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calling it a "small business" invokes images of a struggling entrepreneur out to improve the world. this is a scam. threats of litigation. withholding of prope
by cracki 16y ago
calling it a "small business" invokes images of a struggling entrepreneur out to improve the world.
this is a scam. threats of litigation. withholding of property. unlawful contracts.
you used "mob mentality". that's a big red flag to me. are you perhaps the owner of that small business?
- ceejayoz 16y agoYou totally missed plusbryan's point. The evidence of this being a scam is that someone posted an e-mail the owner allegedly sent. That e-mail could be a total sham, or it could be exaggerated, or there could be a huge other side of the story. There are absolutely scammers out there, and this business might be one of them. There's no hard evidence either way, though.
- duck 16y agoYeah, it is kind of scary if you own a small business. Basically there is no trial, but rather just a guilty verdict.
- alttab 16y agoMy experience tells me those who are defending this business out of principle have never been truly, truly scammed.
- derefr 16y agoOther, similar phrases: - "Anyone who is defending this child molester was never molested as a child." - "Anyone who is defending this racist has never been the victim of prejudice." Some events overtrain our minds, such that we can never emotionally react to them in a genuinely rational way again. However, we can stop ourselves from doing this, by holding fast to the one principle that has always, always worked: Innocent until proven guilty, please.
- ceejayoz 16y agoYou'd have to accept the inverse, then - "no one attacking this business without concrete evidence has ever been falsely accused by an asshole customer."
- duck 16y agoMy experience would tell me either you don't own a small business or you haven't had a bad customer. We could argue how rare bad customers are and it varies drastically across business types, but it just takes one. I have no clue on this particular case and that is the exact point - neither does anyone else on here unless you have actually used them.
- protomyth 16y agoSo, because you got scammed by party A, then any unproven accusation against party B must be true and all those who still respect "innocent until proven guilty" are just ignorant? I think you really need to reexamine your perspective as it will seriously make working with other people on projects quite difficult.
- derefr 16y agoI'm fascinated that the votes here reflect rational, rather than kneejerk, responses to your posts. Do you think it is because HN users are specifically empathetic to small businesses, or do you think we are actually avoiding the cognitive bias responsible for holding up the minority that strikes against the hated outsider? To put that another way, in an isomorphic situation with forged evidence of, say, spousal abuse (pretending that that has some relevance to HN for some reason, and wouldn't get flagged), do you think the votes here would go the same way on your, the parent's, and the grandparent's comments, even if there were many people here who had been victims of spousal abuse (like I am assuming that there are many people here who have been conned by a business at some point)?
- lotharbot 16y agoNot long ago, there was an alleged sexual assault at a tech conference. Rather than going to the police, the alleged victim blogged about it, including the alleged perpetrator's name in the post, which hit the top of HN before being removed. The same pattern was visible there -- most of the highest-point comments were along the lines of "this is serious if true, so go to the police, not the internet" and "let's wait for an investigation before destroying the guy's reputation". On the other hand, when a magazine was shown to have lifted content and then told the original author she should be grateful for the portfolio assist, HN did pile on. In that case, the evidence of wrongdoing was clear and widespread: an admission by the publisher that she'd lifted content, links to the original which was clearly older, and links to content lifted from other publications. This led to the opposite pattern in comments, with evidence being highly upvoted and "let's not jump to conclusions" sitting at only a few points. I don't think "sympathy for small business" is the driving force. I think it's a focus on evidence rather than narrative (which happens to help us avoid that particular cognitive bias.) We are, after all, Hacker News, and the hacker ethos is one of making stuff that works, A/B testing, and following the evidence.
- Alex3917 16y agoThe only one we for sure is in the wrong is Yelp, because they are letting people who have never been customers post bad reviews.
- ceejayoz 16y agoHow on earth could you expect Yelp to automatically catch that?
- smackfu 16y agoThey do actually filter reviews automatically using some secret algorithm.
- ceejayoz 16y agoFrom what I've heard, that algorithm is essentially if($customer->has_paid && $review->score < 4) { delete_review(); }
- kls 16y agoEven though you jest, I have to agree. I really wish Google would buy out Yelp or would enter into direct competition. They would bring a level of credibility to an even playing fields for all parties involved. There are no many companies that carry around the kind of credibility needed to asway all concerns that people are not buying there way out of reviews.
- kls 16y agoDon't know why I got down-voted on this one, it is a serious concern. Yelp credibility in providing a level playing field has come into question on more than one occasion. Like it or not, Google brings a level of credibility to the table. When disagreeing with someones position please refrain from using the down-vote button for "I disagree" when a simple rebuttal would suffice.
- 16y ago
- dandelany 16y agoIt's not just the one e-mail, there appear to be other bad reviews from people who have actually used them, although it's impossible to tell whether or not they're real. "They quoted me $155 and ended up charging me over $500 and STILL wanted me to pay for some dumb protection service at $85 per year. AND THEY DID NOT EVEN FULLY RECOVER THE FULL DATA!" "John retrieved the images as promised, but once he did he held them hostage demanding more money!" "This place is extremely unprofessional. They charged WAY more than the original quote, and then demanded payment before returning my item. Also, they accused me of "harassing" them when I called to discuss the difference in price from the quoted cost." "Wish I'd skipped them. My laptop hard drive crashed and I needed to recover some Word & Excel docs. A month later they haven't recovered all of my data and are completely unresponsive to calls/emails. Now I'm out $460, I don't have the data that I paid to get back, and John still has my hard drive, so I'm stuck." "The data recovery was more expensive than quoted by Tekserve (by $200). Actual price was way over estimate (by $400). Communications were unclear. Terms were nebulous. Service was always late."
- tedunangst 16y agowhy is it a scam? the original review, while generally giving poor marks, wrote "All the said, he recovered every single file from my external hard drive." And where was the withholding of property?
- ceejayoz 16y agoThe review that started all this states that the hard drive is missing a circuit board that the owner of the company refuses to return.
- tedunangst 16y agoi can't find the word "circuit" on the page... help?
- ceejayoz 16y agoThe original review can be found here: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=KgzadQp3TZbn_yLGjka6dw http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=KgzadQp3TZbn_yLGjka6... > As of this time, I still haven't gotten my circuit board back.
- tedunangst 16y agooops, i found a different "original" review. thanks.