Beware of the Latest Scams
It's been awhile since we were victims of identity theft, when someone from Canada had made hundreds of copies of our personal checks and mailed them out across the US. Luckily our bank caught it in time and shut down our account, but not before dozens of people called us checking to see if the scam was legit. You can read more about the checks from Eric and Carolynn Gockel here.
This post also serves another purpose, to circumvent postings on the ripoffreport.com that appear when googling our name. When some folks got our fake checks in the mail purporting to be Irish Lottery Winnings or Secret Shopper money, they smelled a ruse and went to make a post on ripoffreport.com saying we were the scammers. On sites like these, you're guilty until proven innocent. They will not fact check and will leave posts on their site untouched. You can post a rebuttal, but they will not remove the original post. Well, that is, unless you PAY them to.
Take notes kids, here's a good business model for you. Provide an unchecked forum to let people anonymously post potentially (or purposely) slanderous comments about you or your business. When people call you to have it removed, even if they have proof to the contrary, claim 1st amendment rights and offer up your services on a monthly retainer to "clean up" their reputation you allowed to be marred to begin with.
If this wasn't bad enough, now another website has entered the ring. Repsavior.com to the rescue! They've gone to the trouble of scraping and databasing the complaints on ripoffreport.com . So if you missed your company's name getting bashed on ripoffreport, you may find a copy of it on repsavior.com with a message to contact them about getting their help to get the posting removed from ripoffreport (and presumably their own site).
The irony is, by reposting the ripoffreport content on their website, they're only perpetuating the problem. We went to the trouble of trying to push down the ripoffreport content by posting our own content, and it succeed for awhile until repsavior.com (and complaintrepair.com, et al) showed up.
Companies such as the QED Media Group are utilizing websites like these for lead generation for their own SEO (search engine optimization) and reputation repair services. When speaking with their head guy, Mr. Russo, he had no intention of trying to help.
If you are having similar problems and have a website of your own you can use a little web know-how and fight back against these guys. If you have any questions or suggestions, please add them to the comments and I'll try to give out some pointers that could help your situation.
Comments
Hi. This is really interesting post. Thank You! I have just subscribed to Your rss!
Best regards
Posted by: Forexman | June 5, 2008 03:58 AM