ComplaintsforResearch Square AJE, LLC

• Initial Complaint

  05/16/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  This is a scam website. They are operating out of India and I have requested to be removed from their harassing emails several times and they keep emailing me. It is a phishing site that has sold my information to several other scam journals. This is a fraudulent website and company and should be removed immediately to protect other scholars from succumbing to their abhorrent business tactics.

  Business response

  05/16/2022

  Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond to this complaint. Dr. **** contacted us Friday, May 13th, and one of our support agents has already deleted his account and all file information. I have also reached out to our head of marketing to ensure that ******.****@********* is not included on any of our email lists. 
  
  I do want to state that we are definitely not based in India; we were incorporated in North Carolina and have operated out of Durham ever since, although most of our staff members work remotely throughout the U.S. It is also important to note that we do not sell any customer data, as stated in our terms of service here: https://****************************************************************
  
  Please let me know if I can provide any additional information. 

  Business response

  05/17/2022

  Dear Dr. ****, 
  
  Thank you again for contacting us. I'm very sorry that you've received the messages you describe. However, I must reiterate again that they did not come from us or from any of our publishing partners. 
  
  After reviewing your account history, I found the following: 
  * You created an account on **************.com
  * You had 2 dashboard submissions. Dashboard submissions are private. Therefore, it is not possible that a predatory journal could have received your contact information through our site. 
  * Any emails we sent to you were sent from ***********************, our primary support address, or ***************, our marketing email address. It is possible you received messages from one of those email addresses encouraging you to preprint your papers on our site or purchase products on *******. However, those emails would not have demanded payment. 
  *We are not a publisher, nor do we ever sell customer data to journals, especially predatory journals like the ones you describe. 
  
  I'm very sorry that you received harassing emails. If you forward one of the messages to me or share the email address it came from, then perhaps I can investigate further. At this time, all I can do is reiterate that we do not operate as a "phishing operation" because our primary source of revenue is the editing and translation services we sell through *******. We have no reason to sell customer data, nor would we ever want to because doing so is unethical. 
  
  Is there any additional information I can send you to assuage your concerns? We have already deleted your account and removed you from our marketing email lists. 
  
  Best regards,
  *****

  Customer response

  05/18/2022

  
  Complaint: 17205104
  
  I am rejecting this response because: Research Square, whether hacked or not, took my contact information and gave it to a host of fake scholarly journals. I then received a message back from the company via BBB and they said that they deleted my information. I then received several other emails from them and the fake journals as if nothing happened. This is a big problem and has been going on for several months.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ****** ****

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩