"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.
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 - 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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
No, GetSatisfaction is different. The business model of Yelp or Zaggats is to sell ad space or books or whatnot. The business model of GetSatisfaction is to get companies to pay them so that the company can take down negative information about itself.
With Yelp, there is no option for a business to pay them $100 per month so that you can take down bad reviews of your restaurant. That's a fundamental difference. GetSatisfaction has a desire to get users writing things on their site so that the company their writing about gets over a barrel where they have to pay them "protection money" to remove bad things people complain about their service. And $100 isn't much for the ability to silence a bunch of people bad-mouthing your service.
GetSatisfaction's wording has even tried to push the point using phrasing like "X is not yet participating" and "X has not yet committed to open conversation about its products and services" (which used to be their tagline). They both try to make it sound like they've approached X and X has declined to participate. That's different from a review site where users can say what they want, but there's no claim that the place being reviewed has declined to participate.
If you allow users to post negative things about a business, fine. If you allow users to post negative things about a business and then go to that business and ask them for $100/mo to silence those negative things, not fine.
If you allow companies to participate in the conversation and say, "we have no affiliation with X" for the companies who have nothing to do with your forum, fine. If you make it sound like the company is trying to avoid your forum because they're scared of the truth, not fine.
The devil's in the details. Here, HelpHive is trying to put themselves in a position where users have their number for places of business rather than that place of business' number. In the future, there's nothing to stop them from adding ads for competitors (and offering to connect the caller to that competitor) or worse, if they're really successful and become an online directory that a lot use, holding customers for ransom.
What it comes down to is truth. GetSatisfaction is obscuring the truth by allowing companies to moderate for a price and by using misleading language about the companies who aren't paying them. HelpHive is obscuring the truth by telling customers that their number is the number of the business they want to call. People don't get uppity about Yelp or Zaggats because, while a user can post an untrue review or a reviewer might have just seen a bad night, it's a lot closer to the truth and a lot more fair. If you're getting a massive amount of bad reviews on Yelp, that's not good for you, but at least Yelp isn't coming along to extort $100 out of you to get rid of those bad reviews.
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.
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).
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.
If you put the ultimate company name (the service the customer is trying to contact) and then your phone number then that's passing off, tortuous malfeasance in European TM law (and I'd be highly surprised if it's allowed in the US).
If you want to advertise a business lookup service the ethical and legal way is to put your own name, then something like "contact Mountain View Cars through SuperHappyConmen.com on 123-456-7890, we are not associates of Mountain View Cars".
If people want to buy tracked phone numbers for their ads they will, I'm more than happy for you to provide them. But it's not your choice whether they take on your service or not.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Please show me where this is mentioned. In the link that you submitted the plumber claims (in the comments): "These local business listings are not placed there by the business but have been harvested from other sources."
So:
- HelpHive listed plumber's company with falsified information
- Plumber didn't request the listing or authorize the 'proxy' phone number.
- Plumber has no recourse to 'turn off' the feature.
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).
AANAL, but I'm pretty sure he's covered by trademark law anyway, and could win in court. (In this case, I'd say _would_ win in court.) He would just not be a allowed to win damages unless registered. (He'd have to pay his own court costs.)
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]
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.