5 ms·

Plumber vs. programmer: a face-off over an online directory

47 points by chuck_taylor 17y ago

CapitalistCartr 17y ago
"Conklin's missive raises an interesting point: Do businesses (or individuals for that matter) have any control over what's published or said about them on third-party directory sites? And do businesses have control over the phone numbers being represented to the public?" Yes, when its a material misrepresentation of the facts. Putting up a false phone number for a company is not only unethical, its fraudulent. To me, the element that makes the deceitful nature of their actions clear is that they didn't contact the business owner first.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  It's "passing off" a slightly weaker part of trademark law. They are pretending to the public that their service is that of someone else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off - written from the UK perspective, it's certainly part of EU TM law too, but I don't know enough about US TM law to comment properly on this.
imraj 17y ago
I think techies got it wrong this time.
- auston 17y ago
  I beg to differ, how can they TRULY measure the value of their service if they aren't tracking a highly relevant action such as phone calls? Especially if they are supposed to be getting paid per call.
  - chuck_taylor 17y ago
    They're not getting paid per call. It's just for metric purposes.
    - auston 17y ago
      I still stand by my argument; measurement is very important - unless a significant percent of your customers complain, then I wouldn't change it.
      - pyre 17y ago
        How is the plumber a customer? He didn't sign up for the service and he doesn't want the service, but he's forced to have it 'provided' to him for free by HelpHive. Measurement is important to HelpHive, not to the plumber (who doesn't even want the service, let alone the metrics).
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    How does their want for data make this ethical?
    - auston 17y ago
      I fail to see how it is unethical, provided it is disclosed that the number will be routed. Maybe I missed something... Plumber pays helphive $99 a year (see: http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/10/21/helphive-tests-pay-per-job-model-connects-home-service-businesses-with-consumers/ http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/10/21/helphive-tests-pay...) to be listed? In doing so, Plumber agrees to the terms that state his phone number will be re-routed? Plumber didn't read his agreement & now he is upset? Plumber can turn off this feature & he is still upset?
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
      - jamesbritt 17y ago
        The article says, "Up to now, HelpHive has been free for both consumers and businesses that sign up to be on the site." But, according to to plumber, "These local business listings are not placed there by the business but have been harvested from other sources." And, "If it isn’t illegal to place ads or listings to the public using our company’s name without permission and faking our phone numbers, we need a law now." I see nothing that says the plumber signed up for anything, had any agreement, or paid any money. It appears that HelpHive took upon themselves to "help" this guy. Unless I'm missing something, Karim Meghji's rebuttal completely skipped over the claim that HelpHive was harvesting company data from other sources and listing businesses without prior approval.
      - jfager 17y ago
        You missed something. HelpHive uses the same bullshit model that GetSatisfaction and Seth Godin's lame new project got railed for, where it sets up an official looking page for every company it can find, regardless of whether it has that company's permission or not, and basically tries to extort money from that company by hoarding customers who think they're dealing with the actual business. The article you linked is about a 'feature' they're experimenting with, where a business signs up for the opportunity to pay for the leads from these pages. From a quick look at HelpHive's site, it looks like basic claiming is still free, but it specifically says: Your business contact info (email and business phone) are used when customers call or send messages to your business. Your business information isn't displayed on your business profile page... You are not permitted to enter your email, phone or other web contact information in other areas of your business profile page.
  - thinkzig 17y ago
    They can truly measure the value of the service by charging for it and seeing what service providers are willing to pay. All the fake phone number does is measure how many phone leads the site generates, but it does nothing to measure the value of those leads. What if it generates 30 leads a month from consumers that are a bad fit for the service provider? On the other hand, what if it's 3 leads a month that turn into valuable business? I'm with the plumber on this one. If you're trying to gain favor with a business you don't do it by hijacking their name and representing them as something they are not. HelpHive got this one wrong.
dstorrs 17y ago
What left me puzzled was why HelpHive didn't simply de-list Conklin with an apology and a statement that it wasn't their intent to harm his business. It seems that this would have been the ethical thing to do, and would have resulted in some good publicity for them.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "It seems that this would have been the ethical thing to do, and would have resulted in some good publicity for them." HelpHive doesn't seem so big on on the whole "ethical thing".
  - shpxnvz 17y ago
    Yeah, but regardless of ethics it seems like an incredibly small price to pay to avoid negative publicity and a possible lawsuit.
    - jamesbritt 17y ago
      That's the weird thing. Even if you think the plumber is stone wrong, a bit of business sense should tell you to politely acquiesce and move on. Instead, they demonize this guy and selectively address his complaints. It seems they really can't grasp they idea that not everyone agrees with their sense of what's good and right. And that makes me think issues of ethics never crossed their minds; it looks as though they cannot imagine themselves as being wrong.
nym 17y ago
I worked for a major online car company (like edmunds, autotrader) and wanted to do the same thing with our dealership directory. It seems to me the same as someone saying "Where can I find a Toyota dealership in Mountain View, CA?" and replying "Here you go, call this number if you want me to introduce you two!". The routed call might say to the dealer when he picked up "Lead provided by SuperHappyCars.com!" before letting the two parties talk to each other. This would help dealerships see the impact ROI based advertising had, in the lowest tech way possible. Nothing wrong with that, although I can see how it could be abused too, routing calls to the highest bidder instead of the advertised party.
- pyre 17y ago
  I think the issue here is that someone viewing HelpHive's website would be under the impression that the phone number provided on the listing for "Mountain View Toyota" is their direct number, and not a 'proxy' number that redirects them. What happens when HelpHive screws up their phone service and loses customers for "Mountain View Toyota" because they got no connection or a 'line disconnected' message? What happens when the customer puts the 'proxy' number in their phonebook and calls it whenever they want to call "Mountain View Toyota?" When happens when a majority of "Mountain View Toyota" customers have the proxy phone number in their phone? Now it looks like there is a lot of phone traffic coming from HelpHive, but it's grossly exaggerated because you have people using the number multiple times (rather than once when they first find the business through HelpHive).
  - nym 17y ago
    I agree that you have to clear about "connecting" the customer to the business, not providing the direct number. In some ways this is better than a regular phone number because if the business' number does change, the proxied number could stay the same. The gross exaggeration you're referring to is something that's easily overcome though by tracking total calls vs unique calls. Also you get great stats like how long the customer was on the phone for, and I imagine if they hung up or were hung up on. Turns out many businesses want this kind of data to better improve their customer service. You would not believe how many leads are purchased, and never acted upon, just because the salespeople are lazy.
mrduncan 17y ago
Although not quite the same situation, this reminds me of the fiasco around GetSatisfaction at the beginning of the year. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540
- dschobel 17y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. Although when you think about it, fundamentally it's no different than Yelp or Zaggats. It's just another level of service layered on top of a directory.
  - jfager 17y ago
    Service for whom? It doesn't serve the business - I'm sure they'd much rather people contact them directly - and it doesn't serve the customer - who wants to deal with a middleman when your toilet's overflowing? The only one served by this is the middleman, who gets to hijack leads and extort businesses.
    - dschobel 17y ago
      The value added over a "dumb" directory is that you can use ratings to inform your decision instead of taking the service provider's word of being "the best in town". I'm not making this stuff up, tons of people use Yelp, Zaggats, GetSatisfaction, etc so obviously they're seeing value somewhere.
      - jfager 17y ago
        I use Yelp all the time, so I agree with you that there is value in a directory with ratings. But the value of Yelp comes from the carefully crafted community that I feel I can trust, not from some random star rating from faceless people, and I certainly wouldn't get any value if Yelp stepped in as a forced intermediary if I wanted to contact the business (that would make me stop using it immediately, actually).
  - mdasen 17y ago
jwhitlark 17y ago
I went and looked at the site. They list the companies' address, and below it a phone number. The layout implies that the phone number belongs to the business. If they wanted to do it the right way, they could have added something like, "contact this business via helphive". I would call this highly unethical, at this point; it is a willful and material misrepresentation of the facts.
matrix 17y ago
HelpHive (the directory) is absolutely in the wrong here. Their business model is unethical at best; it's on par with spamming and link-farming. It doesn't surprise me in the least that the founder of HelpHive is a former RealNetworks employee.
- willwagner 17y ago
  To me, unless the phone number is clearly marked that it's from HelpHive as opposed to the business, it's similar to a phishing site; it could really get delisted by google which would be the kiss of death for this company's business. I use google all the time to quickly get contact info; I'll have to check the source a lot more carefully if this becomes a commonplace.
- btilly 17y ago
  Is it the technology or the business you are unhappy with? When I was at Rent.com we implemented a very similar telephone system around the time that we were acquired by eBay. The critical difference was that the apartments on our site all had contracts with us and were all paying us per person actually placed in the building. Our initial implementation also didn't have an opt-out, but we had to implement that fairly quickly because of very similar issues with automated answering systems. The main reasons that we implemented the system were to improve collection rates on our invoices, and improve the rate at which leases go reported to us. (It is amazing how many apartment building owners wanted to cheat us...) I'm curious whether people's outrage at this technology would extend to that implementation by a different company with a much more clearly established business relationship.
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    "I'm curious whether people's outrage at this technology would extend to that implementation by a different company with a much more clearly established business relationship." The tech is fine. The idea of involving people without their consent is what's wrong. It makes sense as a way to ensure tracking of referrals, but all parties need to be in agreement on it, and users need to be told that they are going through an intermediary.
tocomment 17y ago
The plumber just needs to trademark his business and then it's a simple case of trademark infringement, no?
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  This whole thing reminds me, also, of the GetSatisfaction pile. Bottom line at the top, I doubt if HiveMind is illegal, but I believe the phone number hijacking is unethical. But what this also reminds me of is news organizations' objection to article links on aggregation sites. The difference, of course, is after you follow a link you're "there" (assuming you haven't been framed) and can bookmark it as you wish, and click on all the tasty advertisements. If "all the plumber needs to do" is to trademark his business name to keep HiveMind from listing him (assuming HiveMind wouldn't just remove him by request), then wouldn't this also work for Rupert Murdoch and his ilk? [conscious use of the negative and inflammatory "ilk," with no small amount of satisfaction]
  - nym 17y ago
    It all depends on what they do with the proxied number. If they're just watching traffic, that's no less unethical than proxying a URL like Google does to see how many people click on an item in their SERP.
    - eli_s 17y ago
      that is such bullshit. When google acts as proxy I dont associate the proxy link as the actual link to the resource I'm looking for. This fool has wedged himself between the client and business and in the process has hijacked the business' phone number. When helphive goes out of business how many people will still try to contact their local plumber, get a no signal tone and assume the plumber is no longer in business?
      - nym 17y ago
        My mistake, Google isn't doing this (I thought they did?). Facebook does for outbound links, for example http://www.datmansymbol.com/ http://www.datmansymbol.com/ is actually: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.datmansymbol.com%252F&h=dfe9138aed1f6ba0c66f8cc680cf3315&ref=mf http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.datma... The right approach would be to have the hivemind number say "Connecting you to <phone number>... one moment please", at least being more transparent about the process. I just think there is an ethical way to proxy numbers. Incidentally, Hotels.com forces you to use their 800 number as well, although they have an established relationship. I often will google the hotel name to get the real number, since you know, I might have questions about the hotel that hotels.com can't actually answer.
WesleyJohnson 17y ago
You know, I sometimes find it difficult to find local numbers for things like City Hall, Utility companies or even Police and Fire stations. I'm going to setup a service similar to HelpHive to help the reach these services are getting into the public and I'll list my own number so I can show them metrics about all the good things I'm doing for them. Maybe, just maybe, I'll record the call too. Yeah, I know that's extreme, but this whole thing just reeks of wrong to me. I'm siding with the Plumber on this one.
eli_s 17y ago
Wow this is just disgusting slimeball behaviour on the part of helphive. A business' phone number is an important part of it's identity. Business owners pay to have memorable numbers (repeating digits etc.) - not to mention numbers like 1800-PLUMBER to help people remember the number. Now this mafiozi wedges himself between a legitimate local business and their clientele - it's so plainly wrong! What happens when this bottom feeder (helphive) goes out of business? How many people have now got a number for a local business written in their diary or on the fridge, which no longer works? This is without a doubt unethical and I imagine illigal. Let's hope there's someone out there with deep enough pockets to sue this guy into bankruptcy!

47 points by chuck_taylor 17y ago

"Conklin's missive raises an interesting point: Do businesses (or individuals for that matter) have any control over what's published or said about them on third-party directory sites? And do businesses have control over the phone numbers being represented to the public?" Yes, when its a material misrepresentation of the facts. Putting up a false phone number for a company is not only unethical, its fraudulent. To me, the element that makes the deceitful nature of their actions clear is that they didn't contact the business owner first.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
It's "passing off" a slightly weaker part of trademark law. They are pretending to the public that their service is that of someone else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off - written from the UK perspective, it's certainly part of EU TM law too, but I don't know enough about US TM law to comment properly on this.

imraj 17y ago

I think techies got it wrong this time.

auston 17y ago
I beg to differ, how can they TRULY measure the value of their service if they aren't tracking a highly relevant action such as phone calls? Especially if they are supposed to be getting paid per call.
- chuck_taylor 17y ago
  They're not getting paid per call. It's just for metric purposes.
  - auston 17y ago
    I still stand by my argument; measurement is very important - unless a significant percent of your customers complain, then I wouldn't change it.
    - pyre 17y ago
      How is the plumber a customer? He didn't sign up for the service and he doesn't want the service, but he's forced to have it 'provided' to him for free by HelpHive. Measurement is important to HelpHive, not to the plumber (who doesn't even want the service, let alone the metrics).
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  How does their want for data make this ethical?
  - auston 17y ago
    I fail to see how it is unethical, provided it is disclosed that the number will be routed. Maybe I missed something... Plumber pays helphive $99 a year (see: http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/10/21/helphive-tests-pay-per-job-model-connects-home-service-businesses-with-consumers/ http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/10/21/helphive-tests-pay...) to be listed? In doing so, Plumber agrees to the terms that state his phone number will be re-routed? Plumber didn't read his agreement & now he is upset? Plumber can turn off this feature & he is still upset?
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - jamesbritt 17y ago
      The article says, "Up to now, HelpHive has been free for both consumers and businesses that sign up to be on the site." But, according to to plumber, "These local business listings are not placed there by the business but have been harvested from other sources." And, "If it isn’t illegal to place ads or listings to the public using our company’s name without permission and faking our phone numbers, we need a law now." I see nothing that says the plumber signed up for anything, had any agreement, or paid any money. It appears that HelpHive took upon themselves to "help" this guy. Unless I'm missing something, Karim Meghji's rebuttal completely skipped over the claim that HelpHive was harvesting company data from other sources and listing businesses without prior approval.
    - jfager 17y ago
      You missed something. HelpHive uses the same bullshit model that GetSatisfaction and Seth Godin's lame new project got railed for, where it sets up an official looking page for every company it can find, regardless of whether it has that company's permission or not, and basically tries to extort money from that company by hoarding customers who think they're dealing with the actual business. The article you linked is about a 'feature' they're experimenting with, where a business signs up for the opportunity to pay for the leads from these pages. From a quick look at HelpHive's site, it looks like basic claiming is still free, but it specifically says: Your business contact info (email and business phone) are used when customers call or send messages to your business. Your business information isn't displayed on your business profile page... You are not permitted to enter your email, phone or other web contact information in other areas of your business profile page.
- thinkzig 17y ago
  They can truly measure the value of the service by charging for it and seeing what service providers are willing to pay. All the fake phone number does is measure how many phone leads the site generates, but it does nothing to measure the value of those leads. What if it generates 30 leads a month from consumers that are a bad fit for the service provider? On the other hand, what if it's 3 leads a month that turn into valuable business? I'm with the plumber on this one. If you're trying to gain favor with a business you don't do it by hijacking their name and representing them as something they are not. HelpHive got this one wrong.

dstorrs 17y ago

What left me puzzled was why HelpHive didn't simply de-list Conklin with an apology and a statement that it wasn't their intent to harm his business. It seems that this would have been the ethical thing to do, and would have resulted in some good publicity for them.

jamesbritt 17y ago
"It seems that this would have been the ethical thing to do, and would have resulted in some good publicity for them." HelpHive doesn't seem so big on on the whole "ethical thing".
- shpxnvz 17y ago
  Yeah, but regardless of ethics it seems like an incredibly small price to pay to avoid negative publicity and a possible lawsuit.
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    That's the weird thing. Even if you think the plumber is stone wrong, a bit of business sense should tell you to politely acquiesce and move on. Instead, they demonize this guy and selectively address his complaints. It seems they really can't grasp they idea that not everyone agrees with their sense of what's good and right. And that makes me think issues of ethics never crossed their minds; it looks as though they cannot imagine themselves as being wrong.

nym 17y ago

I worked for a major online car company (like edmunds, autotrader) and wanted to do the same thing with our dealership directory. It seems to me the same as someone saying "Where can I find a Toyota dealership in Mountain View, CA?" and replying "Here you go, call this number if you want me to introduce you two!". The routed call might say to the dealer when he picked up "Lead provided by SuperHappyCars.com!" before letting the two parties talk to each other. This would help dealerships see the impact ROI based advertising had, in the lowest tech way possible. Nothing wrong with that, although I can see how it could be abused too, routing calls to the highest bidder instead of the advertised party.

pyre 17y ago
I think the issue here is that someone viewing HelpHive's website would be under the impression that the phone number provided on the listing for "Mountain View Toyota" is their direct number, and not a 'proxy' number that redirects them. What happens when HelpHive screws up their phone service and loses customers for "Mountain View Toyota" because they got no connection or a 'line disconnected' message? What happens when the customer puts the 'proxy' number in their phonebook and calls it whenever they want to call "Mountain View Toyota?" When happens when a majority of "Mountain View Toyota" customers have the proxy phone number in their phone? Now it looks like there is a lot of phone traffic coming from HelpHive, but it's grossly exaggerated because you have people using the number multiple times (rather than once when they first find the business through HelpHive).
- nym 17y ago
  I agree that you have to clear about "connecting" the customer to the business, not providing the direct number. In some ways this is better than a regular phone number because if the business' number does change, the proxied number could stay the same. The gross exaggeration you're referring to is something that's easily overcome though by tracking total calls vs unique calls. Also you get great stats like how long the customer was on the phone for, and I imagine if they hung up or were hung up on. Turns out many businesses want this kind of data to better improve their customer service. You would not believe how many leads are purchased, and never acted upon, just because the salespeople are lazy.

mrduncan 17y ago

Although not quite the same situation, this reminds me of the fiasco around GetSatisfaction at the beginning of the year. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540

dschobel 17y ago
I was thinking the same thing. Although when you think about it, fundamentally it's no different than Yelp or Zaggats. It's just another level of service layered on top of a directory.
- jfager 17y ago
  Service for whom? It doesn't serve the business - I'm sure they'd much rather people contact them directly - and it doesn't serve the customer - who wants to deal with a middleman when your toilet's overflowing? The only one served by this is the middleman, who gets to hijack leads and extort businesses.
  - dschobel 17y ago
    The value added over a "dumb" directory is that you can use ratings to inform your decision instead of taking the service provider's word of being "the best in town". I'm not making this stuff up, tons of people use Yelp, Zaggats, GetSatisfaction, etc so obviously they're seeing value somewhere.
    - jfager 17y ago
      I use Yelp all the time, so I agree with you that there is value in a directory with ratings. But the value of Yelp comes from the carefully crafted community that I feel I can trust, not from some random star rating from faceless people, and I certainly wouldn't get any value if Yelp stepped in as a forced intermediary if I wanted to contact the business (that would make me stop using it immediately, actually).
- mdasen 17y ago

jwhitlark 17y ago

I went and looked at the site. They list the companies' address, and below it a phone number. The layout implies that the phone number belongs to the business. If they wanted to do it the right way, they could have added something like, "contact this business via helphive". I would call this highly unethical, at this point; it is a willful and material misrepresentation of the facts.

matrix 17y ago

HelpHive (the directory) is absolutely in the wrong here. Their business model is unethical at best; it's on par with spamming and link-farming. It doesn't surprise me in the least that the founder of HelpHive is a former RealNetworks employee.

willwagner 17y ago
To me, unless the phone number is clearly marked that it's from HelpHive as opposed to the business, it's similar to a phishing site; it could really get delisted by google which would be the kiss of death for this company's business. I use google all the time to quickly get contact info; I'll have to check the source a lot more carefully if this becomes a commonplace.
btilly 17y ago
Is it the technology or the business you are unhappy with? When I was at Rent.com we implemented a very similar telephone system around the time that we were acquired by eBay. The critical difference was that the apartments on our site all had contracts with us and were all paying us per person actually placed in the building. Our initial implementation also didn't have an opt-out, but we had to implement that fairly quickly because of very similar issues with automated answering systems. The main reasons that we implemented the system were to improve collection rates on our invoices, and improve the rate at which leases go reported to us. (It is amazing how many apartment building owners wanted to cheat us...) I'm curious whether people's outrage at this technology would extend to that implementation by a different company with a much more clearly established business relationship.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "I'm curious whether people's outrage at this technology would extend to that implementation by a different company with a much more clearly established business relationship." The tech is fine. The idea of involving people without their consent is what's wrong. It makes sense as a way to ensure tracking of referrals, but all parties need to be in agreement on it, and users need to be told that they are going through an intermediary.

tocomment 17y ago

The plumber just needs to trademark his business and then it's a simple case of trademark infringement, no?

nfnaaron 17y ago
This whole thing reminds me, also, of the GetSatisfaction pile. Bottom line at the top, I doubt if HiveMind is illegal, but I believe the phone number hijacking is unethical. But what this also reminds me of is news organizations' objection to article links on aggregation sites. The difference, of course, is after you follow a link you're "there" (assuming you haven't been framed) and can bookmark it as you wish, and click on all the tasty advertisements. If "all the plumber needs to do" is to trademark his business name to keep HiveMind from listing him (assuming HiveMind wouldn't just remove him by request), then wouldn't this also work for Rupert Murdoch and his ilk? [conscious use of the negative and inflammatory "ilk," with no small amount of satisfaction]
- nym 17y ago
  It all depends on what they do with the proxied number. If they're just watching traffic, that's no less unethical than proxying a URL like Google does to see how many people click on an item in their SERP.
  - eli_s 17y ago
    that is such bullshit. When google acts as proxy I dont associate the proxy link as the actual link to the resource I'm looking for. This fool has wedged himself between the client and business and in the process has hijacked the business' phone number. When helphive goes out of business how many people will still try to contact their local plumber, get a no signal tone and assume the plumber is no longer in business?
    - nym 17y ago
      My mistake, Google isn't doing this (I thought they did?). Facebook does for outbound links, for example http://www.datmansymbol.com/ http://www.datmansymbol.com/ is actually: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.datmansymbol.com%252F&h=dfe9138aed1f6ba0c66f8cc680cf3315&ref=mf http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.datma... The right approach would be to have the hivemind number say "Connecting you to <phone number>... one moment please", at least being more transparent about the process. I just think there is an ethical way to proxy numbers. Incidentally, Hotels.com forces you to use their 800 number as well, although they have an established relationship. I often will google the hotel name to get the real number, since you know, I might have questions about the hotel that hotels.com can't actually answer.

WesleyJohnson 17y ago

You know, I sometimes find it difficult to find local numbers for things like City Hall, Utility companies or even Police and Fire stations. I'm going to setup a service similar to HelpHive to help the reach these services are getting into the public and I'll list my own number so I can show them metrics about all the good things I'm doing for them. Maybe, just maybe, I'll record the call too. Yeah, I know that's extreme, but this whole thing just reeks of wrong to me. I'm siding with the Plumber on this one.

eli_s 17y ago

Wow this is just disgusting slimeball behaviour on the part of helphive. A business' phone number is an important part of it's identity. Business owners pay to have memorable numbers (repeating digits etc.) - not to mention numbers like 1800-PLUMBER to help people remember the number. Now this mafiozi wedges himself between a legitimate local business and their clientele - it's so plainly wrong! What happens when this bottom feeder (helphive) goes out of business? How many people have now got a number for a local business written in their diary or on the fridge, which no longer works? This is without a doubt unethical and I imagine illigal. Let's hope there's someone out there with deep enough pockets to sue this guy into bankruptcy!