe off the bad blemish associated with my name, nor will it go away from the internet at this point.
I've branded this name so changing it would be very expensive to reprint shirts, cards, websites, you name it.
I'd like to hear what you guys think and suggest!
The part that hurts so much is that this company takes people's credit cards and rips them off. I don't even take credit cards at all, but people call me up demanding I put their money back on their card.