HelloPeter under fire

Gatecrasher said:
You cannot deny that Hellopeter does some good and provides irate consumers with an avenue of complaint.

However, the business model employed by Peter Cheales is devoid of integrity. It is corrupt.

A company providing bad service can get away with it by paying payola to Peter. Suddenly they are not bad boys any more, they are good boys, and bitter complaints are deleted. The frowning face becomes a smile. The company pays lip service. Suddenly they are on top of the "Companies that Respond" list. But what has really changed? Nothing. The bad service continues unabated, customers are now unhappy and voiceless, and Peter Cheales is financially enriched.

Extortion is exactly what it is. Not that my heart bleeds for the companies. But consumers get a raw deal once the target of their complaints decide to cough up.

Paying Peter does not equal good service.
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Isn't that what happened to Telkom a few months ago?
 
LaRoosTa said:
Isn't that what happened to Telkom a few months ago?
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Exactly. Fastracked from the top of "Most complaints" list to the top of the "Most Complimented" list in one easy payment.

The fact that the complaints keep mounting up (those that are not deleted)and outweigh compliments 10 to 1 no longer matters.

All that matters is that Telkom paid.

Listening to Peter and Mike on Classic FM try to explain how Telkom had transformed from bad boy to good boy overnight made me want to bring up my supper. :sick:
 
GavinMannion said:
34 416 uniques a month? That is way lower than I expected...

I am not a fan of the Hellopeter website anymore either, his childish behaviour whenever he is criticised is a perfect example of bad customer service.
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That works to 1000 visitors an hour... or 0.7 unique visitors per Minute... NOT even 1 new IP per minute!

pretty slow imho. :sick:

I like the HelloPeter Idea, I dont like his extortion stance on only paid companys can respond.
 
Why not get a tie-up with, wait for it, mybroadband.co.za, call it myservice.co.za?

You could have a similar frontend and then have the same sort of threading as the forum does per complaint/compliment. Power it by ads but allow the companies to respond freely or have some mechanism to get larger companies to buy ad space; perhaps based on size of company (head count), turnover or threads.

You could even bring a merit/demerit system for charging where the more complaints you get (legitimate ones that is) the more you are required to advertise and the more complements you get the more discounted ad space you get.
 
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Roo! said:
You could even bring a merit/demerit system for charging where the more complaints you get (legitimate ones that is) the more you are required to advertise and the more complements you get the more discounted ad space you get.
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Nope. You've got to separate your funding from the complaints. Anything else and compaines are essentially paying to clear their name - that should not be the point.
 
chiskop said:
Nope. You've got to separate your funding from the complaints. Anything else and compaines are essentially paying to clear their name - that should not be the point.
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Good point, it was just a thought.

How about getting a tie-up with Scott Cundill's stuff, fedup.co.za / majesticways.net? He seems all for a better consumer experience, although more the SME stuff, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be interested.
 
Ha! As I was reading this thread I got an email from hellopeter.com - and it was a response for a COMPLIMENT. Everyone seems to forget that not every comment on the site is a complaint. Personally, I use many of the companies listed with compliments on hellopeter - I like to know what I am getting myself into.

Its a two way street ppl.
 
i used hellopeter last week for the 1st time after waiting an excessive long time for company X to collect notebook Y....

did a post on the website - boom - it was sorted within 3days. (after receiving an apology from customer care MD and he assuring me that my case would be resolved promptly)

so i'm happy with hellopeter atm.
 
Ricard said:
That works to 1000 visitors an hour... or 0.7 unique visitors per Minute... NOT even 1 new IP per minute!

pretty slow imho. :sick:

I like the HelloPeter Idea, I dont like his extortion stance on only paid companys can respond.
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Is my maths screwy? I figure about 1,100 visitors a DAY, but the rest of your sums are correct.
 
xrapidx said:
Exactly, and I'm sure the site could be maintained on sponsered adds... (by the companies)
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Yes, for sure it can be done. People complain on myadsl and some suppliers respond here as well (for free). I just don't think it is viable for a company to spend 13k if there is one complain against them which might be false in the first place. It will be best to have free site for all for both Suppliers and Consumer because some supplier might wanna complain about there suppliers too (everyone has a supplier).
As long as there is money involved it is extortion. Even if the complain was responded to by the supplier directly to the client it will show as a complain without any responses in hellopeter which doesn't sound legitimate.

I work for a hosting company and can arrange sponsorship for such a project if couple of people are interested and take responsibility. We already sponsor few NPO's with free hosting and domains. So this has to be NPO as well and not a money making scheme.
 
Well...I said in another thread I'd donate time... the only issue is, I'm a .NET developer :) Oh, and MS SQL.
 
That shouldn't be a problem. We can support that although 2 people with same technology background will be good because 2 is better then 1 :), I can personally help a bit but I am not sure if realistically I can give enough time but love to help to get it started. So we need one more guy/gal now.
 
Hellopeter does offer a good service but where money is involved there will always be string-pulling in the background.

According to the Anti-HelloPeter website the minimum cost to become ‘A company that responds’ is R13 500. “This is the lowest category of subscription, and if you are a regular responder you need to take an upgraded package, which can be as much as R60 000 per year,” the website states.
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Not 100% sure where that R13 000 figure comes from!

We had a complaint about my company. Was not founded, so we asked for the right to reply. They sent though a quotation, and for a year subscription was R800.00

This includes advertising on their front page.

R800 for a small business is a small price to pay for advertising and being able to respond. Whoever wrote that article was exaggerating the costs.

This is what was included in the R800.00

• Annual registration and set up.
• Customer’s Contact Details: Each comment is submitted with an alias. Companies Who Respond receive name, email and telephone number of customer.
• Email Notification: You are notified immediately of every comment made about you, with hyperlink directly to comment.
• SMS Notification: In addition to the email notification you have the option to receive a FREE SMS on your cell phone alerting you to comments on the site.
• Supplier’s Response: The right to reply. Every time a comment is made about your company you have the right to respond on the site, and to the customer directly.
• Update Response: The facility to respond in more detail to customer comments when new information comes to hand.
• Hyperlink your Company Website: By supplying a hyperlink next to your company's name, users can click through to your own website.
• Customer Response Rating and Analysis: Users are asked to rate your response to their comments 36 hours after posting a comment.
• Newsflashes: Home page publicity for your company. Special offers, discounts, announcements may all be publicised.
• 10% discount on all presentations by Peter Cheales: Book Peter to speak at your conference.
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