Archive for the ‘Reputation Online’ Category

The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2010 has begun yet again with its Bollywood star power and deep pockets of business tycoons and is looking like a well-oiled business enterprise adept at social networking.

All teams, Kolkata KnightRiders (KKR), Deccan Chargers (DC) Rajasthan Royals (RR), Delhi Daredevils (DD), Kings XI Punjab, Chennai Superkings (CSK), Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Mumbai Indians (MI),l are active on Twitter.

For the first time IPL has tied up with Google and has live video streaming via the IPL YouTube channel so that the great Indian diaspora can enjoy the games from far-flung places around the globe.  In terms of channel views, the first day of IPL 2010 saw the number going up 84 per cent to 880,615 by the second half of the day from 478,057 in the first half. By Sunday, it had crossed 3.1 millions.

For now the quality of the videos being streamed remains to be analysed but there is no denying that as business ventures go, the IPL 2010 takes its online presence seriously.

Tweeting owners: Team owners like Shahrukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shettty; captains like Shane Warne and players like Robin Uttappa and Yuvraj Singh are all busy tweeting away. IPL Chairman Lalit Modi is active on twitter as well along with PR people of each team tweeting about their respective teams. This is celebrity reputation management as well; all things IPL have celebrity status these days in India.

Mobile TV technology companies, gaming portals and online ticket booking sites are all raking in the moolah.

Being active on Twitter is crucial for team owners and more so in the case of Shahrukh Khan (SRK) whose team faced a reputation management crisis like no other – a blogger, who called himself the “fakeiplblogger” on blogspot, regularly trashed the team and its owner with surprising inside info on the workings of the team and its off-scene activity in South Africa last year. The team morale nosedived and KKR were languishing at the bottom.

This time around the buzz is great for KKR,  SRK himself is tweeting his way into people’s hearts and making sure nothing works against his team. A great example of how controversy helped create a buzz is his last movie MNIK (My name is KHAN), thanks to social networking sites and the tag “MNIK” trended worldwide on Twitter and helped the star regain some of his lost popularity.

IPL 2010 stands testimony to how important reputation management through social media is for businesses and sport like cricket these days.

Lindsay Lohan is yet again in news. The 23-year-old actress has filed a lawsuit against E-Trade for $100 million over a Super Bowl ad featuring a “milkaholic” baby named Lindsay. The controversial TV ad features a baby boy apologizing to his girlfriend for not calling her because he was busy trading stocks on E-Trade. Lohan alleged E-trade for breaching of civil rights and use of her name, ‘Lindsay’ and characterization without payment or permission.

This is nothing new for the glam doll who has the habit of being in news for all the wrong reasons; starting from spending a day in jail, her relationship with Samantha Ronson, being shooed away by enraged people in the Paris Fashion Week, Lindsay has it all in her to invite controversy.

If we look back, Tracy Palmer, the Director of Consumer Advertising Sprint, made no fuss when her name was used for the girls character in the sprint ad. So doubts are afloat if this whole controversy by Lindsay is a publicity stunt. The allegations levied by her lawyer also seems inappropriate to stand up in the court.

“Many celebrities are known by one name, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit,” Lohan’s lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, said in a statement to the New York Post . “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

The whole drama has done a world of good for E-trade, with thousands of people searching for the controversial commercial online. Wonder why LiLo seems so offended, or is it a mere frustration of hers.  She is in real need of a quality PR and some strategic celebrity reputation management to be in place to regain her lost image as a celebrity rather than as a troubled star.

We, at  Reputation Management For.com, feel that Lindsay has to retain the confidence of the public and should work towards getting back her stardom.  Who will want to sponsor a celebrity who may turn round and sue them later, had she not mentioned anything for the best part the ad would have gone unnoticed, now even we are writing about it now!

We are a very pro-active and believe in taking a preventative measure rather than waiting until negative results start appearing about a company or individual.  We wanted to start reporting on companies and celebrities and ranking them on how good their online PR and reputation management is.  We started with 3 completely different celebs and will be adding to it weekly.

• Jimmy Carr got into hot water about a joke he performed.
• Jonathan Ross got into trouble about a phone call prank.
• John Terry had an affair with a team mates partner

What is apparent is the lack of online presence celebs and companies have.  This is asking for trouble and with search engines becoming faster at reporting news, photos and videos if you don’t take action to protect your reputation online then you are allowing other people to write anything they want about you.  Anyone with a phone is now a journalist, they can blog you, post you, video you and with in minutes have them online.

We can help protect and defend your reputation online, we highly recommend you do this before negative things may appear about you.  It is way more difficult to push negative results down once they are there, by reducing the chances of results appearing on the first page will help soften or eliminate negative stories all together on the first page of Google.

If you need help or want to protect your reputation online then give us a call:

Call: UK +44(0)845 862 1893
Call: USA +1 646 723 3965

or fill out our online enquiry form

Yelp Extortion

Yelp, the hub for disgruntled clients to put in scathing reviews is now facing class-action lawsuit. The allegations against Yelp is that it asks advertisement money from business houses to manipulate or remove reviews. Strange, but no advertisers on Yelp has a perfect reputation.

Yelp the popular user-generated reviews website, was more popular than Google; users would search for a particular company or local business house before they wanted to deal with it. And anything that appeared negative or positive will be the final impression. So if it is on Yelp, it’s heard.

The company on the other hand denies the allegations, contained in the class-action lawsuit, but the whole affair has put a huge question mark about the reliability of Yelp.

If Yelp’s revenue was solely based on advertising, it was easy to understand why they wanted to tamper with reviews on its website, but it was not to be. Yelp will have some hard time explaining the ethics it follows. It will be interesting to see what the company has to say in its self-defense.

The situation would have been different if Yelp had a big brother with corporate backing like MSN or Google, then meddling with reviews wouldn’t be a cause for worry.

As reputation management goes Yelp needs new principles, new moral code of conduct to bring back credibility before they are totally deserted.

The electronics giant Sony on Monday came up with a message for it’s millions of PlayStation3 users not to use their games consoles. The reason for such a call was due to a glitch in the older ‘fat’ PlayStation3 which stopped the players to connect to the PlayStation network. The bug in the clock system led the consoles to act as if 2010 is a leap year messing up the system’s internal clock. The bug though is said to be more serious for the PS3, which holds a better reliability than the rival Xbox360 of Microsoft.

Being a global name, Sony came up strongly and tackled the situation smartly making sure this glitch won’t torment its reputation. Showing signs of how to deal with crisis management, the company came up with an announcement on it’s blog, that the problem with its PS3 clock system has been resolved and gamers can adjust the date manually or by Internet.

Meanwhile setting an example for those big companies who fail to handle such critical situation, Sony showed the smart way to take control of the issue before it spiral out. Sony has sold over 33.5m PS3’s worldwide, with Microsoft which has sold out about 40m Xbox 360’s and Nintendo,which has sold 67mWiis.

Though its not the first time a Japanese company is facing such a situation, earlier Toyota was also seen battling out to safeguard its brand value and reputation. But Sony true to its reputation about quality and customer service has dealt with the situation brilliantly and not letting their reputation stink.

Related Posts :

• Toyota- Problems deepening
• Toyota- Damage control mode
• Toyota, Honda- Industry Jinxed?

December, 09 all flights of Flyglobespan were cancelled after its parent company, Globespan, entered administration. An attempt to enter a financing deal with Jersey-based Halycon Investments broke down that led to Flyglobespan collapse.

The firm blamed for the deadly blow to Globespan was E-Clear, a credit card processing company. When passengers book tickets online with their credit card, the money goes into the booking site (E-Clear) and is then passed on to Flyglobespan. So it’s all about the way money reaches the airline after it was processed by E-Clear

It was learned that E-Clear withheld £35m from Globespan, this was money that had been paid for tickets, but was not been passed on to the airline. They also diverted £1.5 million to keep its struggling sister company Allbury Travel alive.

E-Clear was forced into administration by Globespan’s in an effort to reclaim the missing cash and Allbury Travel was closed.

This disgraced episode only raises few doubts, No credit card company can hold money of this size particularly if that business depends on cash flow, so what was Globespan doing to retain the non-payment?  Secondly why did they continue to use E-Clear when payments were not being processed?

This is a strange situation and it’s getting murkier by the day and it’s time for some close introspection about the reputation of credit card processing companies. Airline reputation management is going through its most turbulent times.

The Greeks have never been able to stick to it’s alloted 60 percent debt limit. It’s huge public deficit and debt has raised concern within the 16 nation Eurozone. The current debt crisis, EU countries are up and cautiously watching how it will affect them as a whole. For Greece this is a national reputation management crisis

Greece’s debt crisis, there is great worry if the country will be able to refund its debt. As it happened to Dubai, UAE owing to last years economic pressures, the Greek government budget has plunged into greater deficit. Investors are now feeling uncomfortable and skeptical if the government can repay the debt.

If Greece fails to repay its debts the crisis shouldn’t be much of concern for the global economy. This will only weaken the strong euro and not cause the currency to collapse completely. Situation will be different if other European members like Ireland, Italy and Spain defaults, in such case countries will start pulling out of the Euro.

On the contrary Greece’s present problems need to be addressed in the proper context, so when we say Greece’s debt is critical, it’s not as critical that we term it as sovereign debt.

Before Greece’s debts effects pulls down the value of euro and stock markets all the way to Wall Street, wealthy European countries are chalking out some assured strategy to prevent Greece from defaulting. The earlier this is done the quicker a positive message is sent out to investors, and set the ball rolling to get the economy back on track.

Close to the heels of Toyota recall, Honda Motor Co is all out to make a similar move to replace the faulty airbag deflator in their cars. The No.2 automaker of Japan is about to recall 4+ million cars.

About 12 incidents have been reported including one fatality.  This is the second time Honda is recalling their cars for the same reason, previously it was in November 2008 and June 2009. The series of recalls from Honda also includes the one for faulty window switch.

The current recall applies to 2001 and 2002 year model; CL vehicles, Civic, Accord, CR-V, Pilot, Odyssey, and 2002 Acura TL. Honda is currently concentrating the recall in the United States

A Honda spokesman said “the defect was caused by insufficient stamping pressure during the production of the inflator”. On the contrary the US unit of Japan’s Takata Corporation; manufacturer of the airbag stated ‘they are not aware of any defect in airbags supplied to Honda’.

Known for their reliability and quality over the years, the recent incidence has jolted the customer’s faith in these Japanese (Honda, Toyota) vehicles.  This has also effected its production and sale in many countries.  Quick to grab the market share the domestic car makers; General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are looking to cash in on the woes of their unbeatable Japanese competitors.

As from the reputation management point of view, we feel if Honda is able to turn the buzz rapidly and positively, the damage will only be marginal. A positive step to regain customer confidence, Honda has already started contacting it’s customers by mail asking them to take their cars to the authorized dealers.

So obviously part of our reputation management is monitoring what people are saying about clients.  We of course monitor what is being said about our own business, and it’s amazing what we see.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/internet/reputationmanagementfor.html

This is a classic attack from either a competitor or from the website owners themselves trying to damage our reputation or force us to pay a premium to add comments.  This happens to 1000’s of companies and many are not aware of it until customer cancels a sale after reading bogus and negative comments on such sites.

If you want to comment on their pages this is what they say:

ConsumerAffairs.com is a private, non-govermental entity that empowers consumers by providing a forum for their complaints and a means for them to be contacted by lawyers if their complaints have legal merit. Your complaints and comments may be published, shared with the news media and reviewed by attorneys at no cost to you. See the FAQ for more information.

Please be accurate and fair in your comments. Remember, you are responsible for what you write. We do not proofread your submission so please type carefully — and please, don’t use all capital letters.

Consumer Information Information about you. We do not publish your identity but must have it for our records. If your complaint is published, only your first name will be used on our Web site. See privacy policy for more information. Reports become the property of ConsumerAffairs.com Inc. and may be published, edited or discarded at our sole option.

Why don’t they publish the details of people who complain?  Does this mean anyone can write anything without the worry of being sued – I think so?

Company Response Welcome If complaints about your company appear on our site, we welcome your response. Please see the Response Form for more information.

I could not see anyway to have things removed, only options available are to respond:

We offer two different ways to respond to consumer complaints and comments on our site:

1. The complaint form Click on the red “Complaint Button” and insert your business name in the appropriate spot. Your response will be posted as soon as it is reviewed by our moderators. Do not use the customer’s last name or other personal information that you may have. Doing so will result in your being banned permanently from our system.

2. Isertive Instant Response®
This is a premium service that enables businesses to respond directly to consumers, enabling them to resolve complaints and prevent similar problems in the future. Subscribers may also post their responses directly to our site. For more information and an application, visit Isertive.com

The last thing you ever want to do on such a crappy site is respond on it, this will encourage even more people to write negative responses and you can’t control it.

The best thing Google could do is BLACK LIST this site from showing in their reults.

Please let me know if you are having an issue with bogus comments on this site.

Now what are the chances that Consumer Affairs is owned by the same people who own, oh surprise surprise James Hood owns both of the sites http://isertive.com/

WHOIS Info for CONSUMERAFFAIRS.COM

Some information on the domain:
Domain Name: CONSUMERAFFAIRS.COM
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
Name Server: NS0.DNSMADEEASY.COM
Name Server: NS1.DNSMADEEASY.COM
Name Server: NS2.DNSMADEEASY.COM
Name Server: NS3.DNSMADEEASY.COM

IP:209.20.68.198

Look at how often they have moved servers and changed name, hmmm call me synical!!!

Email Search: is associated with about 1,024,614 domains

Registrant Contact:
ConsumerAffairs.Com, Inc.
James Hood ()

Fax:
11400 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90064
US

Administrative Contact:
ConsumerAffairs.Com, Inc.
James Hood ()
+1.2132918086
Fax:
11400 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90064
US

Technical Contact:
The Oakton Press, Inc.
James Hood ()
+1.7033596800
Fax: +1.8007790816
11350 Random Hills Drive, Suite 650
Fairfax, VA 22030
US
is associated with about 30 domains
is associated with about 182 domains
Registrar History: 2 registrars with 2 drops.
NS History: 12 changes on 8 unique name servers over 8 years.
IP History: 4 changes on 4 unique name servers over 4 years.
Whois History: 674 records have been archived since 2001-12-20 .
Dedicated Hosting: consumeraffairs.com is hosted on a dedicated server.

WHOIS Info for isertive.com

Registrant Contact:
ConsumerAffairs.Com Inc.
James Hood ()

Fax:
PO Box 3233
Oakton, VA 22124
US

Administrative Contact:
ConsumerAffairs.com
James Hood ()
+1.8778548038
Fax:
PO Box 3233
Oakton, VA 22124
US

Technical Contact:
The Oakton Press, Inc.
James Hood ()
+1.7033596800
Fax: +1.8007790816
11350 Random Hills Drive, Suite 650
Fairfax, VA 22030
US

Status: Active

Name Servers:
ns1.slicehost.net
ns2.slicehost.net
ns3.slicehost.net

Creation date: 13 Aug 2000 16:38:07

We have been approached by many tourism companies both agents and hotels alike requestiong help with negative comments appearing about them on the search results.  More often than n0t they come from sites like tripadvisor whose business model is based on customer feedback.

There are 2 big issues with this:

1. You tend to get more genuine feedback from customers who have had a negative experience rather than a positive one.
2. Competitors write negative things about another company which are false.

So quite often Tripadvisor will not give a overall balanced feedback from customers because the same old saying is true “a customer who has had a bad experience will tell a 100 people where a customer who has a good experience will tell 10″.  Customers will normally only give feedback to a site like Tripadvisor if they have had a negative experience rather than a positive one.

We are also now seeing what we believe to be competitors writing bogus negative feedback about competing companies in order to trash their reputation.  It’s very bad practice and something we frown on and will certainly not get involved in.

What can you do about negative comments on Tripadvisor?

1. Make sure there is genuinely not an issue that needs addressing if  many customers are complaining about the same thing.
2. Offer customers a gift if they write something positive about their stay at your hotel on Tripadvisor
3. Hire a company to help protect your reputation online and bury negative results in the search results.

The outcome, although you can’t get rid of negative comments totally is you can show a much more balanced view, in many ways this is much better than just positive or negative views.