This major snoop was prompted by my surprise when a spokesman for "birkenhead.net" claimed "they" had been in existence for seven years. Perhaps he meant all the "Town Index" company sites, when he said "we" received 5 Million hits.
This was too good to be true. I'd found a thriving web design company, not ten-minutes from my home, and even better, their ad said they needed "web-designers" (plural). I applied for a position. Their terms dictated "one week's trial". No problem. This is becoming quite normal, not particularly to test the range of skills a web designer might be called-upon to use, but more specifically, to encourage (decent) employers to give work trials to the disadvantaged/unemployed, and is allowed under "New Deal" scheme funded by government money. My local Job Centre arranged the starting date. Then... quite suddenly, the trial was disallowed. The Job Centre had received bad-reports from supervisory placement assessors. The so-called "web design" positions consisted of calling any and all local businesses and attempting to sell them a domain name. Those sent for work trials had not applied for telephone-sales positions, and as such "birkenhead.net" was deemed below the standards required for "New-Deal" work trials.
Few people complete a week's trial if given telephone-sales work to do, when not actually applied for (the jobs advertised requested a variety of web skills), and it could be calculated that many hours minimum wage labour is gleaned from a supply of local unemployed who qualify for the "New Deal" status, under which work trials are governed, (and by "minimum" I mean as low as £0.00 for the hours worked in an aborted "work-trial" week).

• Despite advertising a job requiring web skills...
• Virtually NO web design work is ever required by Town-Index Ltd's "Local Operators", and certainly not by the people they (Local Operators) subsequently employ.
• It is the local operators function to recruit and maintain a telephone-sales work force, whose function is to sell domains via the hostingplus.biz (which really must be seen to be believed) and webhostingplus.biz sites, and the much touted memorabledomains.net,
• A local operator does not require web experience or skills (as stated under "Local Operators" on all Town-Index sites), and sets up his "franchise" for minimum wage on a short 16 week contract, his tasks are telephone-sales staff recruitment and telephone-sales itself.
• Hosting fees are exceptionally high.
• There is no real "substance" to the advertised "value added features" of most Town-Index sites. The pages look shabby and hastily-constructed, with many broken/out-dated external links, (but essentially "as tele-sold").
• Payments are conducted through Pay-Pal, definitely low on the web payment best-practice list, and the subject of a certain amount of well-informed criticism itself.
• Good web business listings usually provide email and web site details, which may need continual additions and updates. There appears to be nothing on any Town-Index franchise I have visited that needs updating. No local news/events, site developments or editorials. Nothing that requires man-power to maintain.