Complaint Remover is a special service that says it gets rid of “defamatory” and “negative links” on the internet for you:
The immediate goal of our service is to stop defamation by positioning links on the Search Engines and by appeals to law to remove negative information. We send cease and desist letters and if necessary, file legal actions against the perpetrators and Internet service providers contributing to the unjust defamation of our members.
Their site has an online chat function with a customer service rep and we decided to ask if they could help us take a crap all over free speech, and how much that would cost…
CLIENT: Do you like the 1st amendment?
Kelly: hy
Kelly: how may i help you?
CLIENT: I have a question
CLIENT: I wonder if your company enjoys the 1st amendment?
Kelly: We are in the business of removing negative information from search engines. If you do not need our services then I have no further information
CLIENT: I do need your services
CLIENT: How much are they?
Kelly: what do you mean?
Kelly: do you have negative links ?
CLIENT: How much does it cost to remove five negative links?
Kelly: it depends…
Kelly: sometime it htake moths to remove negative links…
Kelly: if you are intereseted
CLIENT: So it’s based on time rather than number of links?
Kelly: depends on how much work we have to do on that
Kelly: can you give me your keywords please
CLIENT: Does your company work on all of the internets?
Kelly: yes
Kelly: we remove negative links from all erch engines like
Kelly: google or aol, or yahoo
CLIENT: How does that work? How are you able to get another company to get rid of something that’s part of their business?
Kelly: we push the negative links back in serch engines
Kelly: so nobody will see that ones
CLIENT: So you like make new internets and push the bad internets down
Kelly: yes
CLIENT: My keywords are lolcats
CLIENT: I have a cat breeding business and people keep making pictures of cats with derogatory phrases on them
CLIENT: It’s hampering my ability to attract new clients
Kelly: just a seccond please
Kelly: ok
Kelly: wich one of those you want to be pushed back ?
CLIENT: let
CLIENT: ‘s see
CLIENT: this one is very bad
CLIENT: http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/ceilingcat9xd.jpg
CLIENT: it’s from here: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/24/ceiling-cat-is-watching-you-masturbate/CLIENT: I have also seen it recreated in other internets
Kelly: an wich one is your domain?
CLIENT: FanciersPlus
CLIENT: Where pet lovers go
CLIENT: http://www.fanciersplus.com
CLIENT: We also need to push this negative one down the internetsCLIENT: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12943180@N00/296449700/
CLIENT: Not only is it blocking people from my site, it promotes dangerous cat behavior
Kelly: can i have you name and you phone please
CLIENT: I’m just looking for a price quote, I don’t want to get in your telemarketing database yet
Kelly: i cant tell you a price..
Kelly: for that you ahve tu discuss with my manager
Kelly: he will call you if you will provide me your name
Kelly: and your phone number
CLIENT: Ok, I understand, but do you think I have a case? Will you be able to push these disgusting “LOLcats” off the internets so people can find my cat breeding page?
Kelly: we can help you with that
I wonder how long it will take ComplaintRemover to push this negative link down on the search engines?
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This company has been in trouble in the past.
[www.news.com]
Someone needs to set up a website or stand alone blog full of negative things about these bozos. Then do a googlebomb of it (everyone links to it, puts it in signature lines etc). So it overruns their website’s pagerank. They can’t keep up with enough internet traffic countering it.
Or just have this story linked everywhere and digged. Later rinse repeat.
lather.
consumerist against lolcats! I though we loved those cats here! And if you won blog of the year, you would had cats all day long. Tax cat cries in a corner
I can see how companies would want to remove negative info, but tough for them.
A good example is [www.montereyfinancial.com]
I bought something from a company who uses this financing company. (i didn’t even know they would outsource it) As soon as I googled them to find where to send a payment i see articles from pissed off consumers and articles from “rip off report.com”
It immediately gave me a negative view of this company to see so many bad comments and websites.
but again – tough for them. knowledge is power.
I can haz negatiif commentz remooved?
i LOLZ’d
Do. Not. Want. Stop. LOLz. Iz be cryn is so funny. Is jeanish Ben. Jeanish.
Cmon.. This is simple. If you have bad information popping up on page 1 they simple start attaching your company name to more popular sites. They smack your listing on the popular directories like superpages. They get a press release of yours linked to cnn or yahoo.
Someone should start a “Complaint Improver” site to undo the blatant fraud this company is committing. You could call it an artificial re-inflation of legal negative opinions by actual past customers.
There’s somethin’ … I say there’s somethin’ kinda ewww about someone who doesn’t like LOLcats.
what an awesome business model. considering search engines modify their retrieval info constantly, you could end up paying for this company’s service over & over & over again.
that’s much more economical than, you know, actually working to keep a positive image of your company.
@rkmc12:
Excepting that if we allow these businesses to propagate, the government will start contracting them.
Hey, it isn’t a constitutional breach! The government isn’t establishing a law or restricting anything, they’d just be paying a bill for a provided service.
Kelly types like a LOLcat.
Wow, this is great fun. Hit the link, and have a field day.
I just had the following wonderful exchange…
Hello, My name is JamieB. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: I’m scared of some of the things I see on the internet.
JamieB: well, there are some scaring things
JamieB: but our business here is to remove any negative information that you might have
CLIENT: Like pictures of people hitting other people with sticks and stuff. Violence, and things like that. Some people want to hit me with sticks, and bad comments.
JamieB: so, you have negative information posted about you on the internet?
JamieB: we can help you remove those things
CLIENT: I am a Nigerian scam artist, and people don’t like us. Can you make everyone believe they won $800,000 and I’m a barrister?
JamieB: no, we can’t do that
CLIENT: It would be sooooo keen if you can help me with that.
CLIENT: Okay. I don’t want to waste your time.
JamieB: i’m sorry, we only remove negative information
CLIENT: But I would like you to know that you just won $850,000 in the European lottery.
CLIENT: Or the Heineken contest, or something equally wonderful.
CLIENT: Okay, well bye, then. You have a bright future, because there’s lots of negative stuff on the old internets.
How much to push Google off the Internets!!!!! ROFL
This is a great experiment: If this article is still here in a week, we know they don’t work.
Why start out with asshole lines like “wondering if your company enjoys the first amendment”? Journalists don’t call questionable nursing homes and lead off with “Do you enjoy torturing the elderly?” Seriously…
@rkmc12: and a cease and desist letter implies that the next step is legal action – which is where the government comes in.
fwiw, suing someone for defamation (one private party against another) is very rarely successful, mostly because the courts cite potential damage to, oh, what’s that thing? The First Amendment.
It is absolutely true that the Bill of Rights applies only to government actors, but the second a private party tries to get a government actor to enforce their own actions, it could be a Constitutional issue.
@stezton: hahaha!
SO when Sprint invests in this company and then this company disappears in 6 mo.s without a trace, will Sprint be calling on Consumerist to expose these eploitative practices? Cause that would be funny.
@SpiderJerusalem: *exploitative
LOL! Let the banings begin!
Hello, My name is Kelly. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: Hi. I’d like to remove a site from the web.
Kelly: hi
Kelly: are you the owner of the site?
CLIENT: No.
CLIENT: Otherwise, I’d just remove it myself.
CLIENT: It’s hurting my buisness.
Kelly: nobody can remove the site just the owner..
Kelly: but
Kelly: we can push thos links backk in serch engines
CLIENT: Well, I want it knocked down lower on the search engines.
Kelly: so nobody will se those
CLIENT: Yeah. That’s what I mean
Kelly: soo what shoud i search?
Kelly: too see that negative links
CLIENT: How about “Remove Negative Links”
CLIENT: the site name is complaintremover.com
Kelly: yes
CLIENT: So how much to push that site lower?
Kelly: give me your keywords please
CLIENT: Try “Remove Negative Links”
Kelly: yes
CLIENT: Yes
CLIENT: How much?
Kelly: what about?
CLIENT: What about what?
CLIENT: First base… LOL
CLIENT: Get it?
You are banned to this site by operator Kelly. Reason: No reason.
Connection lost!
I am so tempted to call now.
I wonder if Ed Magedson can use the service to take down this URL:
[www.complaintremover.com]
@SecretChimp: You clearly don’t watch FOX.
Hey, it’s a good business idea.
I mean, if you just want to make money off of suckers without doing any real work.
People have pointed out that it is not properly speaking a 1st amendment issue. True.
It is however a free speech issue. Free speech is one of the foundational values around which the US society is organized. Because free speech is so important it has shaped how the legal systems handles actions that are just attempts to silence someone. In this case, trying to game Google is not an infringement of free speech but bringing up legal threats is unlikely to be successful precisely because the mere fact that “they are saying negative things about us” is not sufficient. The statements have to be negative and untrue. It is precisely because of free speech that a defamation suit would likely be unsuccessful. I’m not saying that a judge would give “free speech” as the rationale to dismiss the suit but that the legal tests that a defamation suit have to pass have been shaped by a belief that free speech is desirable in a free society.
@Phillip M. Vector:
FIRST BASE!!!! You win the thread sir!
Now here’s something curious: they’re in my database of known spammer sites. Back in August 2006, the site registration info had:
Lea Schurz
ComplaintRemover.com
info@ccomplaintremover.com
PO 893
Tilden, texas 68781 US
512 3254587
Today, it has:
Name: Andrea Schurz
Organization: none
Address: X-X8 Redatsky Strasse
City: Klagenfurt
Country: AT
Postal Code: 9020
Phone: +011.2072216162
Fax: +011.2072216162
Email: sales@embeddedchat.com
and yes, embeddedchat.com are spamming too; do a Google search for “embeddedchat.com ROKSO”.
@WNW: I was checking to see if she was a bot. I don’t think the programmers would’ve programmed in a reply to that one..
Anyway, I think it’s a real person (though her/his English skills are in question).
If they’re using the courts to try to get words taken down, doesn’t that make it a first amendment issue?
@noquarter:
No, it makes it a civil action which is governed by caselaw. The first amendment applies when the government is suing you.
Let’s not forget about the 9th amendment which contains privacy concerns as well….there are a lot of other amendments out there to trash….any takers?
Hello, My name is JamieB. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: I’m trying to understand what it is you do.
JamieB: We are in the bussiness of removing negative information from search engines
CLIENT: Really, and how so?
JamieB: Do you have bad links in search engines?
CLIENT: Could you re-phrase that? I’m not great at deciphering bad grammer.
JamieB: If you search for your name(or your company name) in google, yahoo, msn or other search engines and a negative link will shown we can remove that by posting positive content about you on higher ranked sites than the negative one , by doing that the negative link will be pushed away in the back of all major search engines where nobody is looking
JamieB: this is what we do
CLIENT: How do you know that absolutely no one is looking? Someone could be bored.
JamieB: Do you need our services?
CLIENT: Ok so if I’m from WalMart, and Kmart is writing crap about me, you can make them go away?
JamieB: yes
CLIENT: for good? like abolish Kmart completely?
CLIENT: ?
CLIENT: or are you too overwhelmed with the LOLcats?
Connect Lost!
LOL!
I think the jig is up boys. They’re onto us!
There techniques to “push back links” is likely to use old banned SEO tricks that are deemed spam by Googlebot and search engines. When someone uses one of these website tricks the search engine penalizes them by sorting them later in search or removing them in search results.
However once a site hits a certain amount of traffic or back links I have doubts that this will have any effect.
For example it is unlikely they could prevents a message on consumerist or a story on abcnews.
Look, stop talking to the stupid home worker on the chat and start SEOing negative info about Complaint Remover. I suggest we start with this post.
“So you like make new internets and push the bad internets down” — classic. I LOL’d repeatedly.
They seem to suck at what they do…
If you google “complaintremover”, first link is to Boing Boing, third link is to a comment about an injunction against them. But the other links show exactly what their SEO tactics are: to create a bunch of worthless spam pages on random sites such as StudioAtHome.com, Quantcast.com, etc. Completely destroys the purpose if your useful link is buried under all of their spam links.
P.S. this article is the 5th hit if you google “complaint remover” (with a space)
Way to go, Consumerist!
@yelohbird: now this article is #1 if you google complaintremover OR complaint remover.
lol.
i love the intertubes.
people who are commenting that this is not a First Amendment issue aren’t exactly correct.
this company’s website claims that they will pursue legal options to “remove” negative links from the web. if true, that means that this company will use state and federal government instruments to carry out these suits. that automatically causes the First Amendment to be applicable. any judge worth their salt is not going to agree with a suit asking for restrictions on specific speech without asking some very tough questions. what this service is selling is, well, very questionable and can run into conflict with the First Amendment in a lot of ways.
@mac-phisto: Actually, BoingBoing is pointing to us, so that’s the first article I see. Still the same effect.
I just rick rolled them
my connection got lost before I could save the text. this is the most fun I have had in a long time.
@picshereplz:
“the First Amendment only applies as against government action.”
Yes, and these nitwits are busy asking the courts to step in and violate it.
I fully support this initiative.
Since LOLCats was only funny for about a week, and now that the unwashed internet masses have taken hold of it, it has become stale and annoying super fast.
If you get banned just go here [www.complaintremover.com] and let the good times roll
this is so crazy I am fully banned now oh well it was fun while it lasted remember the rick roll is your friend
@fightinfilipino: Your interpretation is incorrect. If it were true, it would never be possible to sue someone for defamation irrespective of the merits of the case. By your interpretation if the court finds the person accused of defamation guilty and orders the accused to stop stating the defaming statements, then because the court is part of the government that is automatically a breach of the first amendment because the government would be infringing on the freedom of speech of an individual.
The court being involved in defamation suits does not automatically make those suits first amendment cases.
@Deadeyereborn: Still banned. O well.
@noquarter: It is a first amendment issue, and the clowns offering the “service” don’t believe in it, and neither do their clients.
Anyone who would use that “service” isn’t interested in silencing libel, their interested in silencing valid criticism. Those who have tried to sue negative posters in the past (e.g. investment services) have lost when the criticism was found valid and the poster not profiting from such comments; libelers and illegal traders lost such cases.
If you follow the link from itsallme ( [www.news.com] ) you can see the owner of ComplaintRemover.com has already been in trouble with the law for sending death threats among other things. Part of the threatening letter he sent is included below. Note the similar style in poor grammar and misspellings as the “CSRs” Kelly and JamieB. Coincidence?
Excerpt of death threat below:
This letter is being sent to you in the name of more than 500 businesses. No matter where you go, we will cause you a problem. Your life is in danger until you comply with our demands. This is your last warning.
Your neighbors already know about your criminal dealings and how you are making many people loose (sic) their business. You will soon be beaten to a pulp and pounced into the ground six feet under with a baseball bat and sleg (sic) hammer. You will soon be sorry not just from what I am capable of doing to you, but what other members will do as soon as they know exactly where you are. Its (sic) just a matter of time until I get to you.
Here is what you can do to save your life. But you must act imidiatly (sic). Make what ever deal it takes, you must comply.