I'm sure by now you've seen some of those advertisements for an immense amount of plans for one low price. Well, as you've probably guessed, most of these are scams! Like your mother always said, if its too good to be true...
Now, with some of these offers, you do actually get the plans ... but, they often don't included instructions, some aren't full plans or they are hard to read, and some are just duplicates. Many have been poorly scanned from magazines and some have just been lifted or stolen from various websites.
The REAL PROBLEM is not the poor quality of the plans, really ... what would expect for $50 and 16,000 plans ... the REAL PROBLEM is people who order these plans and receive nothing, AND they can't get their money back.
There are many, many unscrupulus sellers out there who will take money from honest, unsuspecting people and give them nothing in return.
These "offers" have become a real plague on You Tube, Facebook and other social media sites were the sellers of these woodworking plans are spamming anything related to woodworking just to try to make a sale.
But Ted's Plans is not the only culprit, there are others with easy sounding names that are just as bad, if not worse, so BE AWARE of everything and do your homework, and if you are not sure - Ask Someone.
Meet Ted "Woody" Mcgrath
Ted "Woody" Mcgrath of tedswoodworking.com is one of the largest offenders in these scams. TedsWoodworking 16,000 Plans scam is by far the largest woodworking plans offer spammed across the internet.
Who is Ted? Well, as you've probably guessed, there is no Ted Mcgrath. Ted is just another character of fiction created to sell products. Teds Woodworking is really owed by Richard Butler of Gosport, HAMPSHIRE UK. Richard has probably not done a day of woodworking in his life and probably spends his days finding ways to rip honest people off.
How to Avoid and Prevent these Woodworking Plan Scams.
- Make sure you only buy plans from legit sources. If you're not sure of a source, do a Google search for reviews or just ask in our forums.
- Have a look at the purchase page of the plans, if it goes to Clickbank domain, its more than likely a scam product. Clickbank is a market place where anyone can add their products for affiliates to promote. Affiliates get a large revenue share for selling the product and unfortunately most turn to spamming to do so.
- You can help remove Woodworking plans scams from the internet by reporting them when possible. For example, in YouTube you can "flag" the video, on Facebook you can "report page" and on Twitter you can report the user as spam. Many other social networking sites offer similar features that let you report spammers and scammers.
If you really want to see if any of these people are woodworkers or just plain scammers, check they out, they NEVER show anything they have built from the plans, they only ever talk about it which proves another point, they are not woodworkers, they are scammers ... so don't be fooled, there are thousands of good FREE PLANS all over the Internet and there are thousands more plans offered for a small amount of money, and the plans where you actually pay something are almost always much better than the free plans, so don't be afraid to pay someone for their time and efforts ... you will get a much better plans and much better results.
