Ripoff Report: Where the angry vent their steam
Filed under: Ripoffs and Scams, Consumer Complaints, Buyer Beware
If you care enough to check out a company before you do business, there are a couple of places to turn to get a flavor of whether the consumer experience is one to be avoided.
You could look at the somewhat sterile but informative numbers that appear on the Better Business Bureau site. Or you can go right for the red meat on RipoffReport.com.
Ed Magedson's site has become a magnet for the angry and disenfranchised who post rants, narratives and sometimes reasoned criticism of businesses they are unhappy with. As the site's popularity has risen, so has the power of the complainers, whose warnings can be powerful payback. For one thing, these posts come in near or at the top of search engine results, which means you don't even have to start you search at RipoffReport.com to feel the venom of someone angry at a business.
"I think people see the value of researching business names before they do business with an organization, but many also visit to see if anyone else had the same problem they had with an offending company afterwards," Magedson said. "Misery loves company."
RipoffReport.com, he said, has grown along with the entire social media phenomenon.
You have to read the site with a dose of perspective. Not everyone's experience will mirror your own. But as similar complaints begin to ad up, RipoffReport.com shows its value.
Magedson advises businesses that have taken a hit to respond. He says he will not delete any consumer complaints, so it's better to be contrite and explain steps being taken to avoid similar situations.
"Those who become angry only make things worse," he said.
Magedson says in addition to the traditional complaints about business experience, his site has been seeing increased complaints of late from people who complain of being victim to predatory lending and bogus foreclosure rescues. They've shouted out load about becoming victims to scams touting economic stimulus money through government grants. And more are seeing multilevel marketing scams and work-at-home schemes aimed at preying on people who have lost their jobs.
"Many don't take the time to do the necessary research," Magedson said. "I let them know if they ask for money up front or want any kind of banking info.. walk away!"
And, Magedson said, he also issues this warning to those who email him:
"First off, there is NO SUCH THING AS STUFFING ENVELOPES FOR MONEY! That was a thing of the 70's. It is not cost effective today to do that. It's a scam! If there is a company out there that does this, we don't know about it!"
While most of what Magedson has done and harnessed and grown is give consumers a recognizable brand to lodge complaints, he also has raised some ire through his "
Magedson dismisses their complaints as sour grapes from companies that spend a lot of money to SEO firms to water down where the search results with the damaging information shows up. He notes that he has been sued many times, says he has never lost and has actually collected from those suing him.
Angry at RipoffReport.com? Forget trying to use the Better Business Bureau as an intermediary. Magedson, a foe of the BBB (which solicits money for memberships) gets an "F" rating from the organization for never responding to their inquiries about complaints.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-23-2009 @ 4:15PM
Sue Daniels said...
I was just looking at RipoffReport.com we hired www.ReputationArmor.com and worked with a case manager Jason Taylor to suppress a rip off report on this site.
Their service worked well and made the rip off report come up on about the 4th page of Google rather than the 1st.
Like I said I was just looking at the website RipoffReport.com checking on that post and since 1pm on 4-23-09 the site has been down. It comes up with some type of Error. Has RipoffReport.com finally been shut down?
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4-23-2009 @ 7:44PM
Bea said...
I am a victim of five totally false ripoffreports written by A&E Psychic Chip Coffey and his friends Tanila Price and Tammy Willingham whom I have never met and I certainly never ripped them off and no rip off was claimed . . . just pure lies and slanders and false allegations.
They wrote FIVE ripoff reports calling me a racist and a homophobe and it was devastating since I am nothing of the kind.
Chip Coffey actually did rip me off in 2005 by purchasing my legal birth name as two domains .com and .net and using it to guide people to his website and then trying to extort $3000 from me to buy my own name back.
When I saw him on television guiding children on a show called Psychic Kids on A&E, I was so outraged knowing what kind person he is, I told my story on ROR which I happened to stumble upon and I told only the truth and it can be verified.
I really hope ROR is shut down for good. Ed Magedson is a truly heartless man who does not care whom he hurts and there is absolutely no documentation or proof needed to file a rip off report. If you are upset with someone you can ruin them and no matter what he refuses to take down the reports. Then I started getting emails from services that will get them buried for a lot of money. The whole thing is a scam.
Ed Magedson even goes against his own terms of service which states that you cannot slander or be abusive and yet he helps others without morals or ethics spread lies and allows cyber bullying to prevail on his site.
Do not trust a word that is written on Ripoffreport. 90% of it is lies.
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4-27-2009 @ 8:51PM
SMexpert said...
Why does anyone care about 2 reports? We have more important things to worry about with people like Bernie Madoff and the Craigslist killer! People need a place to speak their mind, and I think the Ripoff Report is as good as any. It shouldn't be the site's responsibility to check every comment made to determine if it's real or not--it's a forum, for pete's sake! No blog owner or forum moderator with as large a list as the ripoff reprot could possibly determine the validity of every single post. Trying to do it would require 1000s of people working for them, costing big bucks, and the usefulness of the site would significantly decrease because you'd have to pay for those salaries! I trust people to be able to tell the difference between genuine and fake posts. Besides, only a few (supposedly false) reports shouldn't affect your brand online that much, if you're doing your job and managing your own reputation with regular blogging and social media!!
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5-23-2009 @ 11:10AM
b casey said...
I have reported people on rip off report for no reason at all and it allowed me to do so with no verification. My goal is to go through the yellow pages and report everyone so the site will really become worthless.
4-28-2009 @ 6:30AM
maria rodriguez said...
Actually, what is very wrong about ripoffreport is that magedson allows anonymous posts. I got slandered by a poster who clearly didn't want his identity known. At the very least, magedson should not allow anonymous posts and he should also improve the way he verifies and ascertain the identity of posters. Currently, he says that he ascertain the identity of the poster by relying on a valid email address. Since some kind of U.S. law protects what he does and does not make him liable for other peoples postings, then he should also make sure that the poster and the person being posted about both reside in the U.S. As it stands, people that reside outside of the U.S. are getting affected and laws in other countries do not protect villains like magedson.
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5-05-2009 @ 5:36PM
Leanne said...
The Better Business Bureau is actually slimier than RipOffReport. The BBB takes money from businesses and as long as they "respond" to the complaint, they then get an A rating. Also, the BBB supresses information such as government actions/lawsuits against companies which pay membership dues or donate to the BBB.
RipOffReport may be so freewheeling as to render complaints ineffective, but the BBB is so obviously skewed towards member businesses that their ratings are equally as useless.
I visit RipOffReport when a red flag or two has already gone up about a business. If I see a slew of complaints written by people experiencing similar problems, then my suspicions are confirmed and I cut off all dealings with the company. If I went to BBB and saw an "A" rating, what exactly would that mean to me? Nothing. The company could be awful but as long as they pay their dues and "respond" to the complaint (rather than resolve it) with some bogus, meaningless non-resolution response, they get the green light from BBB. Therefore RipOffReport is more valuable in the long run to the consumer, as are a variety of other consumer complaint/opinion sites.
I have, btw, added to the RipOffReport complaints about a company that was clearly violating the law. More often than not, I don't add my two cents, but in some cases the company's bad behavior is so egregious I feel a long continually updated list of complaints on a site such as RipOffReport is the consumer's best protection against such behavior.
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5-23-2009 @ 11:09AM
b casey said...
I have reported people on rip off for no reason at all and it allowed me to do so with no verification. My goal is to go through the yellow pages and report everyone so the site will really become worthless.
6-10-2009 @ 3:36PM
Tracy Sigler said...
There are a lot of businesses out there that are very upset that consumers have such a forum. Let it be said that we all can read these reports and discriminate between them, which of those sound like whining and those that are reasonable and have been backed by others of the same or similar complaints. Some of us wouldn't mind living in a world where no one knew of our unethical business practices. But imagine a world like that. There are enough slimy business owners who don't care about how they treat consumers, as long as they get the money. I hear it all the time, "We care about our reputation." That's great, how about you care about your customers and maybe your reputation will reflect exactly that rather than whine about the hits against your rep. I for one am very pleased to have somewhere to check on businesses and discern for myself whether a customer has a valid complaint, thank you very much. I am also very glad to have had the opportunity to maybe prevent some other consumers from experiencing the same utter disappointment I have had with a very dishonest business person!!!! Kudos to RipoffReport.com. May you long live!
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