Tag Archives: Scam

Registry Australia Scam

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We normally associate scams with an overseas entity randomly targeting you when we think of scams. Still, Registry Australia is an Australian company mining real data from ASIC. The Registry Australia scam encourages you to pay twice as much to reregister your business name renewal.

Small Business Answers owns more than one business name, and one of those names came up for renewal. In the mail, we received an official-looking letter indicating our business name was expiring next month, which it was. This letter provided payment details for a 1-year renewal for $99 or 3 years for $189. Thentwo2 weeks later, an email arrived from ASIC, the official government body for business registrations, indicating the same but at the cost of $39 for one year or $82 for three years.

Registry Australia claims to be Australia’s leading and most reliable business registration service in their letter and offers you an online portal and automatic renewal notifications. ASIC provides an online portal and sends you automatic renewals. Registry Australia states they are independent of ASIC, and you are not required to pay any money. Still, as with all scams, youmust pay attention andy read this information in the letter.

Unfortunately, nothing stops Registry Australia from obtaining business renewal information from ASIC. Then contact you in the hope that you will pay them more money for them to pay ASIC the $37 or $88 on your behalf to reregister your business name.

Small Business Answers advise ignoring this correspondence from Registry Australia and only dealing with the official government channels. Besides that, overthree3 years, you will have an extra $111 in your pocket rather than funding a scam.

For more information on the official government method of registering a new business name, see Small Business Answers guide to Register a Business Name. ASIC also has a page on Scams

Registration Pty Ltd Scam

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In a previous article on Registry Australia, we identified a practice of offering business name renewal registration to Australian business owners at an inflated price over and above what the Australian Government ASIC charges. Registration Pty Ltd is up to the same scam.

This year it would appear that more companies can make a living by sending a paper imitation invoice by post to renew your business name. This time a company called Registration PTY LTD has sent Small Business Answers an invoice for $99 to renew its business name for one year. The same renewal through ASIC costs $39, meaning a premium of $60 for the same renewal. This $60 premium, according to their letter, gives you the benefit of dealing with an Australian company with friendly Australian staff. The only advantage we can see is they offer an auto-renewal feature which ASIC does not. Of course, they offer an auto-renewal as every year, they can collect an extra $60 from you, which you do not have to pay. The icing on the cake in their letter is their last quoted benefit is “ .. and strive to offer you a fair price.”

Registration Pty Ltd do offer an early bird discount if you pay before a set date of $10 which unfortunately only encourages the unsuspecting business owner to pay before they receive their official invoice from ASIC (Australian Government)

Registration PTY Ltd does have a box at the bottom of their letter stating that the letter is not a bill and you do not have to pay any money. We do not question that Registration PTY Ltd will not renew your business name registration.

The business registration scams do not end with a letter in the post. A quick internet search will identify other companies advertising business name renewal at a premium. Some of these companies include:

  • Businessname.com.au
  • Namecorp.com.au

For further information about these scams, ASIC has a web page warning its customers of this practice.