Trust Your Data

The world is infected with garbage data.  Nine out of ten dentists prefer Pukebreath toothpaste.  Three out of four people prefer AT&T to Verizon.  Some dumb ass voted for Sarah Palin.  Before you can trust data to run your business, there are three things you need to know.  Who collected the data?  Why did they collect it?  How did they collect it?

Who and why are closely related.  If Pepsi quotes a survey telling you that seven out of ten people prefer Pepsi to Coke, you need to know if Pepsi paid for the survey.  If they did, the why part is obvious.  They are selling you something.  Sometimes the connection between who and why is less obvious.

This past week, on the Facebook page that shares a name with this blog, we spoofed Dunn & Bradstreet and Yelp with a bogus business allegedly owned by my mother-in-law, Sharlene.  We called the business,  Between the Wise Sheats (Chantilly, VA).  It's an adult companionship service that serves the over sixty demographic.  In other words, it's a whorehouse for the elderly.  Customers have come here for over a week.  We proved that D&B and Yelp contain a lot of bogus data.

D&B and Yelp collect data to sell it.  Despite protestations to the contrary, they don't care much about the validity of their data.  Data is their inventory.  No inventory, no sales.  After a week, both D&B and Yelp still list our whorehouse.  The next logical step would be to get a tax ID number from the IRS and apply for government grants.  It's a women owned, disadvantaged business.  Surely some dumb ass government worker would give us a grant.  After all, old people need to get off too.  We're willing to sell the business to some genius entrepreneur.  We're only asking $10 million, a bargain given the aging of baby boomers.  Or best offer.  We take credit cards.

I would get the tax ID number from the IRS, except that would be fraud.  I like preparing tax returns more than I like preparing license plates.

So we know the who (D&B and Yelp).  We know the why (to sell the data).  The how is downright amazing.

D&B collects business data from Sam's Club applications.  Sharlene applied for a membership to Sam's Club.  The membership clerk started out using a business application instead of a personal application.  When Sharlene told the clerk that a personal, not business, application was what she wanted, the clerk told her it didn't matter.  The clerk didn't want to start a new application.  Thus, bogus data was born.

D&B got the data and issued the much desired, among fledgling government contractors, DUNS number.  Businesses pay hundreds of dollars to D&B to get expedite issuing these numbers.  Sharlene got one for free via a lazy clerk.

D&B then sent Sharlene a letter asking for financial information.  I have extensive experience responding to D&B financial information requests for previous employers and clients.  I volunteered to be her CDO, chief disinformation officer.

Years ago, D&B called our office to get financial information about our CPA firm.  I politely declined having past experience with D&B people.  I'll be honest; politely might be an exaggeration.  I was polite in the way Lee Harvey Oswald was polite to JFK.  I'm not perfect.  You knew that already.

One afternoon, D&B called back and talked to our office manager, Jane.  They told her that we had a contract to provide financial information, but had not provided it.  They needed the information immediately (that night) or we would be noncompliant with our contract.  Of course all of this was total bullshit.

Jane answered their detailed financial questions the best she could.  She wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack on her best days, but that's another post.  She did her best to keep us out of nonexistent trouble.

A few weeks later, I got an offer from D&B to see the information they had on us as a promotion to get us to buy their data on other businesses.  When the report arrived, I learned that we had owned our office space for nearly ten years.  That would have been news to our landlord.  They even had us starting our CPA firm before we had graduated from college.  They were selling this data.  If you bought it, do you think you got your money's worth?

Once I got the DUNS number for Between the Wise Sheats, spoofing Yelp was next.  How better to achieve credibility in the whorehouse business than some satisfied customers?  I created a bogus Yelp account and posted a review as James A. from Ashburn.  In a few minutes, the business had a raving fan.  Feel free to post your own glowing reviews.  I would never own a substandard whorehouse.  Quality matters to me.

Before condemning me as a fraudster, consider this.  Literally thousands of the reviews on Yelp are written by the reviewed businesses themselves or hired whores known politely as marketing firms.  Have you ever visited a four star Yelp restaurant and thought, "What half-wit moron gave this four stars?  Dog turds taste better." (I won't ask how you know how dog turds taste.)  Answer, the owner's social media expert.

If you don't know your data's who, why, and how, consider it garbage.  No data is usually better than garbage data.

Thanks for reading!  For real tax and accounting advice, visit our main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.  Also please like the "How to Screw Up Your Small Business" Facebook page.  I post there several times daily.

Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us!