A recruiter is calling for three months free advertising after a special offer from job board fish4jobs led to rec-to-rec firms contacting his staff.

Tony Finn-Ford, managing director of Portsmouth commercial recruiter Job Place, told Recruiterhe had been inundated with around 200 emails after an email offering a 25% introductory reduction from  fish4jobs was circulated to around 500 people in the recruitment industry.

Finn-Ford claims that because the email was circulated using the ‘to’ option rather the  ‘bcc’ option,  rec-to-rec companies were able to contact his consultants by using the ‘reply to all’ option.

“People are approaching my consultants because they have now got all our email addresses,” says Finn-Ford.

He says that to avoid rec-to-recs and other agencies contacting his consultants, he now has to change everybody’s email account, as well as stationery and business cards.

Finn-Ford says that when he contacted Phil Mellows, a sales manager at fish4jobs, he failed to receive a satisfactory response.

Finn-Ford is calling on fish4jobs to apologise to everyone who received the email, and and offer Job Place free advertising for three months, or publish an apology.

Recruiter contacted Mellows, who says the company is looking into the matter.