How to Deal with a Ripoff Report Listing

I agree that a rebuttal is usually warranted and a good way to go with Rep Management, but one thing we try to teach our clients is write the response without mentioning your company name or personal name as it will help the piece rank higher. Obviously it may need to be said once to state who the Rebuttal is from but especially in cases of Rip Off Report (and their ridiculous amount of trust in Google) rebuttals can be the quickest way to make sure that post ranks even higher for your term.

Nice post Glen.

Thanks for the mention again about our post on ROR. The thing that absolutely amazes me is that no one from Google has stepped up and made things right. If our post didn’t get anyones attention in Google, then nothing will. In my opinion - their silence is making them look very guilty in allowing ROR to spam their index. I really hope the money is good, because allowing this is (dare I say it) allowing evil to happen.

Someone needs to unleash the hax0r power on ‘em.

I am the victim of a bogus report on ROR. I have written a rebuttal several times. They have never been published. I have written ROR to ask why and to date I have received no response. What these people are doing just is not right. Truth means nothing to the folks at ROR.

I am the victim of a bogus report on ROR. I have written rebuttals several times and they have never been published. I have written to the editor at ROR to ask him why they won’t publish my rebuttal. To date I have received no response. The truth seems to not matter at all to these guys. What they are doing just isn’t right.

This was an interesting post for me to read as I have used RipOffReport quite a few times to investigate companies that were a bit questionable, whether it was their tactics, their offers, or something else. In fact, I went to a seminar once where a company used very high pressure tactics to get folks to shell out several thousand dollars for webhosting, websites - the whole nine yards. Many people who didn’t know better were sucked in. When I came home, I looked the company up on ROR and saw they were known for doing the same thing in many different areas of the U.S., and had even changed the name of the company a few times.

I have also seen rebuttals on their website, although the people filing rebuttals do seem to be met with a good deal of skepticism from the readers. If ROR is not publishing rebuttals, or requesting payment for a listing to be removed, then that is plainly wrong. Makes it difficult to know who to trust, although I always do a lot of research (ROR is just one site that I check) to see what reviews there are for programs, services and so on. Sorry to hear about your problems, Aaron.
- Megan

Thanks, Megan. At this point I am at a loss. I guess I will create a several blogs and such in order to try and push this ROR site down. What bothers me most is how there was no attempt to even check for factual accuracy in the report about me. The things this guy says that I did………they just aren’t true. And the fact that they aren’t letting me present my side, why would you even do that to someone. I

I’m all for consumer advocacy. I read Consumer Report religiously and always do research before purchasing something. But this website, it isn’t consumerism. It’s gossip.

Hey this site comes up third when you Google my name! Awesome! Since ROR won’t post my reply then I will post it here if that’s ok with everyone.

Here goes:

“I have been trying to post a rebuttal to this posting for a VERY, VERY long time and for some reason my response to this issue has never made it on to this site.

I called a furniture store to try to find a particular item and Doug just happened to be the guy who answered the phone. He was very helpful and seemed a bit overqualified for what he was doing for a living. I just asked him if he liked his job and he said he was definitely open to doing something else. I used a company-approved script to invite him to our office. The script is very clear about how our open interview process works so I’m not sure why Doug was surprised when he got down there.

Doug left the presentation before I had a chance to speak with him. I like to call anyone who takes time out to come to a presentation and thank them for their time. I was absolutely not at all rude or abusive to Doug in any way and I certainly did not hang up on him. He said he didn’t think our opportunity was a good fit for him because he’s “not a salesman”. I told him that he was quite the salesman when I had spoke with him at the furniture store…and Doug went on a tirade. I never got to say another word.

Apparently he had been in computers and was laid-off (a common tale in Denver at the time) and that’s how he ended up at the furniture store. He got very angry talking about the whole thing and he hung up on me. I understand that being laid-off can be a traumatic thing; I’ve gone through it myself. What I don’t understand is why Doug decided to take out his frustration on me by posting this “report”. Just about everything he says about me is untrue. I can’t help but wonder why his version of what happened is so different than what actually happened.

I have witnessed so many people join Primerica and change their lives. I honestly offered a viable opportunity to Doug when he was in need of one. I never misled him in any way. If it wasn’t right for him, that’s fine, but how is that in any way a “rip-off”? “

I am a victim of Rip Off. He has created an employee I never had and all of a sudden just the other day there is this other scathing article about me and my company, from “friendly”.

I do have a couple of complaints which are real, but they come from 2006 and were handled in court fairly.

but other complaints are bogus

I have filed rubuttals and they are not there to be found,.

I am not sure what I can do.

He is at the top of the search engines and I do not understand Google.

It seems we need to band together in a group - in a united force somehow

What do you think?

Well Aaron

I can only say I have had the same problems. I have posted rebuttals on Rip off only to find they are not there!

I too had one person who was discontented. Now this person writes reports about something that happened 2 years ago. It sounds like it happened yesterday.

Then ROR has created a fake employee, that this person (Pam) responds to.

I need to do something about this. I am not sure what. Maybe we can form some kind of united group?

I will write here again with an email address that anyone can write to.

Ruth

I have tried to post a rebuttal for several days now…. it doesn’t show up.
I signed up to be contacted by their Consumer Advocacy Program…. and they haven’t contact me.
The real ripoff is ripoff reports itself.

My nightmare started in 2006 when RipOff Report allowed 2 totally bogus claims come in which were created in my name and signed by my husbands name (all searchable and indexable). My husband shares his name with his father, therefore the RipOff Report shows up for his father too. I have spent over $3-5K in websites, and I cannot tell you how many hours in SEO development to clear his name. I moved it down for my name, but only onto page 2 on Google. The RipOff Report for his name still shows up no top PAGE 1. Yahoo, AltaVista, Ask and other search engines do not index RipOff Report. Only Google. I wrote to Google (what a waste of time that was), and explained that the claims on the internet were not true IN ANY WAY and they need to be removed (7 months ago). I explained that this was our family name being tarnished. After I realized that Google could care less, I started blogging. Now I am on every blog page, link rolling page, picture sharing page, etc. Our family name is posted all over the internet. But guess who is still on top? What else can I do? I really do not want our name here as it will eventually be indexed.

How can this be legal? Why can’t this be stopped? We need to change the laws in this information world. It is like graffiti on the web. It is gossip and should not be taken seriously. Where is our FTC? Our Attorney Generals? Where is our Government. Are they all profiting off this SCAM?

HELP ME PUSH DOWN RIPOFF REPORT!

Signed
I HATE RipOff Report

Wonderful post. I have been doing this for a few weeks to repair my reputation that a stalker attempted to ruin, and it is working for me. It does take a lot of determination and can be time consuming, but so far, evidence points to the possibility of this “counter-attack blogging” generating even more business for companies. It can, if handled properly, backfire on the perpetrators, as long as companies are diligent in their blogging efforts.

Before you even consider filing a Rip Off Report be very, very aware that you can never ever remove it. The Rip Off Report essentially takes over ownership of your complaint and uses your frustration for their profit from the company you complain about, not for your satisfaction. I would never pay an extortionist who uses ROR (and Google) as a criminal tool to hold my good reputation hostage unless I paid them their financial extortion demands. Why would a company pay a fraudulent ROR complainer anything if you cannot remove the report anyway? You’ve just permanently screwed their reputation for life and yourself too because I don’t believe that your complaint will put the company you complain about in any mood to mediate a settlement with you.

Filing a complaint on ROR is like one person holding a public lynching of another with no trial right on the court house steps rather than take your complaint inside the court house to Small Claims Court if a complaint is legitimate. So I believe ROR is mainly for people who have no legitimate complaint and no evidence to support their rant. I believe ROR is already causing great damage to our American judicial system and it will only get worse.

I believe the US Government will eventually need to step in and force hate sites like ROR to file a disclaimer on them like on cigarettes: “Caution: Reading this may be hazardous to your mental health.”

I agree with you Mike. It’s not something that honest people do. It’s a junk site, for anyone with white-trash revenge type mentality.

We have been in business almost ten years and only have ONE BBB complaint and have a 95% customer retention rate. We have 2 BOGUS reports and filed rebuttals, but they never got posted.

Thank heavens, our customers are smart and did their homework first on our company and on ROR…and how they are extorting thousands of dollars from thousands of companies to remove the bogus claims.

This has helped us with pushing ROR back a few pages…we are still tackling some others… ;(

1. create as many profiles on social networking sites you can find. Search wikipedia social network list.

2. add an in site blog and post till your fingers fall off…focusing on your companies name.

3. use VIDEO from youtube..upload whatever you got, and target your companies name.

Good luck and may the force b with you!
sandy

Mega Star Media INC
http://www.megastarmedia.com

Yes..thank God your customers are aware of garbage sites…thankfully, mine haven’t been made privy to ROR…they are smart enough to ask me for references, which they get, and that’s enough. Good tips! They do work.

good article

If Satan is seeping up from hell, this ripoff place is where he is surfacing.

Not long ago a competitor wrote a report including my name and my company name that included accusing me of fraud, tax evasion, discrimination and more. This showed up all over the web next to my name and company name in the organic search results with 24 hours of the posting. These were in some search results positions that had taken years for me to achieve.

I am a single Dad who is partially blind and turned down disability to earn my living on the Internet with a small business.

I spent nine years developing my 100% web based business with a 100% customer approval rating. Within one week I lost a top client and my business went down 50% in the next few weeks. The posting has destroyed my business. This was my only income.

After nine years of 12 hour days and developing business, I am now bordering on foreclosure which means my young daughter and I will be homeless - we have no where else to go.

I contacted the person who wrote the libel posting and they expressed remorse and offered to remove the bad information but have found they CANNOT.

I contacted the ripoff people and they said “we will not remove the posting so too bad sue us.”

So I am suing Google and the ripoff.
I am not sure what this will do for my situation but maybe I can help save someone else.

These people and practices MUST be stopped.

We NEED a class action suit NOW.

Do some homework on these rip people.
Their website is lie after lie.

“We NEED a class action suit NOW.

Do some homework on these rip people.
Their website is lie after lie.”

I totally agree. I am willing to be part of a class action lawsuit.
About 3 years ago, some competitor of ours posted two bogus reports on ROR. They knew what they were doing and put the correct titles and tags for it to show up on Google’s 1st page. The posts show up when my husbands name is searched and when our company name is searched. We have spent thousands of dollars on SEO to bump it down, but have gotten nowhere. Google continues to index RipOff Report even before actual news articles. My Husband and I are very good people, who work extremely hard. Our business has suffered severely because of this. Our reputation has too. Our competitor was jealous and very vindictive that posted this RipOff Report. The post was full of lies about my husband and our company.

The other issue is my husband is a Jr. So he shares his father’s name. His father is a farmer and a wonderful person. The post shows up on #2 for him if his name is searched.

I think that this falls under a different law. One that they need to create for slander and libel on the web.

A Class action lawsuit against RipOff Report and Google? I am all for it.

I also have been a victim of bogus claims from an ex-employee that refused to use their real name. By the writing manner it was easy to figure out who the actual person was, yet I can do nothing about the libelous comments. I cannot understand how Google gives so much more weight to an unqualified post that is 4 years old?

I am a stay at home mom that has a crafting business..its nothing big, a few hundred dollars a month. None the less, I have 100% ebay feedback and a small site. I also run a popular online mom blog and am active in a lot of forums. Some of the moms got “mad” at me and filed a ROR against my crafting business saying i defrauded their credit cards, when in fact, not only were they never customers, used fake names, and falsy accused me, I dont even take credit cards, I only take paypal.

But when you search my name online, its the first thing that comes up. Its completely humiliating for my family that just becuase someone on a BLOG got mad at me for an opinion i had on something, they attacked me online and it goes up with ZERO verification. I filed a rebuttal, but of course, ill be lucky if someone reads it ever.

I’m a consumer who posted a complaint against a company on ripoffreport.com, and now I’m worried that this company can take legal action against me - the consumer who posted the scathing complaint. The report I posted shows up in all search engines, and this certainly must have hurt the company’s business. I posted the same complaint on other consumer advocate websites as well, but all the other sites allowed me to remove the report.

I was a hotheaded consumer and ignorant of any legal repercussions that may occur. The company was acting in good faith, but I felt that they continued to be wrong about how they were resolving my situation. What I posted I felt to be the truth, but now I realize that I was probably wrong. I feel that I over reacted.

Now that the company has redeemed themselves, I feel terrible that I caused this permanent blemish which everyone can see by typing their company name on Google. The company had a spotless record, and even though I feel I didn’t do anything wrong when I filed the complaint, I wouldn’t have posted on ripoffreport.com had I known that the company was taking measures to resolve my issue.

I feel just as victimized as anyone else who gets a bad post on ripoffreport. I did not reaize until it was too late that I was being coerced into entering specific metatags designed to come up in Google, and I didn’t realize that I was being coached by ripoffreport while filling out the report to maximize the negagtive impact that this would have on the company. I thought at most this was just one of many numerous consumer websites where people can post complaints with much less or temporary repercussions.

Now I’m worried that this company can sue me for the complaint that I made on ripoffreport. I’m sure that this has hurt their business. As I said, the company was actually acting in good faith to resolve my issue, and I didn’t realize this until after I posted the complaint. I was truthful and honest in the complaint, but I was also angry and really accused the company of being fraudulent and dishonest - which I honestly felt was the case. Now I realize I was mistaken.

Any comments on what can happen to a consumer who files a complaint against a company on ripoffreport? I don’t see anything on the web where companies actually sue the original poster, so maybe this doesn’t happen too much.

I’m also a ripoffreport.com victim and I will entertain participation in any class action complaint against said website for publishing libellous information and repeating it through search engines.

I can be contacted by tagboard7@juno.com

Richard

Part of what gives Rip-Off Report is the fact that they claim immunity of law because they are just reporting what other people have. They have got me, but I have got back with them. They just don’t know it.

If you want to take them down it’s pretty simple, find a state that treats libel criminally and have Rip-Off Report charged. Now if they claim immunity as a 3rd party I have proof that they change their content and manipulate Search Engine Results. Now if you show he has manipulated results he is an accomplice to libel and then once shown he is an accomplice to libel he can found guilty for punitive damages criminally.

If I tell you everything he can protect himself, he scans the internet for stuff against his sorry as*.

Sure you can do a class-action, but those take a long time. Make it criminal and the as*hole will be scorched for what he is. I will have more info later on this and what I plan on doing. Suing this guy is a waste of time and money and if you break even you’ll be lucky.

Sam, you have to know if your state punishes acts of libel as criminal. If so say that RoR is an accomplice to libel. I realized this is not the forum to tell you what I’m going to do.

In many states libel is not criminal. If you cannot prosecute in your state you should find someone who has been libeled in a criminal state and file prosecution charges as an accomplice. It’s a known fact, something he has admitted in court (the owner of RoR), that he changes content of the site. Look up Sergei Brin and he changed his name (noted by 97th Floor) to protect his practices with Google.

You can go after the x-employee, but what do you hope to gain? He probably isn’t worth anything to go after. The system is stacked against us in that regard. I’m opening a company to flush your name and business name off the 1st 3 pages of Google. I’ve seen most of the companies out there and their system sucks.

I am a victim of ROR as well. I started a non-profit, non-commercial site as a hobby back in the late 1990s. It has been going for well over a decade with bout 100,000 members. It involves allowing individuals to list and engage in transactions with each other. I do not charge money or fees or any sort. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars (and hours) running the site and have never charged a dime of the members. It is something I did out of a passion and interest more as a hobby than a business.

Two or three years ago, an underage user began defrauding other members of my site. They began harassing members. Making threats toward members. Spamming the site and my members. They started posting extremely horrific racist messages to the forums on a regular basis. I banned them from my site and notified their ISP of their threats and harassment. Shortly after, I began receiving (and three years later, I STILL receive) all sorts of threats via email. I’ve even received a drunken ranting phone call once (I have no idea how they got my cell number).

At one point, they threatened that if I did not unban their account, they would begin discrediting me all over the internet. Immediately after, a long complaint appeared on ROR from this person. They were not making a complaint against my “business” (remember, it is a FREE SITE — there is no way for me to rip people off when I don’t charge them any money or do any business with them!). No, it was against me PERSONALLY… by MY FULL NAME.

It is very slanderous. I responded to it and then I requested assistance from ROR itself. I felt that as I do not run a business, it was unfair for someone to use it as a vindictive way to get back at me through extortion — “unban my account on your site or I’ll ruin your global reputation!”.

Now, it is the second result on google - only listed after my actual website. And people don’t know the truth about ROR so they accept it as gospel. It’s right there glaring at you when you search my name. It’s depressing. It makes me want to never do anything on the internet again (and I’m a software engineer, so I live and die by the internet).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laid awake at night wanting to either punch my hand through the wall or just burst into tears because the most valuable thing a man owns — his reputation — is ruined because of some underage idiot who shouldn’t have even had an account on a FREE site by someone doing it as a SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY who extorted someone to get out of paying the price for threatening and harassing the administrator and other users.

ROR won’t reply. I don’t have a business, so I can’t pay the RoR extortion fee. I don’t have a business, so I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer (and wouldn’t know what kind of lawyer to hire, anyway).

It makes me want to give up. I have not googled my own name in years. I never will again. It just makes me sick. And the arrogant prick who runs ROR with complete disdain for civility should be shut down.

The best way to stop the lies on RoR is to find someone, and there are hundreds of them, who lives in a state where libel is criminal. Find them and find some way to contact them. If they are angry enough have them press criminal charges on the person who wrote it and the owner (who I will leave unnamed, but well known). Ask if they will press charges, and it has to under the statute of limitations.

Either Ed is charged or he takes off everyone in those states. If he does he opens himself to more civil liability crippling him.

I would teach everyone how to do it themselves on this forum, but it will kill the secret and eventually RoR would know how I do it too.

I don’t know how to resolve this until my site is up against these clowns. But if you want to stop him permanently find people in criminal libel states, contact them, and start prosecution. His immunity is for civil, not criminal, and the fact that the “owner” has stated he has changed content on the site himself is proof he lacks credibility with saying he’s a mere 3rd party.

Everyone.

I have a hit on ROR in a primarily trust business. To say it has hurt would be the understatement of my life. Lawsuits will do no good. They have been tried by the best. But there is a weak link.
Go to the above web view/090714y6KaoiXm.html. If you cannot afford to participate send me an email and we will work something out. But I need your help to make this work. Everyone talks about how bad and sad it is. Ed is a domestic terrorist. Where is Cheney when you need him? Just joking but go to the site. If you object to what I am doing, just email me at nowhitback@yahoo. If you like it, same thing and sign up.

We have been in Business for over 35 years and have successfully
placed hundreds of dogs. We specialize in German Shepherds for law
enforcement and pride ourselves in providing excellent animals to good homes.

To our dismay there have been a few people who have purchased dogs
and later complained through ‘Rip off report’. Even though we have responded to the complaints and to ‘Rip off Report’ there is nothing that can be done to end the slander on those pages.
People who have seen the Rip off Report need to understand the issues that surround these malicious internet operations.

Go to Wikipedia ‘Rip off Report’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripoff_Report
And learn how Rip Off Report is the real rip off operation from
the Phoenix New Times
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-02-01/news/the-real-rip-off-report./
Our reputation has been injured and there is nothing we can do,
except continue to provide healthy dogs to good homes.

Jim And Karen Ellerbach