Controversy
Among the complaints leveled at the company include using hard sell tactics, charging customers hundreds of dollars for non-existing member benefits, limiting customer contact to email,
being denied accreditation by the Better Business Bureau due to hundreds of confirmed complaints, changing the name of the company when complaints accumulate under the old name.
Cambridge Who's Who advertises itself as a database of professionals and "an honor limited to individuals who have demonstrated leadership and achievement in their industry and occupation". It typically solicits persons to list with an unsolicited letter proclaiming that they have been selected for the honor. The company will interview the prospective listee, after which the company will ask the listee for money.
The Guernsey States' data protection office advised the island inhabitants that the company would charge them hundreds of dollars for non-existing member benefits, even if it was advertising itself as a free service, and that any personal detail submitted to this company could be sold to other companies. It further advised that they shouldn't reply to letters from the company and shouldn't even visit its website.
Writer Beware, a watchdog group from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, published an article from Victoria Strauss explaining that her husband had received an unsolicited email from the company just because he was inside her writer insurance. She claims that there is a network of interconnected Who's Who scam companies that keep recycling themselves, and that this company is actually the same company as Metropolitan Who's Who since their logo designs and solicitation letters are identical. She also says that the company was the result of the "merge" of Manchester Who's Who and Empire Who's Who, with the last company having many complaints registered with the Better Business Bureau. She also says that the Cambridge and Empire companies use hard-selling telephone techniques, first selling themselves as a free service, then giving a high price, and then lowering it to make people believe that they are getting a good deal. She says that the companies have many complaints against them in the internet, and that one blogger that denounced them was menaced with legal action, and another blogger was sued for $7 million in damages.
AOL's Daily Finance reports other problems: while the company's name suggests an association with Cambridge, it is actually located on Long Island, as of May 2010 the only way to contact the company was via email, and the privacy policy allows to sell the information to any third party.
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In 2006, the company sued Ripoff Report and the Better Business Bureau in the United States for defamation but settled the suit in January 2008.
In early 2009, Cambridge Who's Who was involved in a breach of security. An executive, Harsharan Sethi, discovered that a set of five back up tapes, or electric storage devices, containing confidential financial information of approximately 400,000 members of Cambridge, as well as thousands of Cambridge employees, were missing and unaccounted for. Sethi urged officials of Cambridge to report the data loss to "appropriate authorities", but the officers alerted no one of the breach.
In 2010, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) labeled the company as a Who's Who scam. Hundreds of consumers filed complaints against Cambridge Who's Who with various complaint bureaus, reporting fraudulent practices. In early September 2011, the BBB reported 414 complaints filed since April 2007. Based on the confirmation and nature of these complaints, the Better Business Bureau denied accreditation to Cambridge Who's Who. As of 2012, Cambridge Who's Who had a C grade with the BBB based upon 356 complaints in 3 years.
In 2012, Cambridge Who's Who settled with the Oregon Department of Justice to pay $15,000 to Oregon consumers, to pay $13,500 to a consumer protection fund, and to bring its sales tactics into compliance with the state's fair trade practices laws.
