You should read everything carefully before sending money to people you don't know. I always knew this... I'm not exactly a businessman born yesterday, but now I know it even more. This is also why we are very serious that CookieCabana.com has clear and easily accessible terms of use... our lawyer has done a good job on this.

Her's the story- As we did our commecial registration (Hendelsregistereintragung), we naturally had to pay some fees. 40 Euros to Amtsgericht, another 30 to another official bureau, etc. Things were fine until a few days after receiving our official notification that the registration was completed, when we received two bills from other seemingly "official" organizations for a total of around 1000 Euros. This was a shock... I hid the bills under a stack of papers for a couple of days, so I wouldn't have to think about them. Finally, the real "man" that I am, I mustered the courage to show the bills to my wife. After some careful consideration, we decided we had to pay these "official" bills, so might as well get it over with. We paid them online last Sunday afternoon... big mistake. On Monday, I received another bill for 530 Euros. This was strange, so I went to see my tax advisor. He told me this was all a scam. There are people who monitor the Handelsregister for new registrations, and send them offers for inclusion in their data bases. However, the informatin about the "offer" is in very very fine print. They name themselves such official sounding names as "Allgemeines Gewerberegister AGR / Gewerberegister Veröffentlichungen", send a letter with a payment slip (überweisung) attached, and ask you to pay before such and such date.

So, we were duped. But, fortunately we found out early enough. The bank could stop one payment, and the other is in the process of being returned. By the way, I've received two more similar bills since then, but now I know better.