Agreed. the whole "some pages are ranked lower than what they've earned on their merit." bit seems pretty vague and subjective. Even when you can prove there's

Agreed. the whole "some pages are ranked lower than what they've earned on their merit." bit seems pretty vague and subjective. Even when you can prove there's a penalty against your website, I don't see any evidence that those penalties are invalid. I agree that it's unfair for Google to not disclose this stuff, but it seems to me that this guy is just hoping Google gets enough bad press that they work with him, but this seems like a bad attitude to take when asking for help.