Oscar Associates Ltd

[jmo21]

Anyone ever heard of or used Oscar Associates Ltd, or know if they are part of any larger agency?

their website doesn't tell me much.

[DaveB]

Anyone ever heard of or used Oscar Associates Ltd, or know if they are part of any larger agency?

their website doesn't tell me much.

These Guys? http://www.oscar-associates.com/

[jmo21]

yip, sorry, meant to paste the URL into my original post.

I assume that's them anyway.

[zara_backdog]

Well they need some web developers to finish their site - get posting!

[DaveB]

Ok, since I'm bored again a quick tutorial in digging the dirt on companies who dont tell you much about themselves.

1sts stop, Companies House. Webcheck Service. It's on the right in the middle.

From here we get two hits :

Oscar Associates Ltd and Oscar Associates (UK) Ltd.

A fair amount of info in there. Both appear to be legitimate companies registered to the same address. Accounts are up to date for both although Oscare Associates Ltd is now dormant while the (UK) version remains active.

Oscar Associates (UK) was originally known as Drayston Ltd. Co's House seem to have no record of this company dissolved or otherwise but OA(UK) has been going since 2001.

Now we take a look at some of the hits returned by googling the company name. The first few hits are the company website and others relating to Oil and Gas or Railways engineering, which they seem to recruit for as well as IT and matches what little info is on the website.

The interesting link is the Jobsite entry that google returns.

This gives an address in Manchester and a phone number that matches the one on the website. Since this is different to the registered address in Co's House this is more than likely their actual offices.

The Freetrade Exchange,
Peter Street,
Manchester,
M2 5GB
020 7600 ****/ 0161 445 ****

Freetrade Exchange appears to be a purpose built commercial office development.

A few clicks from the jobsite entry or following some links further down the google results and we start seeing actual IT jobs they are recruiting for, mostly developer roles by the look of it.

Next stop the Whois datase. www.whois.net

whois oscarassociates.com
Domain Name: OSCARASSOCIATES.COM
Nameserver: ns1.domainmonster.com
Nameserver: ns2.domainmonster.com
Nameserver: ns3.domainmonster.com
Nameserver:
Created Date: 25-Nov-2008
Expiry Date: 29-Oct-2011
Registrant Name: Kamanchi Advisor
Registrant Company: Kamanchi Ltd
Registrant Address: 7 Basset Court
Registrant Address: Grange Park
Registrant Address:
Registrant Address: Northampton
Registrant Address: Northamptonshire
Registrant Address: NN4 5EZ
Registrant Address: United Kingdom
Technical Name: Kamanchi Advisor
Technical Company: Kamanchi Ltd
Technical Address: 7 Basset Court
Technical Address: Grange Park
Technical Address:
Technical Address: Northampton
Technical Address: Northamptonshire
Technical Address: NN4 5EZ
Technical Address: GB

This tells us that OA have their domain registered by Kamanchi Ltd. With a bit of googling we find out that Kamanchi are company specialising in IT services for the recruitment industry.

Next, we go to NSLOOKUP. You can run this from the command prompt or use a web service like this one.

NSLOOKUP oscarassociates.com

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.oscarassociates.com
Address: 194.159.13.6

This gives us the IP address of the website.

Feed that back into NSLOOKUP :

NSLOOKUP 194.159.13.6

Name: www.mailsure-it.com
Address: 194.159.13.6

And we find out that the site is actually hosted on a server run by mailsure-it.com. A bit more googling tells us that they are an IT service and support provider who appear to be hosting OA's mail and web service. For a guess Kamanchi have subbed out the hosting.

So, we know :

Who they are,
What they do,
Where their registered address is,
Where their actual offices are,
Who provides their IT support,
Who hosts their web and e-mail,
That their accounts are up to date,

and answering the original question, they do not appear to be a front for another company.

Not bad for 10 mins work.

[jmo21]

Believe it or not, I did do the companies house part, and compared their registered address to the other agency I had in mind.

I also found the Jobsite address page as well!