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.
