AN INVESTIGATION IS HIGHLY NEEDED TO SEE HOW MUCH DAMAGE ROR HAS DONE TO INTERNET BUSINESSES WITHOUT DOING THE
REQUIRED RESEARCH FOR ACCURACY.
ROR, in all its wisdom, has posted
complaints from another Investigation Company, KMS Investigations Inc, and has
falsely connected our business KMS Detective Agency as one of the same. Google
is now carrying it front first page where our clients can see this crap. This
is America for god’s sake. This ROR has no knowledge of anything with our
company and we are in fact a brand new business.
This guy's site needs to be
restructured and/or shut down. The Rip Off Report is a money making machine and
there is nothing positive about it for anyone other than Ed and his bank
account. Anyone can post anything bad about your company, whether it's true or
not. So if you are a business owner in a competitive market (especially if
you're a consumer based online company like us), your competition can post a
few negative comments that could severely impact your business.
Looks like Ed Magedson's shill,
Salty, is running scared. He and Ed Magedson must be looking over their
shoulders and I don't blame them. The curtain is now coming down on their act.
Lawsuit after lawsuit is being filed against Ed and his scam. Take a look at
the following: RIPOFF REPORT VICTIMS!
If you have good
lawyer they can cut Ed's legs out from under him. By going after service
providers! Ed is a ghost so you have to be crafty. There are many people that
can stop Ed's service. Here is a list of people or companies that for now
provide services to ED and ROR. I’m
not going to get into ROR’s strangely allowed violations of Google’s Terms
Of Service, which has been covered elsewhere ad nauseum. Before
I get to the facts of what I’ve found, however, I do want to show how ROR’s
title tag structure is essentially defamation. ROR
would be the first to tell you that they don’t produce the content featured on
their site, which is how they’re able to skirt lawsuit after lawsuit. The
Communications Decency Act states that a website can’t be held responsible for content
submitted by others - and that’s a good thing. No one wants to be
held accountable for some unsolicited comment someone made on a blog. But
regardless of what’s posted by those initiating the reports, ROR’s title tag
structure (which they have full control of) is such that it slanders a business
simply because a report was generated. The slander I’m talking about
is what makes an ROR report so visible in the search results. ROR’s
title tag structure follows this pattern: Rip-off Report: Business
Name Here In
the search engine results, (Google being the only engine that allows ROR
to rank), this has the effect of painting any reported business as having
committed a “rip off”. Logic follows that there can’t be a “Rip-off
Report” unless a rip-off has occured. Webster’s defines a “rip-off” as: “an
act or instance of stealing”. ROR’s title tags are essentially
saying: “Reported For Stealing: Business Name Here”. Do you think it
would be damaging if “Reported For Stealing: Your Name Here” showed up on
a Google search for your name regardless of the validity of the claim? But
looking further into the definition of “rip-off”, how does it apply to the
majority of the consumer complaints on the site? Some reports are
blatantly false and unmerited, but even those which do involve a real life
dissatisfied consumer have nothing to do with theft. If a customer and
business have an issue with a documented return policy, is that stealing on the
part of the company? If an ex-employee perceives he or she was
wrongfully terminated and decides to tell their story, is that stealing?
I would estimate that very few (if any) of the reports listed on ROR are anywhere
near the textbook definition of a “rip off”. Unfortunately,
it doesn’t matter whether a business or individual deserves to be there.
As soon as an ROR listing shows up for them, they’re damaged regardless.
If you’re thinking of buying products or services from “XYZ Corporation”, and
you see “Rip-off Report: XYZ Corporation”, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll
buy elsewhere. While the American legal system promises “innocence
until proven guilty”, individuals rarely think along those lines when they
see inflammatory words such as “rip-off’. But for the sake of
argument, let’s assume for a moment that every single Rip-off report ever filed is
the gospel truth. Imagine,
if you will, the following scenarios: A)
An electronics dealer sells 100 pieces of audio equipment a year and
has 4 rip off reports within that year B)
An electronics dealer sells 100 pieces of audio equipment a day and
has 4 rip off reports within one year In
scenario A, the dealer has a dissatisfaction rate of 4%, which means there
are probably twice as many customers out there who either would complain if
they knew where to do so, or, are simply too lazy to do so. That’s
an estimated 8% of dealer A’s customers. In short, if eleven people
deal with dealer A, one is likely to be dissatisfied. One out of
eleven isn’t a very good record. I wouldn’t want to shop with
Dealer A if I were privy to these numbers. In
scenario B, the dealer has a dissatisfaction rate of .01%. If the
same assumptions we made for Dealer A apply, Dealer B has a real
disatisfaction rate of .02%, which means that 1 person out of every 5,000 is
dissatisfied. Find me an Ebay dealer of any product with a record that
good and I’ll show you someone I would be happy and confident to buy from. But
guess what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because most
people who see an ROR report in the listings will do what we all do when we see
an inflammatory phrase associated with an entity…make an initial judgement
toward that entity regardless of the facts. Looking
at it from another perspective, let’s say you’re on jury duty in a criminal
proceeding, and you hear testimony from a witness against the accused. The
last question the defense’s lawyer asks the witness is, “have you ever
been convicted of rape?”, to which he answers, “yes”. Most people,
myself included, would almost immediately discount his testimony based on
his affirmative answer to the question. But what if the man, who is now
40 years old, was convicted of statutory rape at 17 years of age when he
was involved with his 16 year old, consenting girlfirend. What
if he and the girl eventually married, had 4 children and are still
happily married to this day? What if the man had lived an otherwise
upstanding life, paid his taxes on time and never had any trouble with the
law since he was 17. Does that make a difference? I think it
would for most people, because even though the law might be clear on what
constitutes a rapist, there’s a colossal difference between the witness in the
preceeding story and a guy dressed in black sneaking into houses at night
with the premeditated intent to sexually assault someone. Likewise,
there’s a collosal difference between a reported 4.0% rate of complaint and a
.01% rate of complaint. But again, it matters not. ”Rip-off”
is a phrase with a very negative connotation that implies something far
more damaging than a complaint. Though “rapist” probably isn’t the best analogy,
the point remains that certain words fuel our hatred and anger like no other.
In the world of business, and especially on the heels of Enron and Bernie
Madoff, “rip-off” is definitely one of those words. Take this, in
combination with the fact that anyone can make up anything they want
about anyone else and get away with it on Rip Off Report, and you can see how
Google is being highly irresponsible by allowing this to continue. Rip
Off Report should be required to alter/rename their site to indicate something
more truthful in their tags or Google needs to devalue the site. I guess the
title tag, “Complaints that May or May Not Be Valid: Business Name Here”
just doesn’t have the same ring to it. So
why hasn’t Big Brother taken action? Good
question. An even better question is why some ROR pages with the
same age have high page PR and other’s don’t, yet an inbound link search reveals no external
inbound links for either page and the same number of internal links. Could
it be that ROR uses a robot.txt to keep from passing site PR to certain pages?
Considering their well known extortionist “mediation service”, it wouldn’t
suprise me. Still, that’s not something Google can control. To see
what Google can control, let’s take a look at one of Google’s premier
advertisers. Blue
Nile is one of the highest PPC spenders on the net, and Google appreciates them
so much for it that they often use Blue Nile to test out new platforms - oddly
at times when it provides them a significant competitive advantage. Over
the holiday season 2008, Google allowed Blue Nile to place ads that dropped
down their products within the ad itself, giving them a ridiculously
unfair advantage over their competitors at a time when sales are at their
peak. Why, you may ask? Because Blue Nile is the cash cow that
keeps on giving. The company did $350 million in business in 2008, and
it’s not a stretch to say that a very significant amount of money went to
Google via Adwords. I
won’t link to any ROR on principle, but you can easily find Blue
Nile’s ROR (PR 1) by typing in “Blue Nile Rip Off Report” in Google. The
thing is, you’ll NEVER find it in the organic listings for “Blue Nile”.
You can go ten pages deep where the listing all have no page rank whatsoever
and you still won’t see it. Another
online Jeweler, Zale Corporation, is yet another Adwords big spender.
Google loves their money so much they decided to test a geographic ad testing option with
them. Unlike Blue Nile with two ROR’s, Zale corporation has 69
rip off reports. You won’t find any of those in the top 100
search results either. Think about it…69 complaints means at least some degree
of interlinking within the already PR blessed ROR, and yet few of
Zales ROR’s have any page rank whatsoever. It’s almost as though someone
paid to have the PR removed. Still, some do have page rank, and yet we
see the same situation as with Blue Nile. Plenty of pages with 0 page
rank come up well before these damaging listings. Let me reiterate that
point. These ROR’s aren’t pushed back by better listings a la some SEO
strategy to boost the positive press. These company’s ROR’s with page
rank don’t outrank pages with 0 page rank from sites with low to
no page rank. These pages have no inbound links and are located on “bottom
of the barrel” sites, yet they still outrank Blue Nile and Zales Corporation
ROR’s. If I built a brand new site tomorrow expressely to rank for
either of these company’s names, it likely would outrank their ROR’s.
Something smells rotten in Denmark, my friends. (On
a side note, you also won’t find ”Zales Complaints” in the “Searches
Related To:” options at the bottom of the first search results
page, which has nothing to do with ROR and everything to do with Google. A
quick look on Trellian reveals that “Zales complaints” does show some search
volume while “Zales Canada”, which is listed at the bottom of the
page, shows none. I don’t think either of the Keyword
Discovery sets of numbers are accurate, but I do think they’re fairly
reliable in terms of showing that one phrase is searched more often than
another.) The
problem is, Google appears to be giving an unfair advantage to their
premier advertisers by devaluing their ROR’s. I manage PPC
and SEO for a popular online jeweler, which is why I’m well aware of how
my competition’s bad press is virtually buried. Unlike Blue Nile and
Zales, however, I opted not to heed the call to up my Adwords spend
despite direct contact from an Adwords representative. As you
can easily read about with a quick search, generic jewelry PPC terms are
highly competitive, cost a lot of money and yield very little in the way of
profits - which is why most companies bid within their own brand.
Bidding on generic “diamond” related terms is a great way to end up with a money
losing ROAS. So, like “Ice.com” (whose gripe with Adwords you can read
about here) and other
jewelers, I opted to do what was fiscally sound for my client and cut a
substantial portion of their spend that had shown low to no production over
time. Our spend dropped considerably when my management took over, though
our profitability went up and our ROI was much improved. Everyone
was happy except the fine folks at Google, who lost out on the
spend that was being wasted. Blue Nile bids for the number one spot
on every single “Diamond” related term you can think of. While there may
be a sound branding strategy behind that logic, no one can argue that the end
result is an overwhelmingly high spend at the end of each month. So
what does that have to do with ROR? As
you might guess, we have some ROR complaints too. Far, far less than
Zales, but ours manage to rank smack-dabbady-doo right in the middle of page 1
of the search results. How do we manage such attention from
both ROR and Google when we obviously have a far better track record than
Zales? Good question. It isn’t that they have more press
or relevant listings, as parts of my client’s name are shared by hundreds
of companies and they have plenty of overall press. You can find high
PR pages well into the 30th to 40th listings of the search results for our
name on Google just as you can for our competitors. Still, our ROR’s
have higher PR and consequently higher rankings than our competitors yet
nothing distinguishes our ROR’s from theirs. Not inbound or internal
links, not meta data, not age…not anything other than the fact that they are
big Adwords spenders and we are not. One site with a ranking page on my
client has a site PR of 9 while ROR has a site PR of 6 and there is no
discernable difference between the internal linking structures of the sites,
yet the ROR page outranks the competing page with the exact same PR. The
two competitors mentioned above have ROR’s that can’t outrank a back-nine
page on a site created last Tuesday. Before
I go further, let me put my client’s industry in relation to ROR
reports in perspective. Jewelry is a hard business for those of you who
aren’t familiar. It’s even harder for companies like my client’s,
Zales and Blue Nile, who sell online. First and foremost, it’s much
easier to comparison shop online, which means a competitive jeweler’s margins
get thinner and thinner as the dollar amount of the item goes up.
Second, a very common issue in the jewelry industry is that local jewelers
have a tendency to appraise the value of something a person bought far
away (i.e. “online”) at less than the actual value in an effort to get a
person to return the item and buy from them. They wouldn’t dare give a
bad appraisal to their competitor across the street because they know they’d
have to answer for it, but there’s nothing to fear from someone half a world
away. The point is that I’m not suggesting Blue Nile or Zales are
less than reputable companies. They both do high volume business and
there are bound to be a few customers that feel they didn’t get a
fair deal when you have thousands of salespeople and millions of dollars in
transactions each year. What
I am saying is that my client’s business is like so many others out
there who have been hurt and maligned by a front page listing indicating some
sort of “rip-off” has occured. We have a rate of complaint
that any corporation would die for (under .003%), but most people who see that
listing will never know that fact or care to find out. Even if they read
the ROR’s, which customers may or may not update regardless of what we do, they
won’t see that we’ve tried to remedy every single complaint filed
just as we would for any customer (though I have to say…a few who filed
ROR’s were clearly in the wrong, completely misrepresented the situation to
make my client look unfavorable and what they asked for was well above and
beyond what any reasonable retailer would allow). The fact is,
that listing above the fold and a few spaces under our listing brands
us as something we are not, which is a “Rip-off”. How many other
businesses have been unfairly branded a “rip-off” through the existence of
ROR listings in Google’s search results? Quite a few. If
Google wants to continue to keep ROR in the forefront by granting it trust
rank, then the playing field needs to be level. As explained above, our ROR’s
have no more age or inbound links than either Blue Nile or Zales ROR’s,
yet the PR for one of our ROR’s is much higher than any of their 71
combined. I hate to say it, but either Rip-off Report, Google, or
both are manipulating the listings. There is no way our competition’s
reports don’t merit the same PR our reports do being in the exact same
category with the exact same internal linking structure and the exact same
internal and external links. Furthermore, our competitor’s few ROR
reports that do have gauged “PR bar” page rank can’t seem to outrank
PR 0 pages with no age. I am firmly convinced that Google is keeping
damaging Rip-off reports far away from their premier advertisers, which is the
equivalent of accentuating the rankings of those reports that damage their
premier advertiser’s competition. A
few last points of interest: A)
Blue Nile’s ROR was ranked on page 6 until recently, when I posted the
above findings on the subject to the comments section of SEO moz’s “The Anatomy of a Ripoff Report
Lawsuit“. Even on page 6, it had more PR and age than
some of the other surrounding listings yet only got as close to the top
ten as 5 pages back. It is now nowhere to be found. B)
You may be wondering, “Why is this post on an education site?” or “Why don’t you
say the name of your client?” The short answer is that I’ve heard far too
many complaints from business owners who have made their dissatisfaction with
Google known regarding a Rip-off Report and soon thereafter found the ROR’s
rankings above those for their own brand. Look around for yourself.
I certainly take everything I read on the internet with a grain of salt,
but it isn’t hard to find multiple comments from ROR victims who
expressly state that complaining to Google made the issue far worse. My purpose
here isn’t to make things worse for my client, but to call out Google (to
whatever degree one small guy can) for what appears to me to be blatant use of
ROR as a tool. C)
You may also be wondering, “Is this linkbaiting?”. The answer is no. In an
effort to discern why my client had been singled out with an ROR
listing whilst their bigger Adwords spending competitors had
been left unscathed, I came across a lot of business owners who have been
hurt by Google via ROR (many with no serious justification for it whatsoever -
97th Floor being a perfect example). Do I want it to get attention
and inbound links so it will get more attention in the long run?
Yes, but not for the purpose of boosting this site, which is unrelated to the
subject matter and not owned by me. I want the article to get attention
so that those who need to devalue ROR will hopefully be shamed
into doing so for the benefit of my client and all businesses who have
been damaged unfairly by ROR. It’s probably wishful thinking, but a part of
me really wants to retain the belief that the net can be a level playing field
for all. It can’t be level as long as Google is using ROR by
skewing search results to hide their reports for some businesses while
putting them front and center for others. Because of the fact that
anyone with any motive can create an ROR and because Google gives them so
much trust, ROR is not a fair or just proposition to begin with, but
that’s amplified when some businesses are immune from their reports while
others have to wear them like an albatross around the neck. D)
I noiced that anytime a “fight ROR” thread gets popular, it starts to
generate what I call “crazy posts”, which are posts by people who seem to be on
the verge of a mental breakdown. The last thing I want to do is come
across like one of those people or a conspiracy theorist, but I seriously think
there’s something behind it. Pardon my use of the phrase
“whackjob”, but the more “whackjobs” that post on comment threads related
to what ROR is doing to hurt legitimate businesses, the more it makes the
entire argument look like it was created by people who want to imagine they’re
being persecuted. It reduces the credibility of the article and all
those who respond to it, which is too bad because a lot of innocent
business owners and individuals with the best of intentions have been damaged
by Rip-off Report. I don’t want to post comments, because sooner or
later it ends up in call for a class action lawsuit, and not suprisingly, that’s
when the crazy people come out in droves to post. Coincidence?
Methinks not. Comments also bring out those who defend Rip-off
Report. Their primary argument is that businesses who are the subject of
bogus reports can’t be that damaged and even if they are, it’s an
acceptable loss in light of all the consumers that have been helped by
ROR. To me, this argument stinks of “Let’s just assume everyone’s guilty
and imprison them all. Sure, a few innocents will live out their
lives in prison, but what’s the suffering of a few in the face of the needs of
the many”. Let me tell you, it’s easy to take this cowardly line of
thinking when it’s not YOUR BUSINESS or YOUR REPUTATION on the line. Once
it is, people with this attitude tend to change their attitude rather
quickly. While I will approve comments on either side of the
argument for discussion, no “crazy posts” will be approved. E) Undoubtedly,
some of you will think that my claiming Google has anything to do with ROR for
their own gain is absurd. What you need to understand is that specific
Adwords advertisers represent a sizeable portion of their bread and butter.
The strange way in which those advertiser’s ROR reports are MIA in the search
results leads me to think the worst. I don’t know if what I believe
to be true is institutional or the result of a backdoor handshake from a
Google higher-up, but I do know that some rankings just don’t add up based on
the pattern set for other, similar pages from the exact same site.
Regardless of what I think, Google is still culpable. Yes, Rip-off
report has been accused of some very questionable (and illegal) behavior
on the net and in court, but Google is ultimately responsible for
giving them license to cause harm to those who are innocent of any wrongdoing -
especially when other search engines saw the writing on the wall with ROR
long ago. Let me repeat that: Google still empowers ROR while their
competitors long ago realized the potential for misuse and took action. What
I’m suggesting is that you ask yourself why? Why would Google do nothing
when their closest competitors have devalued ROR? Is it for the
integrity of the web? I don’t think you can use that argument for a website
that hides behind the Communications Decency Act because it knows that the
great majority of the complaints published on it are one-sided falsehoods
manipulated through the site’s format to cause as much damage as possible.
So again, why? There’s a reason for everything and there’s definitely a
reason for Google allowing ROR to run roughshod over so many businesses yet
conveniently be a non-factor for other businesses who are a big part of
Google’s revenue stream. This article only covers an industry I’m
familiar with, but I would imagine those in other industries could probably
find similar instances if they took the time to look. Find me a noted
high dollar Adwords advertiser and I’ll show you a business with
Rip-off Reports that won’t rank. F)
You may be wondering if I feel that no ROR reports are merited. I
feel as though there are probably many that are merited, but that doesn’t solve
or excuse the problem of even one report being allowed to cause harm if
unmerited. The long and short of it is that some complaints on
ROR are part of a pattern of legitimate complaints and represent a real problem
within a particular organization - and those complaints deserve to be
heard. Some are flat-out fabricated, and those deserve to be
ignored. Finally, some are legitimate but may be representative of the
experience of less than .0001% of a company’s total customers, which makes
them not very representative at all. ROR doesn’t do ANYTHING to find
out which of these scenarios is accurate, which is why MSN and Yahoo decided to
devalue them. Better to let 100 guilty go free than wrongly convict
one, although in this case, I think a lot more innocent people and
businesses are having their good reputations damaged for no real reason than
the other way around. I don’t take issue with a site such as Rip-off
report as long as they play by the rules, which should include NOT offering to
serve as a mediator for complaints at a cost (which seems to me to be an
obvious conflict of interest); NOT naming their site and labeling their title
tags in a defamatory way such as to imply guilt for those with reports;
and finally to NOT pass PR on to interior pages subjectively, but
uniformly. Ripoff Report's high rankings in the
Internet search engines lead to frustration by some companies who feel they are
being victimized by complaints that may or may not have any merit, and that
Magedson solicits these complaints only for his own profit. Ripoff Report
allows consumers to post complaints anonymously. Rebuttals by the accused
companies are only published at Magedson's discretion. Ripoff Report also allows individuals to
post unconfirmed complaints and accusations against other individuals. Aggrieved
individuals can submit their complaints against other individuals, and, after
being screened for personal information and curse words (which are redacted),
those statements are posted online with the expectation that public exposure
will apply pressure to the targeted individual. The individual being accused
usually has his or her full identity revealed while the poster remains
anonymous. Ed Magedson said his staff only verifies the complainants' real
names, which are kept confidential, and verifies that they have an actual email
address. This practice has led to accusations of willful negligence by Magedson
and Ripoffreport for ""falling short of what a reasonable person
would do to protect another individual from foreseeable risks of harm." It
has been argued that these loose verification practices encourage false claims
and slander. Ripoff Report does not allow complaints
about its own services. However, there are a number of allegations against Ed
Magedson and the Ripoff Report which are easily found online. Several sites
have been erected which attack Ripoff Report and Magedson. Also many
allegations have been posted on Internet message boards, including allegations
that ripoffreport.com's search engine optimization tactics violate Google's
terms of service.[2] [3][2] Many companies have sued Rip-off Report or
Magedson.[7][8][9][10] At any given
moment there are always lawsuits pending against Ripoff Report. None of these
cases have ever gone to trial. Some have been settled, and in other cases
Ripoff Report has failed to appear to defend itself. In such cases, a default
judgment is entered against Ripoff Report. Some suits can be reviewed at
Citizen Media Law Project.[11] Several people and businesses listed on
Ripoff Report have allegedly hired the Defamation Action League, an organization run by William L.
"Bill" Stanley (possibly a pseudonym), who is listed as one of the
world's top 200 spammers,[12] to attempt
to make Magedson and his business partners remove specific reports. In return,
Magedson filed a lawsuit under RICO. On June 21, 2007 a preliminary injunction
was granted against DefamationAction.com and ComplaintRemover.com. Stanley and
his associates were found liable for defamation and making death threats.
Robert Russo, who claims not to be part of the Stanley group -- but who does
own ComplaintRemover.com, has filed an answer, defenses and a counter-suit in
the case, which is in progress.[13][14] As is our policy, we never remove reports even when they
are claimed to contain defamatory statements, and even if the original author
requests it. The reasons for this policy are simple. First, this site is only effective when all complaints are
maintained and preserved so that over time patterns of truly bad business
practices are exposed. If we removed complaints this would give companies an
incentive to pressure authors (or us) to remove true and accurate reports in
exchange for money or simply to avoid a costly lawsuit. For that reason, we
will never agree to remove reports, even if someone can show that a report is
probably inaccurate. Under this policy, no reports are ever removed, so there
is no benefit to companies who threaten or pressure a customer hoping to get them
to retract a valid complaint. Even if this means that one or more questionable
reports are left up, we think that removal of any reports would ultimately make
this site less credible and thus less effective as a tool for educating
consumers. That's why we have made this strict policy decision. If this seems unfair or unreasonable, consider this -- if
someone sues you in court and makes outlandish claims that are completely
false, you can fight the case and win, and at the end of the case a judgment
will be entered in your favor proving that you were right and your accuser was
wrong. However, the court clerk will NOT destroy the file or seal the records
of the case simply because you won. Even when a lawsuit is shown to be 100%
baseless, the documents remain part of a public record that is maintained for
years or perhaps forever (trust us -- we KNOW about this from first-hand
experience). In this situation, the remedy you are entitled to is a court order
or judgment proving that you did nothing wrong, not destruction of the public
records about the case. Ripoff Report
What in the hell is going on with America now days. This is shameful. One
business that is not connected to another business is now placed in bed
together by ROR and Google is carrying in first page. How does this crap happen
and has anyone else experienced this funny papers loony toon ROR making stuff
up from la la land and shaming a businesses that has done nothing but just open
its doors
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/050105/078507.html
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=78507
http://bad-business-rip-off.net/hy%20cite.Complaint%20(B0463373).PDF
http://www.rip-off-bad-business.com/served.html
Turn out the lights, the party's over.....
What to do if attacked by Ripoff Report, Ultra Dns, Puregig, Prolexic [snip]
1. Ripoff report was set up to be a site that is beneficial to consumers, but
it is much more than that as you know. it is set up to also extort money from
companies. Ripoff Report (ROR) takes anonymous complaints with no regard to the
truth, slander or harassment and post them on the internet.
2.Contact Arizona attorney general office.
RE: CIC 04-21090 Magedson, ED
(602) 542-5763
[snip]
3. Contact his service providers and sue them. they have a responsibility for
their clients. If one of their clients had a site that promoted terrorism or
child porn they would remove and have liability for servicing site, servers, or
provide bandwidth. IF they didn't know about the content in site then they
would stop doing business with ED. Now, ROR is not as harsh as the two examples
above, but it is harassment, slander, liable and illegal. If ED or the service
providers throw up The 1996 act that suppose to protect free speech on internet
it does not fit in this situation, but it does not cover extortion or any other
illegal activities. Why do service providers have TERMS OF SERVICE AGREEMENTS
or ACCEPTABLE USE POLICIES with their customers? It is very clearly spelled out
what they tolerate. Your lawyer should have filed day with this one unless they
like long drawn out legal battles. You can call personally too sometime you cna
do more than lawyers.
[snip]
She has accepted service for ED's legal matters. contact her
Jaburg & Wilk
3200 N. Central Ave
Phoenix , Az 85012
602-248-1000
B. Ultra DNS
Domain servers for ed's site:
UDNS1.ULTRADNS.NET 204.69.234.1
UDNS2.ULTRADNS.NET 204.74.101.1
ULTRA DNS
(650) 228-2300
support@ultadns.com
888-367-4820
C. Prolexic Tech.
They provide bandwidth
866-800-0366
abuse@prolexic.com
D. Puregig
provides a block of bandwidth for prolexic.
(602) 445-1850
Matt Wilson (general manager)
They will try to make you run in circles, but they have Terms of Service
agreement with their customers.
4. Contact Google,yahoo,msn,lycos. they all have abuse departments. I got my
ROR deindexed,but it took me a while. You have to e-mail and mainly
call until you get something done. Use the same letter to each abuse
department.
5. Don’t call Ed 602-518-4357 unless you want to. Only way to get any thing
done with him is to pay.
6.Go for criminal case not just civil.
7. Have fun, be honest and get your story out there.
8.If you had a ripoff report on you being a child molester, crooked business pardon, or a
bad mom you would get it removed. You would just pay ed.
9. How much $$$$$$ have you lost or like me why would you want lies out there.
With no regards to truth. Remember he is advertising your company’s name in Meta
tags without your permission. Then how else does your ROR get ranked so high.
10.Contact BBB.
11.Ed s llc
Xcentric ventures
P.O box 470
Tempe, Az 85280
(602) 518-4357
EDitor@ripoffreport.com
This can be waste of time since ed has po box and cell phone number listed.
12. St kitts is made up to make companies run in circles just like Hy-cite did.
Ed's company is in Arizona and his service providers are in the USA. Plus, ed
through his site does business in every state in the union. companies in Florida
have been sueing ed in their state. PLUS, THEY ARE ABLE TO SERVE MARIA C. SPETH
ANY LEGAL PAPERS.
13. HAMMER!!! on the T.O.S (terms of service provision at all internet
companies).
Look at the content of the post and see if it is in violation of their own
policy. Why do they have this policy if they are protected by the 1996 act. LoL
14. If you know any information about Ed and ripoff report please post in any
forum or message board or do it here.
15. [snip] got all irate when we contacted there other service provider
Sterling networks
602-682-2200
abuse@sterlingnetwork.com
Now it seems like they (ROR) are no longer customers of sterling networks. Good
stuff!!!
16.It sucks having people post things on the internet anonymously.
17. Hope alot of you can read more into this post.
18. Do not let Ed get away with his scheme. Do something. We can easily get
this taken care of if we all do something. Just how does it feel when you put
your company name in a search engine and you see a Ripoff report there.
19. Here are legal judgments on ed magedson and ripoff report
http:www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/civil/caseinfo.asp?caseNumber=CV1995-004052
and CV2004-021685. There is probably more.
20. 17th Judicial court
Broward county Florida
case no: 04-17721-21
Ed magedson and xcentric ventures LLc is the defendant.
21. There are probably more . Just post if you find out any info. If ed jumps
service providers or any is filled in court (anywhere) .
22. It is very hard for ed to switch service providers!
As noted by 97th Floor’s Chris Bennett in his exposé of Rip Off Report,
Google has an ongoing romance with the site that has allowed many unvalidated complaint
webpages to damage other businesses by their presence in the organic
rankings. Where MSN refuses to list their site by principle and
Yahoo barely at all, Google allows ROR to run rampant across its top ten,
damaging companies irreparably in the process. But a closer
examination suggests Google’s acceptance of ROR goes far beyond that.
If taking away a negative has the equivalent effect of adding a positive, it
seems Google is using Rip-off Report as a tool to help its own cash flow. Criticism and lawsuits
Ripoff Report's
Policy: Why We NEVER Remove Reports even if the report
is
false &/or inaccurate.
PO Box 310, Tempe, Arizona, 85280
602-359-4357