unethical business experience *LONG READ*

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

Ah so you’re accusing gimp of lying. Maybe he started this thread to have a bit of fun? Suppose that’s possible.

No, I wouldn't know if he was telling the truth one way or another.

My assumption is that it did happen, even if it sounds insane.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Weren't you also taking one at face value and the other as a farce?

I caveated my opinion on the basis that he wasn't lying - if he just made that up, I would have a different reaction. But it'd be a pretty epic troll thread if he just made it up, or that aspect of it.

You ever heard of a business voiding a warranty because of a google review? I mean it may have happened, but it's also insane haviour that sounds like literally no business I have ever worked with.

Let me put it to you this way: in my job, I deal with far more sophisticated businesses than some hot tub company, and I have seen people pull some insane, shady crap. So I would put the likelihood of a company being willing to doctor a warranty document after the fact to try to get out of having to service a product they probably would rather never think about ever again for a customer they surely know is already lost at roughly the same as the odds of a person being willing to make up a story about a company doing those things because they were upset with said company - which is to say, neither of these things is beyond the bounds of ####ty human behaviour.

But overall, apparently my BS detector is working fine, in light of this:

Yeah, I was f'n around.

[woob]

Wow, this thread's a trip. FG, do you have a screenshot of your review you posted? Any update?

[TheIronMaiden]

I think most people understand that 90% of bad reviews come from petty people on power trips. That said, in my experience a lot of bad reviews are based in some kind of reality. But like most things reality is much less dramatic than what you see on the internet.

[Monahammer]

I've only ever posted one negative review. It was for a hotel in Canmore we stayed at where our door lock was busted and my poor dog was then stuck in a room (was supposed to only be gone 15 minutes to run down to the car...)
Took them 2 hours to get the door opened. Luckily it was all good in the end; our vacation was much more stressful, but everyone was ok and we were eventually settled.
No damage to the room or anything, our dog is good on that front.

Get home and next week look at my credit card statement and find an extra $500 pet fee. I called the hotel, and they told me it was because I hadn't informed them a pet was in my room. Even though it was a pet friendly hotel, and I literally checked in with my dog on a leash beside me at the check in desk... Anyways, I asked for them to remove the charge, and they refered me to the manager. This manager was turbo ######. I looked him up online, he had a long and sordid history (including public lawsuits) as a turbo ######. I spoke with him on the phone and he was very rude. I just asked him to look back on the cameras to see that I was physically holding my dog while checking in, and no one mentioned a pet fee or anything else to me. He accused me of trying to sneak the dog in for free, hence the $500 charge. I got off the phone with him after he finally said he'd look and call me back.

I waited a week. Nothing. So I sent him an email. He was extremely rude writing back, even at one point saying that my dog should be taken from me for me having left him in the room during the room lock ordeal... So, I left a 1 star review and just posted the screenshots of the emails that contained the whole story and his replies. this was ~5 years ago and I still get emails from Google telling me that people found my review helpful.

[Yamer]

For the sake of expanding my colorful vocabulary, I just want to know which word comes after 'turbo'.

[BlackArcher101]

Someone help me out here with "Turbo ######"

[Stampede2TheCup]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

Someone help me out here with "Turbo ######"

I read it as



Edit: it has an urban dictionary definition:
The penultimate *****bag; aggressive in their quest to outdo other *****bags in their *****baggery

[Flames_Gimp]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

An unethical hot tub company, I can hardly believe that, why normally they are up there with RV and timeshare sales as bastions of morality.

joking aside my sympathies

lol no doubt. and thanks

[Flames_Gimp]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Despite having an obvious bias, Sliver is right. Positive reviews are a lot more rare than negative ones in almost every situation, so online you usually end up with the perception that a business you’ll have a totally fine experience with 99/100 times is actually more like 50/50 because of review skewing.

And Sliver is also right that there is certainly an entirely different side to this story that paints a completely different picture, and the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.

nope i told the absolute truth. You may not have agreed with some of my oppinions but i don't believe i have given the impression that I lied, i've met a lot of calgary puckers and don't think any of them would say i'm an ahole.

That being said i'm willing to show you every single email, BBB and consumer protection people saw the whole story and they told me they broke the law.
if you notice n my post i mentioned that they fixed their mistakes.

they have a bunch of reviews saying they are crooks and aholess.

I left a review and he phoned and screamed at my innocent caregiver and she's an honest and sensitive person, she was in tears.

Pm and i'll show you everything.

[Flames_Gimp]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

No, I wouldn't know if he was telling the truth one way or another.

My assumption is that it did happen, even if it sounds insane.

it is insane man, i was speechless because the receptionist was nice when i placed the order and paid, i forgot to mention something else nce they did at 1st, i originally paid most up front and then decided to switch to payment plan so they switched it and sent me some of the difference back, i will put that in my review. Again this was b4 the mistakes started.

I should mention i've never been late on a single payment and this started last feb.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by Flames_Gimp

it is insane man, i was speechless because the receptionist was nice when i placed the order and paid, i forgot to mention something else nce they did at 1st, i originally paid most up front and then decided to switch to payment plan so they switched it and sent me some of the difference back, i will put that in my review. Again this was b4 the mistakes started.

I should mention i've never been late on a single payment and this started last feb.

This has been going on for 10 months?

[Flames_Gimp]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Holy crap, guys. Keep in mind there are two sides to every story and we are hearing one side. Small business owners view bad reviews as aggressive attacks on what usually amounts to their biggest personal investment, their livelihood and often their life's work to which they're virtually defenseless.

They'll also have their own side of this story - one that includes addressing every issue OP had. I mean, dude was buying a used hot tub...what was the price? Were his expectations out of whack with the reality of buying an old tub? Did he opt for their $1k special, yet wanted $2k of work put into it to make it like new? I'd be curious to hear from the seller. Some red flags are going up here. Maybe they did some work on the tub to keep him happy even though it was costing them money, then he leaves a #### review, anyway (anything under a five star is ####, just so you know).

But yeah, after a #### review I don't blame the guy for cutting you off. I would reach out if I were the owner to find out what I could do to get that review gone, too. He'd be crazy not to. Here he may have spent decades building his business and op can launch a torpedo at it while taking a dump between chucking Animal Crackers and usb cables in his amazon basket.

Fata bad reviews. If you weren't totally happy, just fataing move on. No need to saddle a fellow Calgarian with that albatross for the rest of time. Accept you bought a used hot tub for cheap and that at least the guy supported it and addressed your concerns. Ffs

Sliver pm me please
so you're admitting you would break the law and take away the warranty if you had a business?

my review wasn't that bad 3out of5 and i listed every mistake and every fix, i said it was a hassle and I don't reccomend them, and I don't.

I paid $6000 for a 2001 unit with original analog controller and it showed up dirty and leaking and missing parts.

But you wouldn't leave a bad review if this happened to you right?

You wanted me to reach out to someone who yelled and threatened me to give him a chance to fix it? there's no fixing threats and abuse if i was able their would have been a fistfight.

Maybe you don't realize it how often people like me are abused or discriminated against, i could tell you some stories about insanely cruel experiences i have. You would be surprised how you're treated sometimes when you're not a physical threat.

You don't know this but I can't talk when my trach balloon inflated, and when he called i couldn't talk,so what is it that you think I did to deserve that?

I'd like to invite you and pepsifree over for coffee/beer (well you guys can drink something anyways, im tube fed) and meet me, I gaurantee im not the guy you think I am. BTW i have a business, i sell garage heaters, you can talk to my customers, they all will vouch.

I have a perfect feedback score on kijiji, beyond , canadian gun nutz and ebay, i don't think a liar has perfect feedback.

I posted this to help you guys , i like to think we look out for each other here.


Here's the most recent review they have

[Flames_Gimp]

Originally Posted by you&me

This has been going on for 10 months?

yes, i have been waiting for the cover b4 doing anything and now that i have that i'm started to think about what to do. Part of me wants to finish paying it off and cut all ties and move on and part of me doesn't wnt anyone else having a similar experience.

[calumniate]

sorry flames_gimp.. am more interested now if Knightslayer got his sandwich toasted or not, and if he got enough ranch

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by woob

Wow, this thread's a trip. FG, do you have a screenshot of your review you posted? Any update?

Can you imagine if BoLevi showed.....#### me

[Swift]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yes, of course I'll come out guns fully blazing when I get a bad review unless it's truthful. The truthful bad review I did get I apologized, acknowledged the mistake we made and detailed what we had now changed to prevent it from happening to anybody else. It warranted a proper apology.

Do I - six years later - deserve to have that one-star rating because one of my employees told him we had something in stock that was gone when he came to pick it up? No, I don't. That one star I'm stuck with years later over one tiny mistake when we have corrected the problem is ridiculous for my business to be saddled with. Will the guy take it down? Nope, he feels entitled to continue warning people away from us all these years later for one little mistake that we owned up to, apologized for and took corrective action. That bothers me as it would anybody else.

Just curious, how has that 1 star review affected your rating, because wouldn't it all even out? I just took a look at some of the local businesses in my neighbourhood - almost all of them have a 4+ rating, even the local fried chicken place which has a ton of 1 star reviews (some of which sound absolutely deserved - a long hair encrusted in the chicken batter; green fuzz growing on the cheese in the poutine)

My point is I don't know anybody who looks at ratings and says "Hmm, these guys are only 4.4 stars. Definitely not going there"

[calumniate]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Can you imagine if BoLevi showed.....#### me

woah now.. that'll cost ya!

[Flames_Gimp]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I'm skeptical of the story. I have yet to receive a bad review that is truthful with literally one exception.

Changing the agreement after the fact? Skeptical of that, too. If true, yes, that's a problem. Do I think a used hot tub dealer is genius level businessman with knowledge of the law? No. I can see him saying, let's change our terms and conditions so this doesn't happen again. Was it a signed contract, though? Maybe and if it was he obviously can't do that, but sounds like OP has the proof to invalidate that if his story is 100% accurate. If so, let's see it. I don't have a problem with being wrong on that point.

I'd like to hear the other side before I tell this guy to scream it from the rooftops.

dude instead of attacking a complete stranger, come over i will show you everything and when you're satisfied you can retract your accusation, if you're saying you have never seen a truthful review either you're lying or you treat customers poorly. Not everyone lies, you're acting like no business has ever mistreated customers.

You should b3 wondering how many bad reviews are missing due to being intimidated to take them down.

i have left a whopping 2 google reviews ever.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by calumniate

woah now.. that'll cost ya!

We've already had 2 mentions of cream based salad dressing.......only 1 more......