Website Name
BPO Projects India (BPOProjectProvider.com)
Tech BPO Projects India (TechBPOProject.com)
Website Type
BPO Projects Job Provider
Is BPO Projects India Fake or Real?
Likely Fake
Why is BPO Projects India Likely Fake?
BPOProjectProvider.com is the website of the company BPO Projects India which claims to be an industry pioneer for providing data entry projects to individuals and corporates.
BPO Projects India claims to provide various types of BPO jobs such as HTML typing, online form filling, ads posting, copy paste work, postcard writing and URL listing jobs. There is no qualification criteria or registration fee mentioned for any of the jobs. The content for the Ads Posting Job is just placeholder text, which is quite shoddy for a company that claims to be a leading provider of BPO projects in India.
At this point, I was already quite suspicious of the site as the kind of jobs they are offering are commonly used to lure victims into scams. The modus operandi of scammers is to contact potential victims who have applied for BPO job postings posted by the fraud company on portals such as Naukri, Monster, Indeed, etc. and pretend to provide them with simple jobs which have no or minimal qualification requirement. They ask for a registration fee to be eligible for these jobs and once the victim makes the payment, the company will either refuse to pay them or vanish altogether. It seemed like this website was heading in the same direction.
BPO Projects India claims to be in operation for more than 10 years and their LinkedIn page states that the company was formed in 2006, but a domain lookup of the site shows that the website was registered on 9th September 2019. The company has profiles on various social media sites, but there is no online footprint to suggest that they have been operating before 2019. Even the videos on their YouTube channel have been uploaded not more than 6 months ago.
There are many different phone numbers given on their website. Upon checking these numbers in TrueCaller, most of them have been marked as Spam by users of the app. The main number listed as the common contact for the Mumbai and Chennai offices appeared as HDFC Mini Statement on TrueCaller. On calling this number, the call automatically terminated after one ring and I got a callback from another number. It was a robocall which asked me to call them during their work hours.
The most likely reason that these numbers have been reported as Spam by users is that they pick up numbers from profiles on job portals such as Monster, Naukri, Shine, etc. and make unsolicited calls offering jobs, which is the standard procedure of fake BPO project providers.
The company also claims to be ISO certified, but there is no certification number provided anywhere which can be used to verify the authenticity of this claim. If they had provided a certification number, it could have been cross-checked on the ISO India website to know if it is a genuine claim.
On the Our Projects page of the website, they have attached documents outlining the terms & conditions of each project. Though there is no registration fee mentioned in the website content itself, the PDFs of the agreement terms explicitly mention that a ‘security deposit’ has to be paid, which is supposedly refundable. The agreement terms also have a long list of reasons which can cause your payment to be deducted or refused.
The agreement terms themselves look extremely fake. The terms for the HTML typing job are printed on a ₹20 stamp paper which could possibly be photoshopped. I have this suspicion as the document mentions the year as 2016, but the year 2019 has been scribbled on the side. There is also a stamp which says ‘Stamp Department Cuddalore’ which does not seem to be a real entity. The rest of the agreements look like they are simple MS Word documents converted into PDFs.
The agreement for each job has a different year, address and person’s name such as C. H. Mastan, S. Karthikeyan, Bala Subramaniyan, N. Dinesh and one of the agreements has no name or address. It is unknown whether these people are actually connected with the organization as there is no mention of them on the website or the company’s LinkedIn page.
After seeing this, my suspicion that BPO Projects India is a scam became very strong as they are following the same process as countless other BPO project scamsters. The screenshots given below are from the terms document for HTML typing project. As per the process of this kind of scam, the terms mentioned are ridiculous excuses that they will use to not release payments. Firstly, the volume of work which they give will be so overwhelming that you may have to spend more than 9 hours a day working to complete them. Even if you put in the effort and complete the given work, they will always find numerous faults with the work and refuse payment. If you want to try again, you would have to pay them the ‘security deposit’ once again.
My suspicion was confirmed when I searched for reviews of the website. There are dozens of complaints from people who paid money to the company but were refused payment citing the various reasons given in their bogus terms and conditions. The complaints were found on various platforms, such as Consumer Complaints, MouthShut and Quora. Surprisingly, there were no complaints reported through Google Reviews. One complainant even alleges with video proof that the website where you upload your work automatically changes the name of your uploaded file so that BPO Projects India can falsely claim that you have not followed the terms.
As mentioned in one of the reviews above, the payment gateway used by BPO Projects India used the name Gleam Global Services India Pvt. Ltd. Though the company does not seem to have a website, a google search presented some reviews which contained the same complaints of fraud that people have reported for BPO Projects India. This points to a high possibility that BPO Projects India is a rebranding of Gleam Global Services India or a related venture.
It seems quite likely that BPO Projects India is running a fake job racket under the pretense of providing BPO jobs. There are too many inconsistencies in their claims and a huge number of complaints that cannot be ignored. Fake BPO projects jobs are surprisingly common and many have been defrauded after paying thousands of rupees to such companies. A lack of awareness, desperation of job seekers and false promises by fraudsters have helped such scams to flourish. In many cases, companies simply change their name after gaining a bad reputation online.
The best way to prevent becoming a victim of a fake job scam is to never pay money to a job recruiter for any reason. No legitimate company will ask you to pay them before being able to earn. Genuine job providers would deduct their fees from your payment itself and not ask you to pay out of your pocket.
If you are ever asked to pay subscription fees, upgradation fees, membership fees, maintenance fees, security deposit or make any other kind of payment before earning from the company, always refuse as it is most definitely a scam. A similar case of SmartOnlineWork has been covered earlier on this blog.
*Update*
On 8th September 2020, I was contacted by a person named Mansoor from the email ID nsk786@gmail.com. The name was given as NTS Cabs and the phone number 9008531111 was mentioned in the email signature.
Mansoor shared some documents with me to show that BPO Projects India is a registered company with valid PAN, GST registration, PF registration and ISO Certification.
I was able to verify that the PAN Card and GST registration are valid, but the ISO certificate seems to be made by a fake company called International Quality Certification Services UK Ltd. The ISO certification says ISO 9001:2015 and not 9001:2008 as mentioned on the website of BPO Project Provider. The company name mentioned is also different than the registration documents – BPO Projects Providers instead of BPO Projects Service India.
Mansoor also told me that he has provided the legal documents and paid ‘legal fees’ to remove the complaints from ConsumerComplaints.in, but all the complaints are currently still present.
I also asked him to provide answers which would help me determine whether the company is intentionally scamming people. Unfortunately, I did not find the answers convincing.
He also pointed me to a clone website called Tech BPO Projects India (TechBPOProject.com) that is apparently not related to BPO Projects India (BPOProjectProvider.com).
After carefully considering all the information provided, I have decided to not remove the article. There is plenty of evidence that workers have been scammed by BPO Projects India and none of the payments have been refunded. Complainants have given the name of BPOProjectProvider.com and not TechBPOProject.com.
I don’t have enough reasons to believe that BPO Projects India a genuine company because there are many lies on the website, several complaints from users and they were unable to provide convincing answers to my queries. Many fraud companies are officially registered and reply to workers. They give them fake work, then refuse to pay stating that there are too many mistakes. There is also proof that the platform is changing file names automatically, which clearly shows it might a scam. Due to these reasons, I still advise readers to avoid BPO Projects India, as it does not seem to be genuine.
How to Get Your Money Back from a Scam
Remember: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
If you have been a victim of such a scam, you can take the following steps:
- Lodge a complaint at the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
- Lodge a complaint with PayTM on Twitter, Customer Care or through the app, UPI app such as Google Pay or the Bank with which the company has an account.
- Report the website to Google using the Suspicious Site Reporter extension for Chrome
- Give a low rating to the website on Web of Trust. You can also install their extension for the same.
- File a complaint with the Indian Consumer Complaints Forum
- Write a review on websites such as MouthShut, Scamadviser and TrustPilot.
- Block all numbers of the scammers on TrueCaller, mentioning the words Fake, Fraud or Scam in the name.
- If the company has a listing on Google My Business or Google Maps, file a complaint using the Business Redressal Complaint Form. Also, leave a negative review explaining what kind of experience you had.
Disclaimer: This review is intended for information only and should not be relied on when making financial or business decisions. If you are a website owner and would like to provide clarifications regarding your business and/or website, please get in touch using the Contact Form.