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Reverse yelp. Useful for contractors, service providers, big ticket clients, etc.

Johnny boy

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Most customers are good, decent people who have reasonable expectations and pay on time...

However, many industries are plagued with a minority of rude, unreasonable, arrogant, vindictive assholes who abuse company after company and move on to the next person. They don't pay their invoices, treat customer service reps like trash, and they actually get away with it since there is not a reliable way to judge a problem customer from a good customer.

We call them "karen's".

How many customers and clients would you have avoided if you had known beforehand about the type of person they were?

How much money and time and mental energy would you save by avoiding these awful clients?

Would you use a simple, easy to use service that allowed you to search for reviews of these problem customers beforehand?

After dealing with shitty clients myself and hearing about the complaints from my fellow business owners, I made a website for it.

It's free to use. I'm going to launch it in my area. I'll be posting our shitty customers on it.

Right now it's hosted on a domain I am no longer using since it is a prototype. I'll be swapping it over to the real domain soon.

Let me know if you'd like to use it once it's all set up.

There's no ads, nothing for sale, etc. It's all free.

edit: official new domain is up.
 
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Grinder20

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Most customers are good, decent people who have reasonable expectations and pay on time...

However, many industries are plagued with a minority of rude, unreasonable, arrogant, vindictive assholes who abuse company after company and move on to the next person. They don't pay their invoices, treat customer service reps like trash, and they actually get away with it since there is not a reliable way to judge a problem customer from a good customer.

We call them "karen's".

How many customers and clients would you have avoided if you had known beforehand about the type of person they were?

How much money and time and mental energy would you save by avoiding these awful clients?

Would you use a simple, easy to use service that allowed you to search for reviews of these problem customers beforehand?

After dealing with shitty clients myself and hearing about the complaints from my fellow business owners, I made a website for it.

It's free to use. I'm going to launch it in my area. I'll be posting our shitty customers on it.

Right now it's hosted on a domain I am no longer using since it is a prototype. I'll be swapping it over to the real domain soon.

Let me know if you'd like to use it once it's all set up.

There's no ads, nothing for sale, etc. It's all free. The domain has nothing to do with what's actually on the site. I am no longer selling masks lol


@Johnny boy...Love it! There is a need for this.
 

becks22

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I would totally keep the play on the name Karen. It's universal at this point. It should be a verb.
 
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Cyberthal

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I doubt publicly shaming customers will become an openly-adopted tactic of successful businesses.

Surely there are also legal risks.

A subscription model would make more sense. Don't credit agencies already largely do this for consumers?
 

Johnny boy

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I doubt publicly shaming customers will become an openly-adopted tactic of successful businesses.

Surely there are also legal risks.

A subscription model would make more sense. Don't credit agencies already largely do this for consumers?
That would require a credit check I believe. It’s just something I want and would use myself so I made it.
 
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foodiepersecond

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I doubt publicly shaming customers will become an openly-adopted tactic of successful businesses.

Surely there are also legal risks.

A subscription model would make more sense. Don't credit agencies already largely do this for consumers?
My same train of thought. It would work well with sites that use custom usernames but something that uses actual customer names would probably not work legally.
 

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Think through the implications of running afoul of libel laws.

A customer whose behavior earns them a position on your site is also going to be the kind of person who won't hesitate to do whatever it takes to make your life miserable. And suing for libel is an easy one.

  • Many people sue even even they know they can't win.
  • When you libel a private citizen, the burden of proof is much different than when you libel a public figure. It's much easier for a private citizen to win a libel case.
  • Truth is a defense in libel cases, but if your review of a Karen is just "your word against theirs," then the person being libeled is more likely to win.
  • It would be difficult to enforce everyone who uses your site writing reviews where their proof of truthfulness would hold up in court.
  • As the owner of the site that's publishing the reviews, you would be held equally liable with every one who ever posts a review. So one poster comes into your site and posts some blatant lies about someone they don't like, and all of a sudden, you're guilty of their libel because you had a role in disseminating it.
 

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Think through the implications of running afoul of libel laws.

A customer whose behavior earns them a position on your site is also going to be the kind of person who won't hesitate to do whatever it takes to make your life miserable. And suing for libel is an easy one.

  • Many people sue even even they know they can't win.
  • When you libel a private citizen, the burden of proof is much different than when you libel a public figure. It's much easier for a private citizen to win a libel case.
  • Truth is a defense in libel cases, but if your review of a Karen is just "your word against theirs," then the person being libeled is more likely to win.
  • It would be difficult to enforce everyone who uses your site writing reviews where their proof of truthfulness would hold up in court.
  • As the owner of the site that's publishing the reviews, you would be held equally liable with every one who ever posts a review. So one poster comes into your site and posts some blatant lies about someone they don't like, and all of a sudden, you're guilty of their libel because you had a role in disseminating it.
This idea has been tried many times by many people (even VC backed) and failed because of the reasons above, and the fact that service providers aren’t thinking to look up reviews on individuals so the inbound traffic strategy is nearly impossible.

I wouldn’t touch this idea with a 200 foot pole

Good luck. I hope you pull it off and prove me stupid.
 
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Johnny boy

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This idea has been tried many times by many people (even VC backed) and failed because of the reasons above, and the fact that service providers aren’t thinking to look up reviews on individuals so the inbound traffic strategy is nearly impossible.

I wouldn’t touch this idea with a 200 foot pole

Good luck. I hope you pull it off and prove me stupid.
All good points.
 

Redwolf

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Legalities aside... If you're serious about this idea, I have a few recommendations. Right now it's a very negative vibe site. "Avoid shitty customers", middle finger logo. Making it an "anti-Karen" site is not a good idea, that name/verb is a fad and not a good one at that.

My thought is that it would be better served as a walled garden industry-access-only black-list type site. Call it "theblacklist.com" which I'm sure is taken, or some such variant. The only way to get access is to submit your contractor's or business license. This will keep out 99% of the general public, reduce your libel exposure, and make it feel more exclusive for your clients.

A few other front end recommendations:
  • Change search box from customer name to "customer name, email or phone" to search with more than one criteria.
  • Change 100% Free...for now to something like "Sign up for free beta access" or "100% free during beta."
  • Save money by avoiding problem customers. → Save money and stress by avoiding problem customers.
  • Signup and Post Reviews → Post your first review
 
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Johnny boy

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Legalities aside... If you're serious about this idea, I have a few recommendations. Right now it's a very negative vibe site. "Avoid shitty customers", middle finger logo. Making it an "anti-Karen" site is not a good idea, that name/verb is a fad and not a good one at that.

My thought is that it would be better served as a walled garden industry-access-only black-list type site. Call it "theblacklist.com" which I'm sure is taken, or some such variant. The only way to get access is to submit your contractor's or business license. This will keep out 99% of the general public, reduce your libel exposure, and make it feel more exclusive for your clients.

A few other front end recommendations:
  • Change search box from customer name to "customer name, email or phone" to search with more than one criteria.
  • Change 100% Free...for now to something like "Sign up for free beta access" or "100% free during beta."
  • Save money by avoiding problem customers. → Save money and stress by avoiding problem customers.
  • Signup and Post Reviews → Post your first review
I agree that it would have more widespread appeal by being more positive. Google reviews don't say "avoid shitty businesses".

My gut says to try it out the way it is for the time being because I think it's more niche and would get more attention this way. I want it to be a little controversial.

I'll make those edits right now too, I just wrote the first thing that came to mind for the copy.

I just downloaded a list of 5,000 people in my zip code that includes name, address and phone number for $80. I bulk uploaded them, and I'm putting them behind a subscription wall (it's free but you must be signed up to view reviews and customer profiles) I'll soon be uploading everyone on that list from washington state for $250. It's 1.5 million people.

That way when people search for a customer, they will likely find the customer's name but will have to create a profile to view it, which will get me their email to run a campaign to.

It was a bitch figuring out how to create a membership site, with a full fledged "account" area, and hiding things behind subscription walls.

I don't want to include phone numbers to be viewed on their profiles.

Also, members can choose to not upload their name, make their user name whatever they want, and no personal info is shown on the front-end.

It's now built in a scalable way so I don't need to personally edit any single thing in a repetitive way. I can upload a million people, a million people could join, a million reviews could be written. There's no customer service, shipped goods, etc. There's no contact page, no email to reach me at. It might be the best business ever if I can get people to use it. I have a good feeling about it but we will see. I believe it provides a lot of value.
 

Johnny boy

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I was chatting with another friend of mine that owns a pretty successful business and he said he would rather use a site that had reviews of employees.
 
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MacQNE

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I know a few business owners that complain about the same thing. Herewith some discussion points when we talked about it on occasion:

It is inevitable that a malicious character will create a bad review without merit. Ignoring the legal option of the customer for just a moment, regular review sites allow both good and bad reviews and one malevolent bad review will be "drowned out" by the good reviews giving the reader a clearer picture of the customer's overall performance and put one bad incident (whether true or not) into perspective.

I understand what you're trying to achieve and would recommend that you think about how you can ensure that a review on your site has merit. I created an account to see what information you require for a review and randomly clicked on a few of the existing reviews.

A lot of the reviews is just a name and address. No information about why the customer is listed. As a business owner doing everything I can to grow and get more sales, I'm not certain that just a name and address is enough for me to make a decision regarding a customer. Did they not pay for valid work done? Were they very picky about something? Are they rude and disrespectful with your staff? I would therefore not make the description of the review optional.

I like that you have the option to add photographs about the issue in question. In your shoes, I would educate my user to start taking "before" pictures in the event that they may be needed for this very situation. With a before and after photograph, it would be proof that work was done as per the customer's request. I realize that this only works if you have a business suited to that sort of thing (like garden landscaping for example), but there must be ways to show that the work was done for all types of businesses. For professional services, your user could produce a small "deliverables" list that the customer signs as agreement of the work that will be done before they start. The customer will undoubtedly not "sign off" on the deliverables in the event they're not happy when the work is complete, but surely some communication regarding the issue at hand can show that work was done and what the issue is the customer has. If the supplier can show that they did all they can to complete the job and the customer is just being difficult, that will go a long way to add weight to the claim.

Other review sites allow the customer to reply to a review explaining their side. Not only does it give the reader more insight into the situation but if customers know that they can be listed or blacklisted somewhere public, it may change their behavior. Will you allow customers to reply?

My two cents worth. I wish you well on your journey.
 

Johnny boy

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I know a few business owners that complain about the same thing. Herewith some discussion points when we talked about it on occasion:

It is inevitable that a malicious character will create a bad review without merit. Ignoring the legal option of the customer for just a moment, regular review sites allow both good and bad reviews and one malevolent bad review will be "drowned out" by the good reviews giving the reader a clearer picture of the customer's overall performance and put one bad incident (whether true or not) into perspective.

I understand what you're trying to achieve and would recommend that you think about how you can ensure that a review on your site has merit. I created an account to see what information you require for a review and randomly clicked on a few of the existing reviews.

A lot of the reviews is just a name and address. No information about why the customer is listed. As a business owner doing everything I can to grow and get more sales, I'm not certain that just a name and address is enough for me to make a decision regarding a customer. Did they not pay for valid work done? Were they very picky about something? Are they rude and disrespectful with your staff? I would therefore not make the description of the review optional.

I like that you have the option to add photographs about the issue in question. In your shoes, I would educate my user to start taking "before" pictures in the event that they may be needed for this very situation. With a before and after photograph, it would be proof that work was done as per the customer's request. I realize that this only works if you have a business suited to that sort of thing (like garden landscaping for example), but there must be ways to show that the work was done for all types of businesses. For professional services, your user could produce a small "deliverables" list that the customer signs as agreement of the work that will be done before they start. The customer will undoubtedly not "sign off" on the deliverables in the event they're not happy when the work is complete, but surely some communication regarding the issue at hand can show that work was done and what the issue is the customer has. If the supplier can show that they did all they can to complete the job and the customer is just being difficult, that will go a long way to add weight to the claim.

Other review sites allow the customer to reply to a review explaining their side. Not only does it give the reader more insight into the situation but if customers know that they can be listed or blacklisted somewhere public, it may change their behavior. Will you allow customers to reply?

My two cents worth. I wish you well on your journey.
I actually haven’t put any reviews up yet. I just uploaded a directory of people in the 98373 zip code. I’ll be doing it for a lot more people soon, that way when you search for someone you’ll see your customers names and it entices them to make a profile, similar to how a company like white pages does.

The merit is in the eyes of the person viewing it. Google reviews can be made by anyone, yet people still care about them. I’m going to post all of my customers on there and give good ones good reviews. There’s a reason it has available options for 1-5 stars.

right now there isn’t an option for customers to reply, unless they made a profile and then gave themselves a review.

It’s not meant to be perfect but it’s meant to service a need in a general way and be a business opportunity. If it’s a bad idea I’ll let the market decide for me. That’s my general attitude about it. I’m just building proof of concept and then testing it by blasting it out to business owners in my area. Most people will actually not sign up for it and most wont think it’s worth looking twice at. That’s okay, I’m only looking for a small percentage of people.

I am also going to build something for reviewing employees as well. I want to turn this into a social credit system that benefits businesses instead of the current state of things that only benefits regular consumers.
 

MacQNE

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The merit is in the eyes of the person viewing it. Google reviews can be made by anyone, yet people still care about them. I’m going to post all of my customers on there and give good ones good reviews. There’s a reason it has available options for 1-5 stars.

Oh, apologies. I was under the impression it was only for bad reviews - maybe how I interpret the logo and "avoid shitty customers" slogan. I thought the rating was for "1 star rude person" or "5 star mega prick" :clench: :hilarious:

Cool. I'll keep an eye on it every now and then to see how you're doing. :smile2:
 
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I plead ignorance on this issue, but I have no idea where the term Karen came from. It's a shame that it's used in a negative way though. I live close by Karens and have friends who are Karen. You see, it's an ethnic group here in Thailand. They're very nice people.
 

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Just purchased a list of 100,000 residents in my city. I'm uploading their info to my site.

I'll be making this a site to review employees as well as customers. The general idea is that it empowers business owners to see if the people they might work with are shitty or not. Redoing some of the copy to be written about "customers and employees" instead of just customers.

I also have a list of all of the businesses in Washington state along with their phone numbers. I'll be sending out a mass text to all of their phone numbers saying I have built a local site that reviews customers and employees in Puyallup, WA so that they can avoid the headache that comes along with hiring or doing business with assholes. I can send a thousand texts for $7.

We'll see how it goes. The upload of this much data is going to take a long time.

I'm going to send a tip to the local news outlets pretending that I'm a person who found their name on the site and I'm complaining about it. I feel it would get a better reaction than if I was just trying to promote my business.
 

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For purely business research purposes I would suggest watching this episode of the black mirror

If you walk into a grocery store, and talk with the clerk, you get a notification on your phone as you walk away from him/her.. you rate them one through 5 stars.. and they rate you as well .

You go home with Uber, rate between one and 5 stars.

You hang out with 20 friends, and rate everyone of them.

And then it takes a dark turn.. watch the episode to figure out how this can go wrong
 

Johnny boy

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It'll go great.
And when the people on his website find out he's been keeping their credit card details under his bed the class action lawsuit will keep him busy for a while.

Reverse raw dog
That’s for lawn care not for this lol.
 

Johnny boy

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For purely business research purposes I would suggest watching this episode of the black mirror

If you walk into a grocery store, and talk with the clerk, you get a notification on your phone as you walk away from him/her.. you rate them one through 5 stars.. and they rate you as well .

You go home with Uber, rate between one and 5 stars.

You hang out with 20 friends, and rate everyone of them.

And then it takes a dark turn.. watch the episode to figure out how this can go wrong
The problem with that is it’s for every single interaction and encounter. All I’m doing is giving business owners a chance to level the playing field of reviews for situations that they feel warrant a search. It would save contractors and large ticket service businesses a lot of time if they knew they were dealing with someone who takes advantage of other people.
 
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Lyinx

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The problem with that is it’s for every single interaction and encounter. All I’m doing is giving business owners a chance to level the playing field of reviews for situations that they feel warrant a search. It would save contractors and large ticket service businesses a lot of time if they knew they were dealing with someone who takes advantage of other people.

Let me walk through(what I think) would be a normal-ish day in the world where your idea would be perfectly applied:

Truck is making a funny noise, so I search google for a garage with a good reputation.
I take the truck to the garage, do I need to pay upfront for repairs? or can he trust me to pay later on? He checks my rating, it's rated at a 5/5 for paying on time (out of 250 reviews) ... so he says, no problem, just pay for it when you pickup. I'll text you when done.

I go home with a taxi or UBER, and find that one of my tenants decided to move out at short notice (30 days) and I need to find another person to fill the vacancy.
I put out an ad for house, and get a call. Check his status on the reporting thingie... 1/5 stars on the payment scale, and 2/5 on the friendly scale, 475 interactions and he's upset so many people... nope, you've got to be rated at 3+ stars on friendly and 4+ stars on payments to rent here, sorry buddy.

There's even a slot/potential in the dating market :)
Ratings for ______ guy:
kind: 5/5
thoughtful:5/5
style in bed: 1/5 - could use some training
payment: n/a
:)


can always be "mis-used", but there's a lot of potential there, if you can keep it all legal.

Suggestion: creating reviews for other people without their permission could be a legal problem, I have no advice for getting around that, best to check with lawyers on those things.
 

Johnny boy

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Let me walk through(what I think) would be a normal-ish day in the world where your idea would be perfectly applied:

Truck is making a funny noise, so I search google for a garage with a good reputation.
I take the truck to the garage, do I need to pay upfront for repairs? or can he trust me to pay later on? He checks my rating, it's rated at a 5/5 for paying on time (out of 250 reviews) ... so he says, no problem, just pay for it when you pickup. I'll text you when done.

I go home with a taxi or UBER, and find that one of my tenants decided to move out at short notice (30 days) and I need to find another person to fill the vacancy.
I put out an ad for house, and get a call. Check his status on the reporting thingie... 1/5 stars on the payment scale, and 2/5 on the friendly scale, 475 interactions and he's upset so many people... nope, you've got to be rated at 3+ stars on friendly and 4+ stars on payments to rent here, sorry buddy.

There's even a slot/potential in the dating market :)
Ratings for ______ guy:
kind: 5/5
thoughtful:5/5
style in bed: 1/5 - could use some training
payment: n/a
:)


can always be "mis-used", but there's a lot of potential there, if you can keep it all legal.

Suggestion: creating reviews for other people without their permission could be a legal problem, I have no advice for getting around that, best to check with lawyers on those things.
Exactly. The point is to give a more informal replacement for background checks. I’m not going to background check a client before building them a website, but I’d happily search their name in 10 seconds and see if other people have been screwed by this guy or not. It would be great for new employees too.
 

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