How can a website that claims to help consumers hurt so many families and businesses? The website ripoffreport.com is responsible for several businesses going out of business. The website allows ANYONE to create an anonymous account and post highly visible complaints which they call Rip Off Reports.
The rip off report website DOES NOT verify or validate any of the complaints left on their website. There are several reasons why in my opinion the rip off report website should be shut down or at least regulated in some manner.
A few problems with RipOffReport.com Include:
- The site will never remove complaints even if it is obviously from a competitor. Even if you can prove it is from a competitor, the complaint will remain.
- Anyone can say anything they want about how bad a business or an individual is without verifying their identity.
- If a business makes good on the issue the complaint remains online forever and still looks bad and ranks high.
- Businesses that pay rip off report their high fees for the “advocacy program” get special treatment.
- Rip Off Report allegedly makes complaints rank higher for certain businesses that contact them, in an effort to extort money from them. (Per others).
- There is no physical location to deliver court documents to the owner (Ed Magedson).
- If the author of the complaint request it be removed, rip off report still won’t remove it.
- If a business provided 100% proof that the complaint is fake, rip off report won’t remove it.
Anything Good About Rip Off Report?
- They would be a great website if they had a verification process that verified and displayed the true identity of who filed the complaints. This would allow businesses that are wrongfully attacked to take legal action against the author and not rip off report.
- The only good thing about rip off report is that they will one day be forced to change their ways or be shut down. There are too many businesses and individuals being damaged for this to continue.
- NO
Why and How is Rip Off Report (Ed Magedson) Legally Protected:
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was designated as Title V in the larger legislation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The inclusion of the Communications Decency Act in the greater Telecommunications Act was meant to criminalize obscenity online in the face of the rise of Internet pornography. (Remember, this was 1996, when Internet use was first becoming a common part of American life and people were worried that Internet porn was going to permanently damage our children.) Eventually, the scope of the bill was significantly tightened through the landmark case Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.
Interestingly, CDA 230 was not an original part of the Communications Decency Act, but was added by the House of Representatives through the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, which was co-sponsored by Republican representative Chris Cox and Democratic representative Ron Wyden. The purpose of the addition was to protect Internet service providers from being held criminally liable for indecent content that its users posted. In legalese, the CDA 230 read, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
About Filing Rebuttals – Should I file a rebuttal on a rip off report?
This is a highly debated subject among the reputation management industry. From an online reputation management standpoint and because search engines like content and more content, we would say NO, DO NOT file a rebuttal on rip off report. If you file a rebuttal it WILL (Not May) make the rip off report page about you stronger and possibly rank higher or rank longer on the first page of Google.
If you have no intentions of pushing the link down search pages or there is no possibility at all that the link will move ever, then a rebuttal may be ok. When filing a rebuttal (if you must), DO NOT attack the person who filed the complaint. State simple facts about the issue and explain how your company respects clients and maybe talk about your customer service goals.
Here is an example rebuttal.
XYZ Company takes customer service and satisfaction very seriously. In the uncommon event a client is not happy with our products or service; we will take all necessary steps to ensure that the customer is a happy one. As per the client experience mentioned herein, we have takes steps to refund or satisfy the customer and have reached an agreeable resolution to the matter with the client.
We would like to thank the client for bringing this to our attention your feedback is always welcome VIA our company website or feel free to call our customer service line: 888-555-5555
Again, Remember a rebuttal will make the rip off report links rank higher and stronger on Google, so only file on if you have no intentions or hopes of pushing it down with SEO or ORM.
Remove a rip off report link and take it off the top pages of Google search results.
Removing a rip off report from the top of search results is a tough task and can take several weeks to accomplish (If Not Longer). Our reputation management company Reputation Armor realizes it may not be within your budget to hire a reputation management service to help you remove (displace) rip off reports from the search results. We have compiled some tips that may help you bury a rip off report and reclaim your good online reputation.
The tips below apply to Individual names and Business names. When removing a rip off report the main thing is BE PATIENT.
- Register domain names: Go to Godaddy.com or Moniker.com (Better) and register yourname.com, .net, and .org. If YOURNAME.com is taken already try registering YOUR-NAME.com (With a hyphen). After you register your domain name get a small website up and online. We use wordpress (blog) a lot. Make sure to have your name in the title of the website and mention your name within the website a few times. Then go to Google and submit the website to Google and be patient.
- Now create social profiles (a lot of them) on websites like Twitter, Linkedin, FaceBook, and several others. We use about 300 social networking sites and many of them rank well. Some of them will let you add a link to your website (YourName.com) do it!
- Create an account on free article sites and submit a few articles on a topic you like. Use your name as the author and include a link to one of your domain names in the resource box.
- Use social bookmarking sites like Digg.com to share your articles and website. Digg.com shows up on Google pretty high sometimes.
- Get Paid blog reviews. Regardless of what any “seo company” says, paid blog posts and paid blog reviews are very effective and useful for SEO and Reputation management. I would personally stay away from blogs that openly advertise they sell paid posts and reviews. Google frowns upon paid blog posts and paid reviews, they consider it selling links and PR. Also try to stay away from blogs that have casinos, adult related, illegal warez, and other objectionable material. Include YOUR NAME in the title of the posts and link to your domains and other sites about you from the blog post (article). Always link from YOUR NAME so when you click on YOUR NAME it takes you to a website about YOU.
Obtain backlinks (other sites linking to yours) from websites with PageRank. Link building is important when trying to push a website above a rip off report. You can find backlinks for sale by searching for them on Google and webmaster forums.
This article is provided by Reputation Armor – Online Reputation Management Services. You can reuse this article as long as you keep this footer intact.
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