14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft issued a statement to notify people that one of their Gold partners has been blacklisted after making scam calls to people, alerting them of fake virus infections.
India-based computer support service Comantra has been supposedly making phone calls to individuals in the U.S., U.K and Australia, posing as Microsoft personnel in the attempt to dupe computer users into believing that their machines were malfunctioning. They'd then offer to fix the issue in exchange for certain amounts of money.
[ADMARk=1]According to PC Pro, the ill-intended calls were made since 2009 and even if the Redmond company was previously warned about the whole operation, no action was taken up until now.
"We were made aware of a matter involving one of the members of the Microsoft Partner Network acting in a manner that caused us to raise concerns about this member's business practices," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.
"Following an investigation, the allegations were confirmed and we took action to terminate our relationship with the partner in question and revoke their Gold status.
"There are no circumstances under which we would ever allow partners or any other organizations to pose as Microsoft," the spokesman added. "We view matters such as these extremely seriously and take immediate action if such behavior is brought to our attention and found to be the case," he added.
On the other side of the barricade, Comantra representatives say that everything is a mistake and that their competitors have set the whole thing up. They will attempt to clear the situation with Microsoft in order to regain the partner status.
The company's director is certain that his employees aren't doing the things they are accused of.
It remains to be seen if the corporation founded by Bill Gates will overturn the decision to banish them from its collaborators list. Even though the accusations don't seem to be made up, especially because of the fact that the whole thing is going on for a few years now, I've been wrong before, so you never know.
Note. While this article was written, Comantra has removed the Microsoft Gold Partner logo from their website.