
Plumber vs. programmer: a face-off over an online directory - chuck_taylor
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/11/plumber_vs_programmer_a_face_off_over_an_online_directory.html
======
CapitalistCartr
"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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

------
matrix
HelpHive (the directory) is absolutely in the wrong here. Their business model
is unethical at best; it's on par with spamming and link-farming.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that the founder of HelpHive is a former
RealNetworks employee.

~~~
btilly
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.

~~~
jamesbritt
"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.

------
dstorrs
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.

~~~
jamesbritt
"It seems that this would have been the ethical thing to do, and would have
resulted in some good publicity for them."

HelpHive doesn't seem so big on on the whole "ethical thing".

~~~
shpxnvz
Yeah, but regardless of ethics it seems like an incredibly small price to pay
to avoid negative publicity and a possible lawsuit.

~~~
jamesbritt
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.

------
jwhitlark
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.

------
mrduncan
Although not quite the same situation, this reminds me of the fiasco around
GetSatisfaction at the beginning of the year.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540>

~~~
dschobel
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.

~~~
jfager
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.

~~~
dschobel
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.

~~~
jfager
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).

------
nym
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.

~~~
pyre
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).

~~~
nym
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

------
WesleyJohnson
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.

------
imraj
I think techies got it wrong this time.

~~~
auston
I beg to differ, how can they TRULY measure the value of their service if they
aren't tracking a highly relevant action such as phone calls?

 _Especially_ if they are supposed to be getting _paid per call_.

~~~
jamesbritt
How does their want for data make this ethical?

~~~
auston
I fail to see how it is unethical, provided it is disclosed that the number
will be routed.

Maybe I missed something...

Plumber pays helphive $99 a year (see:
[http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/10/21/helphive-tests-
pay...](http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/10/21/helphive-tests-pay-per-job-
model-connects-home-service-businesses-with-consumers/)) to be listed?

In doing so, Plumber agrees to the terms that state his phone number will be
re-routed?

Plumber didn't read his agreement & now he is upset?

Plumber can turn off this feature & he is still upset?

~~~
jamesbritt
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.

------
tocomment
The plumber just needs to trademark his business and then it's a simple case
of trademark infringement, no?

~~~
nfnaaron
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]

~~~
nym
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.

~~~
eli_s
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?

~~~
nym
My mistake, Google isn't doing this (I thought they did?). Facebook does for
outbound links, for example <http://www.datmansymbol.com/> is actually:

[http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.datma...](http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.datmansymbol.com%252F&h=dfe9138aed1f6ba0c66f8cc680cf3315&ref=mf)

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.

------
eli_s
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!

