Screw U SweetCollect.co.uk

What is this blog about?

2007-04-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

This blog was created to voice my personal opinions and views about the SweetCollect.co.uk website, the company Carl Knight Limited AKA Sterling Rock and Carl Knight/Buckingham himself. In here you'll find background info, consumer reviews, useful links and plenty of warnings about all of the above.

My first article explains the history surrounding me and the above mentioned names. Read here

Recent forum discussions found here and here explain a bit about the business practices of Carl Knight Ltd.

There would have been no need for me to write this blog if Carl Knight and his lapdogs had acted in an honest and decent way. As it stands at the minute Carl Knight is threatening to sue anyone and everything who even hints about any negative aspects regarding his company and business practices. Non-biased consumer review sites are becoming exactly what they claim they aren't. They ARE becoming biased.

The voice of the consumer is lost forever if we can't even be heard on consumer review/opinion sites. The UKs biggest consumer site ciao.co.uk have removed all trace of Sweet Collect from their website, this means the many MANY negative reviews and warnings by us common Joe Bloggs consumers have been lost forever.

Is this fair?

Gawd knows how websites like Sweet Collect and companies such as Carl Knight Ltd remain in business for so long. From what I can see there's far more dishonesty surrounding Carl Knight than there is honesty. It's not right and plenty of consumers just like myself also have the same opinion.

Do you readers have any opinions to offer? You don't have to agree with my viewpoint in order to leave a comment. Do you know of other websites or companies just like this? Share your opinions here (good/bad/positive/negative etc, all are valid) without fear of recrimination.

Let's see what some other consumer writers say

2006-04-17T08:06:00.001-07:00

The next review link is for the one single solitary review featured on Ciao.co.uk. Ciao removed the entire sweetcollect category from their site after the fuss made by carl knight and clan. Every consumer review written was deleted along with the category. Some of the authors were also removed from Ciao and banned as members. This single solitary review is the only one which somehow managed to slide through their net.

Not so sweet to collect
http://www.ciao.co.uk/sweetcollect_co_uk__Review_5576950

UPDATE 1 - The above mentioned review was removed from the site within a day of me posting the link here.

UPDATE 2 - Somehow another sweetcollect review has managed to wriggle its way onto Ciao and it's actually remained on the site for a whole month now. See here . Wonder how quick they can get it deleted *grin*

The consumer voice survives thanks to screenshots

2006-04-16T02:35:00.000-07:00

These are screenshots which I took of all the comments which consumers and Ciao members left on my 'Damning Truth' review before Ciao deleted both review and comments. They should (hopefully) be in more or less the right order. Click on a picture, on the next screen click on the magnifying glass icon (top left of pic) This will enlarge the pictures to a good readable size.

Scams? & fraud? Every Day @ sweetcollect.co.uk

2006-04-15T04:23:00.000-07:00

(just incase Ciao.co.uk also remove this review from their 'non biased consumer review site' i'm posting it here for safe keeping)

LEGAL NOTICES AND GET-OUT CLAUSES - All words and names which could be seen as slanderous or libellous are proceeded with a ?. My words are my own belief, my own experiences, my own despair, my own my own my own MY OWN. You can't sue someone for having a bad experience which is THEIR OWN. Take note Ciao you freaking whimpish freaks.

I also want it to be noted that I refuse to use capital letters for the name sweetcollect. Neither am I using them for carl knight. No explanation neccessary.

Let's get daaan to it.

What is sweetcollect.co.uk? Well apparently it's a reward site where they send you lots of sweeties for doing stuff like filling in crappy forms. They even bribe people to join Ciao with the promise of 2 chewits. Wow! Makes me drool just thinking about it. {Must go make some more Ciao accounts. Must go make some more Ciao accounts.}

Does the sweeties taste nice which they give you? Probably. Maybe. Erm. Damn it! You know what? They never even sent me a single solitary sweetie. Not one. Gutted! Months I spent on that gawd darn awful pink site of theirs and what does I get for it? A big fat stinking nothing, that's what I get. They lied to me. They said i'd get sweeties for this, chocolate for that, jellies for this, sherbet for that. I got fat just thinking about it. And now what am I left with? I'll tell you what i'm bl**dy well left with. A sh*t load of junk mail and spam, got loads of it I have.

That's more than I can say for my mobile phone credit. Cheeky scamming? gits conned/bribed my mobile number off me when I was a newbie sucker and decided it'd be such a lovely and fun idea to send me SMS texts and swipe all my credit. {I can hear Chief scammer? carl knight shouting "slanderous LIBELLOUS" in the distance} OK so the SMS crap came from TheMob and not scamcoll..I mean sweetcollect, but TheMob got my number by me getting scammed? and bribed with a blackjack or two.

So me got no sweets. Me got phone credit thieved. Me got Spam and junk mail throwing itself at me. Me got nearly blinded by horrific pinkness of site. Me got a scamcoll...I mean sweetcollect account sitting there with hundreds of sweeties detailed in a big long HUGE list, but me are never gonna get them. These are the sweeties, my precious precious sweeties, which I worked for. They cost me blood sweat and bl**dy tears.

Oh yes it's mighty fine for Chief scammer? carl knight to take take take take take take TAKE. It's also mighty bloody fine for him to shout "slanderous"... "LIBELLOUS"..... "I WILL SUE YOU"... "I'LL ALSO SUE YOU AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU" whenever he pleases. BUT it's NOT FINE to lie? or to use misleading/fraudulent? promotions to entice/bribe poor suckers. It's also NOT mighty fine to be an arrogant prick to the poor little suckers when they dare ask you about the sweeties. It's NOT mighty fine in ANY SHAPE OR FORM for a 19 year old scammer? to act like he owns the world. He bloody does think he owns it, i'm sure he does. The vile stench and bad reputation of sweetcollect has certainly spanned the world wibe web so in a way he kind of does own the world (only the cesspit part of it though)

carl knight/bebington, (plus any other names he's had) his scamcoll......I mean sweetcollect, and the gazillions of other naff sites he owns, should be approached with caution (preferably whilst carrying a red hot poker to jab jab jab him with) Or rather don't approach nothing to do with him/it/them/those/that at all. Just throw stones, pull faces, and laugh at him at a distance, safe in the knowledge that everything catches up with you in the end. There's no escaping it. You reap what you sow. *evil grin evil grin evil grin* (that wasn't a threat oh legal crap loving scammer? carl knight. That was a fact of life)

So what is Ciao.co.uk (who are supposed to be a respected international non-biased consumer resource site) doing advertising for new members through scamcol....I mean sweetcollect? I'm bewilldered and amused by the offer of "join Ciao for 2 sweets". You got to laugh until you pee, haven't you? Then when you take into account how Ciao have removed and deleted not one but ALL the sweetcollect reviews posted on their site, you gotta laugh and pee even more.

Respected, non-biased consumer resource? I'm gonna be peeing a river soon I tell ya. Oh but Ciao don't stop there, do they? Oh no. They decide it'd be even more mightily fun (in a carl knight kinda way) to fling around a few bans (in a carl knight kinda way) and get those pesky troublemaking sweetcollect haters deleted from Ciao and banished into oblivion forever. Non-biased consumer resource? That is such a big fat face lie...........Bloody hell something's just occured to me. Maybe the scam? sweetcollect and totally lying BIASED scammers Ciao are a partnership made in heaven after all (oh sue me sue me sue me, I know you want to)

THIS BLOG WAS INSPIRED BY THE BLOODY FANTASTIC EPIC COMMENT THREAD WHICH TRANSPIRED DURING THE FIRST POSTING OF SAID REVIEW ON CIAO. AAAHHH GOOD TIMES.

The non-biased and fair but DAMNING truth

2006-04-13T01:30:00.000-07:00

This is the 100% truthful consumer review I wrote about the shockingly bad SweetCollect.co.uk which the consumer review site Ciao.co.uk censored and banned. Skip down to the last third of the review for the interesting reading.

I first heard of Sweetcollect.co.uk a couple of years ago when I spent a lot of time on freebie sites. What I heard in general wasn't very good. In fact it was rather shocking. They were notorious for not honouring their members. Notorious for not paying out. Notorious for being crap in general. Apart from the odd few lucky people most of the members never received the rewards from the site which they'd built up. For these reasons I never joined the site or even went to look at it. But a while back, probably around 6 months ago, I heard the site had been taken over and shaken up. I can't remember where I heard this and I have no idea as to whether what I heard was true but I decided to join up and see if it had turned a corner or if indeed it was still a seemingly scam internet site.

So what is Sweetcollect.co.uk? In short it's yet another internet reward site rather like iPoints and Mutalpoints. You receive rewards for such things as signing up to other internet sites, taking up offers and shopping. The only difference with Sweetcollect is you get rewarded with sweets rather than cold hard cash.

A bit about the basics
****************************
Sign up is easy. Just follow the instructions, type a few details and away you go. One thing I must warn you about is the colour of the site. It's BRIGHT ILLUMINOUS PINK. It's not exactly easy on the eyes and I can't see it greatly appealing to the male of the species. Apart from that the site is very easy to navigate, the account information is very easy to understand and all the offers are on the whole very easy to complete.

So is it a good site then?
*********************************
Well some things are pretty good, like the daily click section. You can earn a sweet for doing something so simple as clicking onto a website. There are a number of these kinda deals and sometimes you can click up to 2/3 times on the same website for extra sweets. These take no effort whatsoever and within 5 minutes you could have earnt 10/15 sweets for just clicking away. You are also credited with a tube of Smarties just for joining and extra tubes of Smarties for referring someone to the site. I also like the fact the sweets are all different depending on which offer/click you complete. Sometimes it can be Smarties, or it could be Blackjack chews, Fruit Salad, Pixie Sticks, Jelly Monsters, Double Dips, Haribo Starmix etc etc.... Before long your account rewards looks like a mini sweet shop. Much better than just accumulating points like on iPoints or MutualPoints. Plus on Ipoints and Mutual it can take forever to accumulate enough points to be able to cash out whereas on Sweetcollect as soon as you've accumulated 25 sweets in your reward account you are able to cash out. In fact cashing out is done automatically on Sweetcollect. As soon as you reach at least 25 sweets rewarded your order is placed on a list to be sent to the dispatch centre. So yes, in theory it's a very good site......

BUT.......and it's a very BIG BUT
***************************************
I've now been a member for a few months and within no time i'd accumulated enough sweets to be able to cash out. By 30th of August I had easily enough sweets and was eagerly awaiting my package through the post. When I looked at my account information I was notified my order was on the list and due to be sent to the dispatch centre around the end of November. That was 3 months after i'd accumulated enough for payout. Oh well I suppose I could wait. In the meantime I carried on clicking away on the site and my reward total kept going up.

BUT what I also noticed was the date to be sent for dispatch also kept changing. One day it'd say November 30th, then it'd go up to December, then January, then back to December, then February, then December again etc etc and today I checked and it'd gone right up to January 21st again. My total amount of sweets accumulated now stands at 130 and still i've yet to see/eat a single reward. Needless to say I now use the site less and less, in fact they're lucky if I visit there once a week right now. The only thing I bother to do is check my account. They're having no more clicks or joining things from me until they show me they honour their obligations.

AND ALSO. Your Sweet collect personal account has a section for 'not completed' transactions. These are things you've clicked on/joined but not fully completed APPARENTLY. My 'not completed' list is massive. I can't be bothered to count every 'not completed' link in my account but there's easily over 40. I know for a fact some of these 'not completed' things HAVE been COMPLETED by me. For example I downloaded the new version of Messenger using a Sweetcollect link and was supposed to receive a free Skittles mini bag. They say I didn't complete the transaction when I KNOW I did because i'm currently using the new downloaded version of Messenger that I downloaded using this site. Another one is for Glowbay which I joined and was supposed to receive a Drumstick Lolly for. They say 'not completed' when I KNOW it is completed because i still go on Glowbay to this day (I'm 99% sure that Sweetcollect also own Glowbay) Another one is MutualPoints which they say 'not completed' Bullsh*t!! I joined through Sweetcollect and still use that site now so HOW did I NOT complete it.

I can hear you saying 'why don't you contact them about crediting your account for these not completed transactions?' Well the thing is I have no proof I completed these transactions. I will put an email together for them but I don't hold out much/any hope. Besides which, what's the point of disputing sweets which haven't been added when i'm having such trouble trying to get them to cash out on what I have been awarded? Yes that's my biggest gripe. I take time out of my day to try to earn rewards on a site, make the site itself lots of money through clicks and memberships and get Sweet F A in return. I've even referred at least 2 people to Sweetcollect so God knows how much profit they're also making from them.

Recommended or not?
*****************************
Not right now I wouldn't recommend it. Hopefully some time next year i'll receive my sweeties but it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth when you have to wait so long for such a pathetic little reward. I thought when I joined that taking 20 minutes outa my day to accumulate enough sweets for a payout would be time well spent and it would have been if they'd sent my damn sweets. They've lost a frequent member in me. If they'd paid out promptly I would've been on that site every day but no way am I spending time on a site that so far is showing itself to be a scam.

Yesterday I sent an email to the Sweetcollect team enquiring (and generally moaning) about their dispatch date stupidity. They sent me this email back

"I will try to explain to you how the system works and hopefully shed some light for you.
As for the dispatch date the system is a computer. It doesn't know when things are going to happen in the office, it doesn't know if staff that are supposed to be packing sweets are going to be away, so it guesses a date.
As SweetCollect is big, and is growing bigger and bigger , it gets
harder and harder to get everyone's sweets etc... out to them, but the staff try and get everything out as fast as they can.
And if you find you keep moving backwards in the queue, this could be because people who were supposed to receive a package of sweets but haven't will get moved to the front of the queue (because they were expecting them a lot longer before)."

OK then let me just quote the final part for you "And if you find you keep moving backwards in the queue, this could be because people who were supposed to receive a package of sweets but haven't will get moved to the front of the queue (because they were expecting them a lot longer before)." So just HOW long were these poor buggers waiting for their sweets? and WHY didn't they receive their sweets when they were SUPPOSED to? This email didn't leave me feeling any better of the site than I did prior to the email. I applaude customer services for getting back to me so quickly but this message did not fill me with confidence.

At this point I feel it right to point out we cashed out on iPoints last week for a £50 Amazon voucher. iPoints is a far bigger and more popular site than Sweetcollect and yet ipoints in conjunction with Amazon sent out our reward by mail and it was received by us within a week. Now THAT is how it should be done.

For now I give Sweetcollect a total of 1 star for their site. If they finally do pay out i'll revise this review slightly and possibly increase the star rating by one star (if they're lucky) Watch this space.

UPDATE 24.12.2005
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As of today my account now says it'll be sent to the dispatch centre around the 7th of May

UPDATE 27.12.2005
***************************
My account today says it'll be sent to the dispatch centre around the 28th of June

UPDATE 06.01.2006
****************************
Now it says it'll be sent to the dispatch centre around the 6th of February. At least the date's come forward as opposed to being put back again.

UPDATE 30.01.2006
****************************
The date it'll be sent to the dispatch centre is now June 28th.

UPDATE 04.04.2006
****************************
Today i'm in shock. Apparently my order will now be sent to the dispatch centre around January 16th 2008. OH MY GOD!!!! I'll be dead before I receive them at this rate.

I sent an email to customer services today about my sweeties (and the stupidity of estimated dispatch not being until 2008) Here is their reply

"Hi
The dispatch date in the system is a computer. It doesn't know when
things are going to happen in the office, it doesn't know if staff
that are supposed to be packing sweets are going to be away, so it
guesses a date.
As SweetCollect is big, and is growing bigger and bigger , it gets
harder and harder to get everyone's sweets etc... out to them, but the
staff try and get everything out as fast as they can.
And if you find you keep moving backwards in the queue, this could be
because people who were supposed to receive a package of sweets but
haven't will get moved to the front of the queue (because they were
expecting them a lot longer before). Please ignore the date you are
seeing,we are having technical difficulties at the moment, of which we
are trying to resolve as quickly as possible.
We appreciate your patience, and be assured that you will get your
sweets in turn, and I hope this has cleared things up for you."

As you can see it's more or less the same as the first email I received from them. Only difference I can see is the technical difficulty explanation towards the bottom. Grrrrrr I HATE sweet collect.

UPDATE 05.04.2006
***************************
i joined the sweet collect forum today http://www.swearch.com/forum/
My purpose was to find out why this reward site was not honouring their part of the deal. They bribe/reward members for joining up to things/completing things/clicking things yet the member has to wait literally forever to receive anything for their efforts (if they ever do) Oh sorry they do receive something. They receive an inbox full of junk and spam emails

Anyway within 5 minutes of me becoming a member, and precisely 30 seconds after my third posting, I was barred from the forum. Why was this? For daring to ask negative questions? I'm in the process of trying to find out (not that I care) This once again has proven to me what a disgusting company Sweet Collect (or rather Carl Knight ltd) is.

If anyone is even remotely thinking about joining up be it on your own head. Stay away from the other Carl Knight Ltd sites too cos they're as bad. They're an absolute disgrace and it's sites like these which give legitimate reward sites a bloody bad name.

This is the email I sent regarding me being banned from the forum

"I think it's very unprofessional for you to ban a member from the forums just because they (with valid reason) dispute some postings. I wasn't abusive, I was just being brutally honest. you wanna know what the general opinion is of sweet collect? Go take a look at the review site ciao.co.uk. I'm not the only person who is disgruntled, it's just that I seem to be the only one speaking out (or have you banned everyone who speaks out?)
Why did you ban me?"

To which I received this reply

"You were banned as you we feel that you're not going to be a positive addition to the Swearch Forum community. You've only made 3 posts on the forum so far and all of them are negative.
That's hardly constructive. If you had made positive postings about other sites and offers then you wouldn't of been banned, but you've demonstrated that your only purpose on Swearch Forums is to be negative and that's simply not good for the forum
community.
Regards,
Carl Knight."

My reply back was

"My purpose on the Swearch forums was to give my opinion about Sweet Collect which is a legitimate reason for joining. So you're saying unless i'm positive about Sweet Collect I gotta keep my mouth shut? That's a terrible attitude to have, especially when i'm a member of Sweet Collect who's slightly peeved off about being messed around with regards to the rewards.

I cannot believe that if you *are* a legitimate business you *don't want* negative views which at the end of the day can only serve to help you improve as a business. Your attitude stinks. Your business knowledge stinks. I don't need to be a member of the Swearch forums, you've answered every question I could've possibly had just by showing me the extent of your ignorance and immaturity. Go back to school and study the Dummies Guide To Running A Business cos you sure as hell need it."

Then I got this reply

"If you think you can talk to people however you like then you're sadly
mistaken.
However as you've replied so rudely then I'm afraid you're not going to get
an unfriendly reply.
You're clearly either a moron, or a complete idiot, or both? At no point did
I say you had to be positive about SweetCollect, I was explaining to you
that we don't allow members to join the forum for the sole purpose of
bitching about things, and that was your only agenda.
I suggest you speak to my customer relations staff and you won't be getting
any more replies from me.
You can email either wendy*******@carlknight.net or
danielle****@sterlingrock.net
Have a miserable day.
Carl Knight."

So I replied with

"HAAAAAA what a nice business manner you have. I don't give a monkeys what you wanna call me. This all sits nicely as a copy and pasted addition on my sweetcollect.co.uk review. You're just making yourself look like an obnoxious scammer. Do your worst to me, it's not me who's trying to (apparently) run a business.
If just one person gets put off joining Sweet Collect and your other sites by reading my review i've done my job. (lots HAVE been put off btw) Thankyou for making it easier for me.
Regards
Erika"

Then he said

"I was simply saying what everyone wanted to say to you. I'll happily include a copy of your emails on our site to demonstrate how popular your comments are.I need to ask consent to include your name and email address with it, do you mind?"

So I said

"Of course I mind. My email address is not for public viewing and you have no permission whatsoever to post anything of mine without me having the right of reply (which is a bit hard since you banned me and I have no intention of ever going back there anyway)"

To which he replied

"Ah so you do understand laws concerning posting private communications then. Remember it works both ways ;)"

So the nob-head got this from me

"No. I'm communicating with a business (you) and I write consumer reviews. If I have a bad experience with a company it's my duty to tell consumers about it. You are talking about posting an ordinary persons details and emails on a public forum. Two entirely different things."

the next boring reply from him is

"If that's what you believe then go ahead and post a review, you're communicating with me directly. If you post copies of these communications, then i'll be doing th same, and there will be no comeback for you if you've posted them on the net already yourself. Maybe you should seek legal (or mental) help?"

Then he got this reply off me

"I wrote the review and posted it months ago. Do what you want, I don't have a business to destroy. Bet you feel all powerful now don't you? Haaaa you can't even argue without getting all flustered. What chance have you got of proving yourself to be a professional and respected business person if you can't even keep your cool with a 28 year old lass? Post whatever you want at your so-called forum. Like it has any impact or makes any difference to my little 'ol life anyway."

Arrogance kicks in again with his next reply

"Ah cool, any chance you could send me a link to your review, i'd love to check it out. Thank you for authorising me to post your communications on our forum (quote: "Post whatever you want at your so-called forum.") I still don't authorise you to re-produce my comments in anyway however.
Have a nice day."

Can't be bothered to contact him again, he can find the review himself if he's so desperate to read it. All this correspondence begs the question, why has he got so much time on his hands? Shouldn't he be working instead of trading insults with me?

I NOW I feel MUCH better about the situation than I did before. Stuff the sweets, this was enough entertainment to pay me ten times over for what offers I completed. They (Carl Knight Ltd) can go and find some other poor sucker cos this sucker here has had more than enough of playing with the 10 year old internet scammers.

Interesting reading from across the web

2006-04-12T19:48:00.000-07:00

As I come across interesting articles on the web i'll post the links here. Believe it or not most of the time I don't actively seek out these kind of articles. I either stumble upon them whilst casually surfing around or the links are sent to me via email anonymously by various people.

SurveyPolice.com - Formal complaints filed about sweetcollect

Fascinating forum discussion regarding Carl & business practices

Yet more complaints from people out of pocket

A review about another related site called Swearch.com

Clix / Sterling Rock taking the pi**

Clix at it again with the e808

Sweet collect - marketing intelligence business model

Big discussion about more suspected scams

Alcopoints was another one of his scam projects

Another Carl Knight site which never sent me my promised rewards

"Sweetcollect - real or scam" Great minds think alike :)

(page in progress)

Noteworthy 'Sucks' Sites

2006-04-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

Google Really Sucks

Paypal sucks website

Disney Sucks

BT Ireland Sucks

Bush & Cheney Suck

Scam.com

More links will be added in due course. In the meantime if you have a website or blog which you'd like included here please get in touch via the comment section.

Know of any other sucks/rant/hate sites out there? Lemme know so I can add those too.

Rewards, cashback, freebies & samples sites

2006-04-11T06:43:00.000-07:00