Is RipOffReport Ripping Off Merchants for Positive Reviews?

Recently, a potential client of mine asked me about RipoffReport.com and how they are able to offer a paid service to protect business’ from negative postings on their site.  So I decided to do a little investigating of my own.

It took little more than a few searches to see that the topic of “Ripoffreport.com” and “extortion” seem to inextricably linked.

Unlike the Better Business Bureau, RipOffReport does not seem to be an impartial organization that allows a fair and open forum for consumers to post legitimate complaints against companies they feel  have not lived up to their expectations.

They do allow for a rebuttal, but from what I can tell, these seem to get edited or not posted at all.  RipOffReport.com does however have an Advocacy program that they sell for a large sum of money.  In today’s search engine reference heavy world, RipOffReport.com and it’s owner, Ed Magdeson seem to have understood that search engine results for company name searches can make for some good profits.

In one of the many many posts on RipOffReport I perused, I found one that was particularly enlightening as to how RipOffReport is well aware of the damage (or good) they can effect and even put a price on this.  (the email below was posted on: http://bad-business-rip-off.net/hycite.html regarding a company, Federated Financial - who if you search for “federated financial” in Google you see ripoff’s listing come up first.)

 From: EDitor@ripoffreport.com
Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 7:36 PM
To: seanluke@earthlink.net; Chris McFarland; Steve Miller
Cc: EDitor@ripoffreport.com; ‘Maria Crimi Speth’
Subject: Proposed settlement offer Federated Financial… RE: as per our last conversation
Chris McFarland & Steve Miller.

SO you know, I have had no Internet for the last 2 hours.. Plus, I am running a fever and going to bed.

…If you want the Corporate Advocacy Program,

I would give you a reduced fee of $2,500 up front and a monthly monitoring of about $125 a month.. paid every 4 months.
The normal cost for the amount of Reports you have would be about $9,000 and much more of a monthly monitoring fee,.

THIS WOULD INCLUDE:

An investigative Report by Rip-off Report. In this case, we know it would be a very positive one, turning all the negatives into a positive. Anyone would want to do business with your company. You will wish there were more Rip-off Reports on you, …NO joke…

To me this seems like a bit of “pay me and I will stop saying bad things about your company” type of scheme.

There were other posts, notably on Wired’s blog that explained how several seo experts made up fictitious companies to see if Ed Magdeson and his team create negative posts on companies and then wait for them to “rebutt”, only to send them invites to join their Corporate Advocacy Program.

“Our attorney had us do the same thing. We posted a fake company to see if Ed and ROR would post a fake complaint about us and he did. It took 24 days after our fake company was out there and Ed and ROR posted some fake complaint about it. Its funny because the company is not real and its fake. The phone numbers listed dont even exist and the company address we used is a fake also. But Good old Ed and ROR thought they could fool their readers and post their own fake complaint and list it.”

As a long time merchant on the Internet and as a consultant to merchants, the only way I see to remove yourself from this sort of extortion is to step up legitimate positive feedback channel visibility.  Here are a few suggestions that will help, but until Google backs off of it’s support of RipOffReport, these are only helping those search engine users who are willing to move past the 1st result and either get to your website or to the other sites where telling your story and being able to fairly rebutt negative accusations is available.

• Make sure your company is listed with the Better Business Bureau in your area, they are recognized for their impartiality.  Place their link above the fold on all your pages.
• Solicit testimonials from your customers and display prominently on your website, giving an entire page on your site to them.
• If possible, get video testimonials from your clients and buyers, use www.trafficgeyser.com to distribute widely on the Internet, make sure to embed as many keywords as you can in the tags (even some negative ones along with the term “rebuttal”: i.e. “complaints rebuttal”, “scam rebuttal”)
• Enable services such as UserTrust or BigTrust to actively solicit feedback from customers and then make that public.
• If you end up on RipOffReport, make sure you consider hiring an attorney to dispute the posting.  As a company you have rights, unfortunately you will end up running into Google, as RipOffReport would have no power whatsoevernor without Google’s unabashed support of their practices.

Here is the list of resources I used in reporting this story, I hope you find them as useful as I did in forming my opinion of RipOffReport.

Google Search for “Rip Off Report Founder“.

Picture of Ed Magdeson - Rip Off Founder

TV News Story on RipOff’s alleged deceptive business practices.

http://www.scamreviewsites.com/Rip_Off_Reports-GoodBusinessBureau.htm

Ed Magdeson’s attempt to open his own site to tell “his” story.

Wired Magazine’s Blog on Rip Off Report and their questionable business practices - Loads of posts here, even some by RipOff’s Attorneys, Ed M. himself and more than a few pissed off business owners.

Ed Magdeson’s Deposition - loads of links to Ed Magdeson’s very full and interesting relationship with various law enforcement agencies, as well as his attempts to smear his neighbor as a sex offender.

Phoenix New Times Interview with Ed Magdeson, RipOffReport.com’s founder.