Go Beyond MLS - Latest Comments in Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Todd Jackson — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:56:49 -0000

You sound real, so get a real job!

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Todd Jackson — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:55:24 -0000

Funny that their own lawyer couldn't even spell Brabus (Barbus, lol) correctly! A real attorney would know the difference. Shows where this company is heading!!! Good luck Vlad.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

cliff — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:01:46 -0000

I am a broker and own a company in Austin TX. I have an 800 credit score and always pay my bills (ligitimate ones)
We had been solicited by Eperks about a year ago. They never provided any of the leads they promised. We filed with our
credit card company for a charge back close to year ago. I just got a call today 12/22/2008 saying they became aware of the charge back
in September. When trying to explain my reason for charge back (DID NOT PROVIDE SERVICES PROMISED-NONE) I was rudely interrupted
and threatened with collections. Finally I just hung up. Beware of this company- they need to be shut down.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

prosperingservant — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 09:12:39 -0000

I can definitely relate to the difficulty of being laid off although it was for different reasons. I was laid off after 9/11 and learned many techniques for surviving and getting my career back on track. I have a series of blog posts about that experience at link that comes with this comment.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Kathy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:25:57 -0000

They are liars and I am being sent to a collection agancy too. They are a scam and if they stood behind their product and told the truth they would not have so many problems. Please file complaints with the Attorney general of CA, and your local AG. I also filed with the BBB of Pleasanton, CA and the Dept of Real Estate, Enforcements in Sacramento, CA as well as the Federal Trade Commission. it is the only way to alert the authorities of the unfait business practices we have all encountered. I am hoping we can all join in a class action lawsuit.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Kathy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:20:33 -0000

Eperks has been nothing but trouble for me. I signed up and was told I would get a full refund if a sale did not close in 6 months. I had no leads, nothing. I called for my refund and the guy is no longer employed by eperks. I disputed it with my credit card company and now they are sending me to collections. If anyone has info on a class action lawsuit please inform us all. I have filed complaints with the Dept of Real Estate, Enforcement in Sacramento, CA, BBB in Pleasanton, CA, the AG in CA, my local AG, and the Federal Trade Commission.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

VladZablotskyy — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:48:25 -0000

Jessica,

Thanks for the info. I do however advise you not to leave this same message
on other blogs. Consider them as an ongoing conversation not an opportunity
for a "plug". It would be nice to here your professional opinion on the
subject matter of this blog.

I also do not see your name among the attorneys on the website to which you
left a link. Are you an attorney yourself?

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

jessicachristina — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:25:47 -0000

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Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

wayne helmore — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:42:10 -0000

This is a great post to show how the person can come together for a common cause. It is amazing that a company will sue someone instead of looking at ways that they can improve their service.
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Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

jean normandin — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:39:01 -0000

hi Vlad i just read your article, the Eperks thing is just another way for crooked companies to try to shut down people who tells the truth. i have some experience in court though and with proof of different IP's you should be able to prove your point and if you can ...get some people who have been screwed to testify in court on your behalf...that should help a lot

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Mitchell — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:16:56 -0000

I agree the suit is about negative blog comments.

However if ePerks tries to say their website and traffic was greatly diminished by the blog I would beg to differ because the robots.txt entry is doing more damage to their website than any negative post on a blog would.

Makes you wonder if ePerks did the robots.txt file on purpose or if its out of incompetence on the webmasters behalf.

If VLAD wants to end this just send the attorneys this link. - Look at the areas I boxed in Red.
http://www.interiorliving.com/eperks.jpg

For those who need an explanation.
http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/prevent.html

How do I prevent robots scanning my site?
The quick way to prevent robots visiting your site is put these two lines into the /robots.txt file on your server

I would estimate they did this around October/November and didnt change it.

Now ejerks go fire your webmaster and stop the stupid lawsuit its your webmasters fault not anyone elses.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Lee — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:32:46 -0000

You would think a lawyers office would have proof read the letter for spelling mistakes before sending it out.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

joe cline — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:49:26 -0000

Shame on ePerks. Maybe someone there at ePerks should try to fix the problems or perception of problems that the blogger is talking about instead of suing the blogger to try to censor free speach. Hopefully, ePerks will let up, but if not, I hope the blogger gets costs, fees, and maybe even some exemplary damages. Don't let them silence your opinions!

Joe

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Joseph Bridges — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:27:55 -0000

Keep up the posts. It is still amazing when a corporation decides to hide behind lawyers instead of addressing comments and reviews as a chance to change their business procedures. No one is perfect and they should look at it as an opportunity to recapture those people and change their processes.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Amy Secundy — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:42:26 -0000

DON'T BUY EPERKS..What a scam..They called me I signed up..Then within an HOUR..they could not deliver what they promised. I called and cancelled..The salesmen calls us a few times a month to get back on..NO I have repeated told him..Then they call and say I owe them $100. I said I never had your service..Then they sent the $100 to a collection agency..WHAT A SCAM..DO NOT DO BUSINESS with them..Say yourself allot of grief.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Vlad — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:12:02 -0000

Jen,

While you at it, could you also ask who posted following on Yahoo! Answers?

http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/silencing-a-blogge...

;)

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Vlad — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:03:22 -0000

Jen,

Good luck with your position at ePerks. I hope to see you here an leave comments a week from now. If I were you, I would not inquire about this cease and desist letter, if you want to keep this job. I am serious about it.

Unless of course you are just here to create more hype for this company.

Best of luck!

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Jennifer — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:42:49 -0000

Open and Honestly ... jennifer.plankenhorn@eperks.com ... new employee ...

Wow, I never knew there was so many mixed feelings about ePERKS. I JUST started working here 2 days ago (I have not even hit the phones yet) and I definitely want to make sure my team manager is aware of this and I will inquire about the class-action lawsuit and cease and desist blogs. (??? C&D, honestly ... who thinks they can silence people like that?!?)

Many of my co-workers are a bit less customer service savvy and more "get it now" type attitude. However, that is the attitude they want us to take because we do face a lot of rejection and in order for employees to not feel like complete failures, they want us to toughen our hides. I think this could contribute to poor service. I want to improve it.

In all honesty, this method of generating business is going to work for some and not for others. Whether it is simply the lack of business in zip codes that are chosen or if people aren't willing to really invest time into marketing themselves in many additional outlets instead of just waiting for the phone to ring, it just depends. Everyone's experience is going to vary.

How I see it, not only as a new employee, but as someone who takes what I do personally and wants to help as many people as possible, I think it overall is a product that is valuable and makes sense but might not be right for everyone.

Unfortunately, people who do not hold themselves to standards like I do may burn valuable bridges. I used to work for ELOAN, until they laid off 500+ people and I loved them too, until I was let go for a bogus reason to avoid being paid severance. And do I have a bad taste in my mouth from that? Hell YES I do. Does that mean that ELOAN is a bad choice for everyone? Not in the least.

What I can say is the job looks like it is going to be really hard, and there is a high turnover even for people who have early success. I want to be successful there so I am trying to know as much as I can from all angles. They have told me that the cancellation process has been crappy because of the way it has to be done and some employees aren't clear to their agents how to do it. Agents are calling to cancel WITHOUT SENDING WRITTEN EMAIL CONFIRMATION to clientservices@eperks.com (OMG I will TOTALLY make sure this is the right email, I still haven't had my work station 100% set up!!!) I'm sure that plays a part in miscommunication about payments and unauthorized charges.

Wow, this is long. I tend to do that. If you ever hear from a Jennifer from ePERKS, I won't ask you to give me any special treatment, but I am driven to be better than anybody else, and will make sure ROI gurantees are fulfilled on agents I sign up and that if they need to cancel for whatever reason that it gets DONE. (my referral ID: jp10) ^_~

I can't make the same promise for my co-workers, everyone has a different ethical sense.

I hope things work out for people who give ePERKS a try. If they find it doesn't, I hope they don't try to rain on anyone else's success and be sure to follow through on cancelling the service as completely as possible. If it works, share great success with others! I tried recruiting tons of collegues to ELOAN while it was riding the wave. ePERKS is NEW NEW NEW only since July 2007! They already have commercials running (although I didn't like the truck hitting the lady one at all!) but still, it's got to mean something.

I am going to stop typing, I promise, I seriously try just way too hard to say everything I want in one shot! This is one of my "tasks" to overcome at work coincidentally, as well as the homework I have to do tonight. So good luck everyone, and I am going to make sure I know all about these incidents before I hit the phones tomorrow. Thanks for reading, I'll keep checking back and see how things go.

Thanks Vlad for your desire to help others. That is really all we can do in life or why bother with the freedom we are given here?

-jen-

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Vlad — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:48:11 -0000

If instead of threatening lawsuits they would get their game cleaned up a little maybe there would be less agents hanging up on them.

Interestingly enough, when the controversy broke on my blog some "fans" of this company would say that no one should expect results first month or two... yeah right at the cost of $250 a month???

Thanks for stopping by and sharing.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

DB — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:14:06 -0000

I should add:

This was not the only place I've heard negative information about eperks. I also posted an agent 2 agent question on trulia and 3 out of 3 responses had negative experiences.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

DB — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:11:52 -0000

Thank you for all your posts. I was considering signing up for eperks and came across this site (and others) complaining about poor results while on the phone with the eperks sales guy.

I was interested in 2 zip codes to buy exclusive rights. That was $259/month. I asked how many agents are currently listed in those zips with non-exclusive rights. He replied, "about 20". My next question was, "So how many deals have closed in those zips (through eperks) in the last 6 months."

The sales guy said he didn't have that information, but even worse said that he couldn't/wouldn't get it because...(insert BS here). Then he said maybe if we were discussing a bigger account they might be able to do that type of research yada yada yada.

Then I found this site and hung up on him!

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Vlad — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:02:43 -0000

Just wanted to point out that I have updated the above post. In the paragraph where Mr. Cook has listed the titles of the articles they have demanded to be taken down, you will notice the hyperlinks to the original articles.

Some most recent revelations about this company's tactics to disparage my name made me convinced more than ever that I have done the right thing by publishing this cease and desist notice.

I am glad that body of the same cease and desist notice had serve the purpose of becoming anchor text for the links to my articles.

Look for tomorrows article describing how low this company is willing to go to disparage and defame me.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Vlad — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:02:56 -0000

Just in case any one subscribed to the comment on this post. There is a good write up on Inman News. Make sure to read it:
http://www.inman.com/news/2008/03/26/real-estat...

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Vlad — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:46:23 -0000

Matt,

This only part of the story. I can't even begin to describe here how low this company is prepared to go.... But not to worry, I am going after every single ass involved in all of this.

Re: Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Lord Matt — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:40:51 -0000

What an amazing amount of bollocks! there is no way that even in the USA that even a fraction of that could stick. I'd slap the law firm back with an anti-harassment cease and desist and a follow up to the eperks themselves. Then, yes, I would blog about it.

Does your blog platform support closing comments on a per post basis? It sounds like some of those older posts needed a line drawn under them.

Anything they want to accuse you of they have to prove both here in the UK and in the USA. If they make claims against you then you can always demand in a cease and desist that "you are advised to demand proof of these claims" - there are plenty of templates for that sort of thing ont he web.

Don't let them bully you.