These are not the bills you are looking for

When you register a new business name with ASIC in Australia certain elements of your registration become public knowledge.

This is done to help people decide how legitimate you are etc. It's the law.

Unfortunately, unscrupulous domain name registrars regularly scour the ASIC registrations for new business listings.

This is so they can market to you in a variety of ways.

So one of the first pieces of snail-mail your new business will receive will be things that look like bills that are really just trying to sell you a domain name to match your business.

Over the years the appearance of these pseudo-bills has not gone without some attention from various consumer protection authorities.

As a result they are required, by law, to state that they aren't bills or invoices. Which, as you can see below, they do in very, very small writing at the bottom of the letter. (circled in red)

However, these letters still look very much like invoices and, for people just another thing you have to pay to get started in business.

They contain a lot of official looking logos, your new business name, BPAY codes, links to pay all sorts of ways and the envelopes they come in through the post also look official and menacing. You know the ones, with windows and looking like you are in trouble from some authority.

The lesson here is that, if you are new to business, or even just a new business name, make sure you carefully check the "invoices" you receive and don't just pay things because they look like invoices.

You need to be aware that there are more scams like this that don't even rely on the registration of a new business.

Often scammers will send out invoices to anyone they can in the hope that most places will just pay anything that looks like a bill...so don't!

Happy 2020 everyone.

David