Copy of Moneywise letter

ACTION AGAINST EUROPEAN CITY GUIDE

Press Coverage

Article from Moneywise September 1999

Category: Advertising
Moneywise issue : 09/99

Give this tour a miss
My shop has received an unsolicited invitation to appear in Europe's City Travel Guide. I thought this rather strange until I read the small print and noticed the large fees for signing this seemingly inoffensive letter! - DM/London

Tony Hetherington answers: The letter you received comes from a company called Tour & Travel Guide Est, based in that well-known tourism and publishing centre, Liechtenstein. On the face of it, you are asked to give a few basic details about your business but if you sign and return the form, the small print commits you to advertising in the next three annual editions of the guide.

And this is not cheap. Each year's advertisement costs £480, plus a further £43 for a copy of the guide itself. And each year, the contract rolls on for a further edition at the same cost.

At the very least, any advertiser might reasonably expect to be given advance details of where the book will circulate and how many copies will be printed. But the City Travel Guide doesn't even let you compose your own advertisement. So you are paying for something you don't control in a guide you haven't seen! And who will actually buy this guide when it costs £43?

Last January the watchdog, Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint against the similarly named European City Guide, with an address in Barcelona, ruling that people could be misled into giving details of their businesses without really intending to advertise. The application form you received is similar, though it's unclear whether the two are connected.

In addition, almost identical forms have circulated recently for something called The Millennium Guide. This uses a Freepost address in London, but records at Companies House show that its registered office is a maildrop and its only director is yet another company, on the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis. A good rule of thumb is never to send money to someone you couldn't easily track down and sue if things were to go wrong. On that basis, all these guides are way off the beaten track.

Tony Hetherington is a financial investigator who takes up readers' queries about companies and investment schemes.

Moneywise financial advice is valid in the UK only. While we take every care to ensure the accuracy of any advice, we can take no responsibility for the consequences of actions based on the advice given.

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