Today’s subject is a chap called Simon Macbeth and I felt compelled to write this blog post after seeing a link circulating on Facebook at the weekend.
Simon Macbeth lives in the Leeds area, rents a few rooms in his house and runs a few other little businesses – mainly “web design” companies (although I use that term lightly as a proper web design company designs websites!) – and does it all quite badly so it seems!
There are a few sides to this particular scammer so I’ve sectioned it off for easy digesting.
Landlord from Hell
It seems that through some scam many years ago (as per some quote from his autobiography – autobiography? Is he for real?!) Simon Macbeth bought a house, and set about renting rooms out to people shortly afterwards, making more than a few of his house-mates feel a tad uneasy along the way;
I lived in his house for about 3 weeks, and during this time I was subject to threats of violence as well as some pretty f**ked up things. Within a week, I had received a text from him telling me that he had been in my room. I was a little bit frustrated about it so text him asking him to tell me next time he plans on going in there, to which he replied ‘this is my house and I will do what I want.’
I’ve lived with other people beside family before, and we never went into each others rooms unless we asked someone to – whether its your house or not, you have to respect peoples privacy. I dislike this assclown already!
I lived with this disgusting person for 3 months and it was awful. We told him to his face that we wanted to leave and end the contract but when it came to returning the deposit he said we had not issued the notice in writing. There was a strong smell of marijuana from his room the whole time and he was generally unkind, unfair and made a point of making you feel unwelcome.
What’s the point in renting rooms out to people, if you are then going to do your very best to drive them away? What kind of lying toe-rag does that? Oh wait….
He also pretended he was studying to be a youth worker, which I now see was a complete sham, to make you believe he had morals which clearly didn’t exist.
Oh that’s right, Simon Macbeth!
There are many many more stories on there about him making people feel uncomfortable, and worse. There are too many to quote, so check them out here: www.simonmacbeth.co (looks like he now owns the website, so all links have been removed from this post)
Wannabe Web Designer
The part of this story that really tipped me over the edge, was when I saw that he apparently owned a number of web design companies, one main generic one and then a few little “industry specific” companies that sold one type of website to one industry.
It is all bollocks really as its just one “company” (i.e. him and the WordPress theme repository) and a load of websites that are optimised for specific web design related terms – making him appear to the outside world like he knows what he’s talking about.
We have to deal with the victims of these amateurs day in, day out. They leave a trail of unhappy customers behind them, many of whom still actually need a website. They eventually find a company like us and we have to re-educate them about the web industry and restore the faith he manages to single-handedly tear from each and every one of them.
Here’s one Simon Macbeth pro web designer (bwhaha) horror story;
After an exchange of numerous emails between myself and Mr Simon I paid him for what I understood to be my own website.
No terms and conditions were discussed. I searched for a domain name and asked him to register this domain name as part of my website. He said no problem and did so. He prepared my website and in the meantime I started with SEO and traffic generation to the website.
Oh wait a second… maybe we’ve got this guy all wrong after-all?
He was helping this guy set up his affiliate pay-day loan website, so that this guy could make a living for himself… That sounds alright, doesn’t it? Well after a while this chap hadn’t heard from Simon Macbeth, and after multiple unanswered calls and ignored emails, he started looked into the source code of his website…
I nearly fell of my chair when I saw they themselves were Affiliates and all the visitors I am sending to my website is cranking numbers on their affiliate link!
Ooo, that’s a bit naughty, Simon.
Then next thing they highjacked my domain name, remember they were the registrar and they changed the name servers and redirect their own website to that domain name. Now they have stolen my domain and my traffic as well!
Since then all I had from them is verbal abuse and some serious threats against me in person!
Ok. So let me get this straight. He took on a client who paid him to make them a website. He then allowed this client to get traffic to this website via SEO and PPC which would have all cost this client a fair whack (£1795.34 to be precise) He then changed their affiliate ID’s and started profiting from the website traffic himself?
Wow. That’s a double douche move.
Another innocent victim of Simon wrote;
I was looking for a website building company, to start a small online shop, I googled and unfortunately, Simon phony, fakey websites appear all over the place!! I spent hours looking at different companies. and much to my regret I plumped for 1 to 1 website design.
You can sense the anger she feels for him already!
She goes on to say they discussed her idea, and he seemed keen to do the job for her (too keen though, as she also believes Simon steals business ideas from people who contact him!!)
He asked for payment upfront of £1050… I was taken aback by this, told him I wasn’t comfortable paying upfront for something , I told him I assumed he would whip a design or 2, send them to me, and then we would agree on website, and I would pay maybe a deposit and the rest on completion.
This is technically standard practice for most premium web design companies, but ones that are worth bothering with will invite you to their office, let you meet their team members and chat to you over a coffee.
She reluctantly sent him the money, and he set about making her the website she dreamed of! Or so she thought…
I specifically asked for 2 design features… I said I wanted a brick work design and also if he could find it, a dog bone font… I later realise he wasn’t capable of producing either of these things, as he is not a designer, but a conman who has downloaded a free template from somewhere and he does not have the skill, ability or correct software to deviate from this.
Ah. He’s one of those “web designers” is he (a really crap one that can only install pre-made templates)
A few days later he sent me a link to the website build… I was horrified… a child could have done it on an iPad in about an hour…. It looked like it was built by a child …for a child!!
Oh. So he’s not even one of those “web designers” – I don’t even know what he is then?
It was awful…I emailed him to ring me…he did and I told him what I thought… he then became rude and obnoxious and tried to twist everything, telling me the brick design I asked for looked naff, that he had met my requirements, and I had mentioned the word Quirky in my form, and he told me quirky meant unexpected, and that his design was unexpected!!
He then emailed me and asked for another £499 to change it!!
Bwhahaha that’s hilarious. “Oh but you said “Dog” in your brief and the website looks like “Dog Poo” so thats ok innit?” hahaha… golden. What a bulb!
It does actually get better though!
I began to realise that his website isn’t what it seems…the team photo on 1 to 1 has been stolen from the Tipperary energy agency (I phoned them and they told me it is members of their engineering staff, not Simon’s web design team) his reviews are fakes written by him, he has fake websites, his photos are stolen from various genuine websites ( I have kindly informed them all of this)
Simon has seriously taken things to a whole new level of urine extraction!
Read the full story here. (link removed)
I hope anyone out there that has used him for web services, or is looking to use him or one of his “companies” manages to get/stay away from him and get back any money that he succeeded in stealing from you.
We’re not all cowboys, but there are many like Simon Macbeth. Be careful.
Simon the Mast0r Optimiz0r
It also seems that Simon is trying to use really bizarre SEO tactics in some feeble attempt at silencing the vast amount of bad press about him on the web – he places a landing page about himself on every website he cons someone to buy off him, and has probably put up loads of his own affiliate websites to try and flood the SERP’s for anyone searching for him, but you’ll never be able to get the kind of traction a site like the Simon Macbeth Exposed will, especially as the links continue to snowball around the social world!
In all seriousness, the “About Simon” pages he litters everywhere are a little creepy, they read a bit like he has some mental disorder and need to read positive things about himself on a daily basis to keep the voices in his head happy. If I had bought a website and saw that linked in the footer of my website, I’d ask him to remove it straight away and refrain from ever using my website as an outlet for his self-help ever again.
Simon Macbeth Summary
Its not often you find so much negative information about one person online – you couldn’t even find this many stories about known and documented conmen and scumbags – and stories of Simon Macbeth are only really starting to surface now.
Do your bit, visit Simon Macbeth Exposed (link removed) and share some of the content on there. If everyone that reads the stories on there re-publishes at least one of them then we can push his websites out the Google Rankings and dominate with facts about this serial-douchebag.
Together, nothing is impossible.
