Dinar Trading Part 2

Following Andy's (real name withheld per his request) inquiry, in this article I’m conducting a case study on freedinar.com, an Iraqi dinar trader. Andy is a prospective investor who is trying to make an informed purchase and asked for my help in the process. This is the second part of the article. For those of you who missed it, here’s a link to the first part of the dinar trading article.

First time impression is ok, although somewhat balanced. They have a clean, crisp and professional design. Obviously someone has put a lot of work in the making it, probably a talented web designer.

The images look obviously similar to stock agency type of photos. Using such images is common practice on the Internet, so there’s nothing bad in this aspect.

Further digging through inner pages show well thought views, even though a bit too “selly” to my taste. But that’s ok, since selling is their business. There’s also some historic information on the Iraqi dinar, good pictures on the available notes and of course the classical anti-counterfeit measures page.

I’d give them a 9 on a scale from 1 to 10 for the first impression.

On top of the page there are some testimonials and quotes, some of which are apparently from satisfied customers. On a second look however, only one testimonial is actually mentioning freedinar.com or its founders, and in a context that has nothing to do with Iraqi dinar trading. This is not to say the rest of them couldn’t be from actual customers, or that those people didn’t purchase Iraqi dinars from freedinar.com, just that there is no obvious connection between the testimonial itself and the freedinar.com website. Furthermore, many don’t even mention they’ve bought Iraqi dinars, and none has any kind of contact information. You may be able to get the contact information if you ask freedinar.com, but I haven’t attempted to do so.

Next point on the Iraqi dinar buyer safety tips is to try and find some testimonials elsewhere, not on their own website. I’ve tried on all 3 major search engines (Google, MSN and Yahoo), but unfortunately wasn’t able to find any testimonials from customers who traded dinars with them. In fact, with the exception of a press release issued earlier this year by freedinar.com, I wasn’t able to find much information about this site at all.

A whois inquiry on their domain name (http://www.whois.sc/freedinar.com (opens in a new window)), the only piece of real information we have so far, shows us a possible reason for the lack of feedback.

As you can see from the screenshot on the left, the domain name itself is only half a year old. Even though their business may be older, as we’ll shortly see in the next part of the article, they haven’t been doing business for long under the freedinar.com name.

Lacking further evidence to verify the testimonials on their web site and being unable to find any references to them elsewhere I’m afraid they get a neutral mark of 5 on a 1 to 10 scale for the testimonials safety tip. This is both a good and a bad sign. It is good because unhappy customers tend to have a higher profile, and are more vocal than happy ones, both in the real world and on the Internet.

So, by not finding any bad reviews we could assume they go the extra mile and make all their customers happy. It could also be a bad sign, because we could be wrong. There isn’t any hard evidence to back our assumption either way.

Next point to check: their physical location. If a dinar trade is completed successfully, great for you! But if things go awry it is critical to be able to seek and find the dinar trader. Hiding a scam behind a web site address is very easy. A real address boosts our confidence, as there are proper authorities who are known for their habit of tracking down fraudsters. Does freedinar.com display their physical location somewhere on the site?

Continue to Dinar Trading Part 3

Return to Dinar Trading Part 1

Note: Screenshots on this page courtesy of http://www.whois.sc (opens in a new window).