It took over 4,000 entries and almost four years, but it finally happened: my blog has finally gotten me into trouble. I’m finally a player!
Yesterday morning, as I was working at my desk, I got a phone call:
Female voice with Eastern European accent: Hello, I have some questions about your web site.
Me: Go ahead…
FV: How do you create your website?
Me: With Blogware, our weblogging software. Is there anything in particular you’d like to know?
FV: And how are comments added to the website? Do they email you, and then you add them?
Me: No, that’s handled automatically by Blogware. Every article has a link that you can click on to add a comment. You type it in, click a button, and it’s there.
FV: And if there were a comment you wanted to delete, could anyone do that?
Me: No, only the owner and people the owner sets up as administrators can do that.
At this point, it was beginning to dawn on me that the person on the other end of the line wasn’t a customer. What was going on?
FV: I am asking because I would like a comment removed. Someone left a comment that is not true.
Me: Not true? Which one?
FV: The one in the thing about movers. Someone left a comment about our company that is not true. They said we did things, but they signed a paper clearing us. If you do not remove this comment, we will send our lawyers after you.
I sighed. I needed to get a lot of work done, and dealing with non-work headaches, especially the threat of legal action, was the last thing I needed.
I decided the best thing to do for the time being would be to copy the comment, take it down and evaluate the situation when I had more time. I pointed my browser at the Blogware control panel, found the article and called up its comment-editing page.
Me: So which comment is it?
FV: The one about Quick Boys.
For the record, here’s the comment:
Re: Anyone Know any Good Toronto Movers?
by Anonymous on 2005.06.27 02:00PM EDT | IP: 70.29.128.20No good ones to recommend but two to avoid at all costs:
Moveworks: Hired them in 2001 to move between two units in the same building. They showed up 3 hours late, failed to bring wardrobe boxes, and sent two 16 year old kids with one of their girlfriends. They moved about four things into the service elevator and then took off, leaving two moving dollies behind and me to do the entire move without assistance. Thank god for friends.
Quick Boys Moving & Storage: Avoid like the plague. Hired in April to move my girlfriend into our place. They took seven hours to load a one bedroom apartment into the truck and drive about ten minutes (they were, of course, being paid hourly). Held her stuff hostage at this end until we paid for the full move. Damaged a substantial percentage of the furniture with scratches, etc. “Forgot” to unload two boxes of crystalware and took three weeks to deliver it to us. The movers were surly, unpleasant, and stank of body odour.
Good luck! A lot of the companies out there really exist to rip you off so be careful. I’ve heard good things about El Cheapo and Two Small Guys With Big Hearts but have never used either. If I ever hire movers again, I’ll just swallow my cost-saving needs and go with the big guys.
It was written by my friend Jay Goldman. I’ve known Jay for about three years and I’ve worked with him on a couple of occasions. He’s always dealt straight with me.
Me: And you say that this comment is not true?
FV: It is a lie. Let me put my boss on the line.
Gruff Male Voice with Eastern European Accent: Remove that comment. That’s all I’m going to say. (click)
Niiiiice. A real sweetheart, that one. There was a bit of an edge to the “That’s all I’m going to say” bit.
FV: So if you could remove that comment, it would be appreciated. I will check to confirm that they have been deleted.
And with that, she hung up.
I noticed that someone had recently added a new comment about Quick Boys. Here it is:
Re: Anyone Know any Good Toronto Movers?
by Anonymous on 2005.07.28 10:45AM EDT | IP: 64.229.26.252I have used Quick Boys Movnig Storage i think they were the best and they have moved couple of my friends as well and they were all
happy. I belive no one is perfect even big van line make mistakes as well.I think whats up there is not true. I highly recomend Quick Boys Moving storage.
Thank you Julian.m
In light of the phone call, the time when the comment was posted and its English-as-a-second-language wording, this comment seemed very suspicious, almost as if it were planted by a shill.
I Googled, using “Quick Boys” and “movers” as search terms. It turns out that the blog entry was the number 2 result. So that’s why they were unhappy.
I saved copies of both Quick Boys-related comments to deal with them later and then deleted them.
Five minutes later, she called back.
Female Voice: I am looking at your site and I see that the comments have not been deleted. I am going to talk to your employer.
Me: Have you reloaded the web page?
FV: Reloaded?
Me: On the toolbar of your browser, there should be a picture of a piece of paper with arrows going in circles. That’s the “refresh” button. Click it, and you’ll reload the page.
FV: Ah. I see. Good.
Me: Now wait a minute. I’m only doing this because I don’t have time to deal with you idiots right now. When I get a moment, I’m going to look into this. Now if your complaint is legitimate, I’ll gladly do as you ask, because I’m not into smearing people. But the way you’re acting, that’s just plain thuggery. This is a personal web site; my employer has nothing to do with this. The person who made the comment is voicing his opinion and he’s not the sort to lie.
FV: But he signed a contract saying he was satisfied.
Me: And if he did, there won’t be a problem. But if he wasn’t satisfied, his comment is going back up. You can’t go pushing people around like this. Do I make myself clear?
FV: I understand.
I gave Jay a ring. He was in a meeting, so I simply left a message. He called me back later that afternoon:
Jay: Hey, Joey, I hear Quick Boys is on your case.
Me: Heh. Yeah. So, what happened?
Jay: Pretty much what I wrote — my girlfriend was moving in and hired them. They arrived over an hour late and in the end took a grand total of nine hours to move a single bedroom a short distance. When they got to my place, they refused to unload the truck until she paid up and signed the contract.
They took so long that they had to run somewhere else and left a lot of her stuff on the ground floor of the building; we had to take it up ourselves. Plus, they damaged some of her furniture and held onto some her stuff until we complained. They say that she signed something that clears them of any responsibility. I asked them for a copy of this document, and after stalling, said they’d mail it to me. I never received it. It’s worthless anyway; I talked to my lawyer and he said that a contract signed under duress like that isn’t valid.
Me: Huh.
Jay: Hey, sorry to cause you all this trouble. You can take down the comments –
Me: No. I trust you, and they way they’ve treated me, I can’t say I trust these guys. Those comments are going back up. For me to take them down…
Jay: …would be pretty bad.
Me: That’s right. In fact, I’m going to post a whole damned blog entry about it.
As I mentioned before, I know Jay, and based on his actions and my dealing with him, trust him. On the other hand, my (admittedly and thankfully) brief experience with Quick Boys has been filled with subterfuge and threats. Thus far, I have no reason to trust them.
The worst thing I can do as a high-profile Toronto blogger, an employee of a company that makes blogging software and a card-carrying member of the EFF is to back down in the face of idle threats like those made by the people at Quick Boys. When someone kowtows to bullying like this, we all lose.
If any representative of Quick Boys wishes to respond to this, they can do so in the comments or give me a ring at the office. I believe they know the number.
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Depends on the jurisdiction. Truth is no defence in some jurisdictions. And the precedents being delivered in some of those places mean that libel doesn’t have to have occurred in the place of the business operation, or among an intended audience.
Having said that, I’m rather glad Joey has posted this. A test case on this issue would turn all those precedents on their head and prevent the stupidity of internet censorship.
Nice, but I doubt youll get very far with so many raving testimonials on their site:
http://quickboysmovingstorage.supersites.ca/testimonials1/
Balls in now in your court, Joey..
Who do you think we’re going to believe, Joey or Quick Boys? Around here, we trust what Joey has to say. What we’ve heard of Quick Boys means we aren’t likely to trust them at all. I suspect that the positive comments on the Quick Boys site were put there by the guys who run that company.
Nice, but I’ll doubt they’ll get very far with Google picking up Joey’s link as the number one result for Quick Boys Moving.
Ball’s back in your court, fraud of a moving company.
So you would have preferred if he had left that detail out? Do you have a problem with the facts?
However, there’s an important difference between US and UK libel law. In the US, the plaintiff must prove that the publication is libelous (false, malicious, etc). In the UK, the defendant must prove that it is not libelous (meaning that you’ve got to be able to prove that every last sentence is strictly true).
Any Canadian lawyers out there? Which is the case in Canada?
The funny thing, though, is that the UK press is far more fearless and aggressive than the US press is, even though publishing anything critical is much more legally risky in the UK.
Quick Boys moving Is very good moving company they have great moving and best customer service.”
June,2003 Sara Mori
Fake. So fake.
If you go to their web page and read their “testimonials” most of them are written in the same english-as-a-second-language style as the double-posted comment.
I’ll be posting a blurb and a link about this in my blog and encouraging others to do the same. Everyone who blogs and allows comments should be concerned about this subject. Hats off to you, Joey!
You obviously didn’t read the comment, did you? Read it again. The person said he understood why Joey said what he said, but that he was disappointed at the reactions of some Xenophobes who read it. Which I think is a valid point: I was disappointed (and disgusted) too.
Weblog:
Mixed Up Socks
Excerpt:
“…It looks like Quick Boys Moving and Storage company in Canada doesn’t like people complaining about their service. They make you sign a waiver saying you’re satisfied with their service before they’ll unload your stuff. If you comment about their less than perfect service in a friends blog later, they’ll track down your friend at work, tell him to remove the comment, threaten him with lawsuits and even say they will contact his employer. They might have even make veiled threats toward your friend and his fiance in the blog’s comments…
Sure, this sounds a little far fetched, but I’m buying it.
Read about it here, and when you’re done, blog about it. If you have a comments section open to the public, you should be interested in this.”
Posted:
07.29.05 9:36 pm
I can see a grand total of ONE xenophobic comment, and it’s in all-caps and quite ranty. And it was immediately stepped on by another commenter.
Mentioning someone’s race is not the same as xenophobia. And if your knee-jerk reaction so completely colours everything you read, your opinion is not safe to rely on or even consider.
Nothing substantial to this post — I’m just seeing if I can put a close italics tag here to fix the mass italicization.
You’re right; mentioning someone’s race isn’t xenophobia unless it’s followed by the word “scum” or “thug”, the latter of which appears more than once in this discussion as if the association is completely normal.
you’re a hero!
Go here; http://www.quickboysmoving.com/quickboys/index.html and theres a full list of contact numbers under contact us. The american number was answered by an american who had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about intimidating people. When I called a couple of the candian numbers they were answered by russians or at least people who knew russian (I know a little russian and spoke it with them briefly). As soon as I mentioned google results or intimidating people they said…not-nice russian words and hung up. I guess they’ve been getting similar calls
Keep kicking ass.
We’re now covering this story here at blogTO.com . Thought you might like to know that even more people care.
From their testimonial page:
Funny how all of their testimonials share a lack of grammar… almost like…. they’re the same person.
I once contacted the EFF for legal advice regarding a torrent site. The EFF referenced me to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). The CIPPIC wrote an official legal opinion for me. Very well researched, and free.
http://www.cippic.ca/
I once contacted the EFF for legal advice regarding a torrent site. The EFF referenced me to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). The CIPPIC wrote an official legal opinion for me. Very well researched, and free.
http://www.cippic.ca/
Crud, sorry about the double post, I got an internal error the first time.
I suspect Quick Boys is one of the many “moving companies” that are actually Mossad front operations for carrying out spying and other dirty tricks; they don’t like any attention brought to their activities.
Joey:
Congrats on your achievement.
I live in T.O. and have never heard of these villains, I mean substandard movers. What a nightmare to have to endure if you are unfortunate enough to hire them.
Kudos on your failure to be intimidated by their english speaking representative. It is good to fight EVIL with GOOD because many web-savvy individuals will now not be hiring them or using their pathetic services.
On a practical note, these people can just rename their company and start swindling others of their possessions and money. It would have been better had your friend also posted their license plate number and the full names of the people that were moving his stuff. This is something we should all do to protect our interests at the outset of a move. In this manner you have the names and particulars of anyone that wants to intimidate you or not perform the contract as agreed.
Cheers,
Alex
In the past, mainstream media would do the occasional expose and embarrass only the most obvious corruption. This moving company will be immortalized for eternity on the pages of google which should have a much better success rate when it comes to keeping shady businesses in line.
On the other hand, it’d be scary as a small business owner if my significant other’s ex decided to defame me on his blog and it lead to the demise of my business.
Sheee-it. So you expect him just to completely leave out large gaping details in a narrative so some people don’t say mean things about Eastern Europeans?
WTF?
Dude, if everyone spent their entire lives trying not to inspire dislike in others, no one would get anything done.
Do ya know? Some sub-continent in origin young lady called me a snob on the train the other day. Is it because I is a cracker?
Dear Anon,
Beware that nobody actually knows if these people are from eastern Europe. Even if they are, does that make any difference in the least? Don’t let nationalism fool you.
Cheers,
Niklas
Question though…
What good is “legal protection” going to do if they break your legs or something stupid like that? Its like saying, “sure pedestrians have the right of way – but are you stupid enough to j-walk the freeway?” You get your ass hurt or killed – you think a lawsuit will help bring something back?
That’s the case where I say, for all the crap DRM and such has – it could actually come in handy because then EVERYONE is easily tracable – and we have at least better protection on our own personal PHYSICAL security, as for our rights? Well that’s another matter.
Cudos Joey – if only more people would stand up to those who believe that force and intimidation will get them anything good in this world.
The problem is that in this particular case, the use of “Eastern European accent” implies some kind of cold-war-era badnik shadiness instead of just being a narrative detail. Like the dark music following the bad guys in a movie that’s supposed to further convince you of their badness.
Xenophobe was a really good Nintendo game.
this is absolutely bizarre. i have never seen such a big fuss over a small comment! tough – the guy had a bad experience with the movers. he�s not the first and certainly won�t be the last. and a comment posted on this blog brought on such anger? don�t these moving people have enough business so as not to have so much free time and check out blogs for negative comments on their work??? do they realize this is a democracy and people are actually free to come forward with their opinions? opinions are not right or wrong! hellooooo movers? anyway, when this is over and done with it will turn out to be a great short story or a short film. really.
cheers!
Oh, boohoo. Get over it.
I’m a lawyer. Truth is ALWAYS a defense to libel because a statement cannot be libelous if it is true.
To play devil’s advocate, if the original commenter knowingly posted a false account of what happened, it would be libelous and, yes, wrong in every sense of the word.
And you say it’s just a “small comment”, but as you can tell from this brouhaha, Google scores aren’t that hard to influence (and checking your Google entry is good business, IMHO). It wouldn’t be that hard to sabotage a competitor with malicious blog comments.
In the immortal words of Chris Rock, I’m not saying it’s right, but I understand.
That said, I do hope legal action is taken against the movers. Or at least file a complaint with BBB (or Canadian equivalent) so it’s on the record. Fraud and intimidation by moving companies go unpunished too often.
yt
I’m a lawyer as well, and the writer who stated it depends upon jurisdiction is correct. I just wrapped up a libel case. In at least one U.S. jurisdiction (Florida – the state who brought you the 2000 election fiasco), a true statement uttered for an “improper reason” is actionable.
The post might be anonymous because there’s no way to “login” to the blog software:
“You are not currently logged in. If you would like your user information to be displayed with your comment, please enter your login information below.”
So, uh, where do I get my login information?
I am Alan Gutierrez, by the way, not trying to hide behind anonymity.
Seriously, do I have to sign up for a blogware blog or something? I already have a blog.
Bingo – you’ve got it. There were no personal names mentioned?
No libel.
This is ostensibly a business enterprise, and if incorporated is subject to the whims of the market.
Yes, I’m sure xenophobic people are just waiting in the wings of Joey’s blog to descend and wreak havoc with the comments…
Joey, you should be ashamed you redneck jerk! Oh, wait…
Alan, again.
Okay, I don’t know how to log in, but…
“You are getting married soon and you have your whole life ahead of you. Why mess around with a bunch of Eastern European thugs like this?”
Pathetic. Utterly, pathetic.
Thanks for posting this story. It’s hilarious.
i too have had a very similiar, very bad experience with a moving company here in victoria, b.c. Diamond Moving is owned and operated by an apparently accentless white man who appears to have been born and raised a canadian even though he(suspiciously) goes by the name of “Diamond Dave”. i’m sure he is not representative of mosy other white, unaccented canadians and i do not mean to disparage them(i mean us). He was personally involved in my disasterous move but even though i was paying by the number of men on the job, of which he was one, he sat in his truck and smoked all day. when i complained about damage he showed me the form i had signed before the move which excused them if things were not properly packed. In this case probably about six inches of foam around everything would have helped a lot. i quit complaining when i began to fear from their aggressive attitudes that violence was part of their negotiating tactics. my friend who has worked in the moving industry tells me that these small fly by nighters don’t really care because their is always enough new vicims (whoops, i mean customers) who have not heard of them, to keep their business going and if it gets really bad there is always the name change option. i also spoke with one of his former employees who ionformed me that this diamond dave guy gets 5 to 10 complaints a month and most are settled in the same way as mine was. be careful what you sign, and have witnesses and/or protection around if you are disputing anything
For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of a call from Boris or Yanosch (Please excuse my poor quality answering machine recording):
MovingGuy-Yanosch.mp3
MovingGuy-Boris.mp3
I was searching for a way to send some feedback to quick boys and have spent the last hour reading this blog. Great reading. Since I now intuit that the company is probably not interested in post payment feedback, I’ll just comment here. I moved last weekend (August long weekend) and used quickboys. All in all they were pretty good. The only thing they did wrong in my move was squeeze an extra 1/2 hour of payment ($45) by dragging their feet on a couple of things. When they showed up, on time, the driver took 1/2 an hour explaining how he was going to charge me. He borrowed a piece of paper and proceeded to do multiplication long form. When they were done the job he went to his truck and pulled out his calculator to tally the bill, at which point I asked him why he didn’t use that to begin with. They also ended up getting a couch stuck in a doorway which they only had to move a grand total of 9 feet since I was throwing it out and only needed to go from the front room to the porch…ended up costing me $30 to move that one piece of furniture.
Like I said though, all in all they did a pretty decent job. I’m sorry other’s have had such a problem with them. Moving sucks no matter how well the process goes. Next time I’m just going to throw out all my stuff and start fresh in the new place. I like the idea of being a minimalist.
I double-checked my sources. Truth is an absolute defense everywhere in Canada but Quebec, as it turns out. – Joe Clark
From Cody Saunders (www.tk23.com/www.tkblog.com):
I like this section … it seems like the shill got his college dropout son to be a secondary shill:
“Like I said though, all in all they did a pretty decent job. I’m sorry other’s have had such a problem with them. Moving sucks no matter how well the process goes. Next time I’m just going to throw out all my stuff and start fresh in the new place. I like the idea of being a minimalist.”
The sarcasm in the next to last sentence seems to be a way of saying “aw, come on, give ‘em a break..”
But I’m into subtelty. I hate the idea of being a minimalist.
Joey,
It’s nice that even blogging can expose these half-cracked businesses that exist only to rip people off. The day of the ‘threatening phone calls’ to straighten things out is bullsh**. I hope you and Jay do NOT back down, and that more people learn about this business and eventually shut them down.
Beagle action?
– Gloria
I for one know for a fact Jay is telling the truth. For some reason the owners of Quick Boys seem to think that it is ok to intimidate people. As first generation Canadians emigrated from Iran, I believe that they feel this behaviour is acceptable. They often lose things and then try to get out of having to pay for or replace said items. As far as movers and drivers, there is absolutely no training and u will be lucky if they speak or understand english at all. General labour is all they will hire. My advise is to never ever use this company. As a matter of fact I advise is to pack and move your own things that way no one can take advantage and u will have no one to blame for broken items but yourself!
Hey, everyone has their own way of living life and everyone needs to make a buck in their own way. Some people take advantage of others and some people get taken advantage of. That is the cyle of life. I’m sure from the Quick Boys’ perspective, they were taken advantage of here. The point is everyone is able to justify their own reality one way or another.
The beat goes on so there is no sense in trying to stop it. Thump. Thump. Thump. Do you hear it? It is the great heart of life pumping in the only way it knows how.
Besides, this Quick Boy story is dead. Take a look at The Soundtrack from My Personal Coming-Of-Age Film, Part Deux – wow!
So that it’s documented for those searching. I too got screwed over by Quick Boys (recently). They showed up an hour late, took 8 hours to move a one bedroom apartment, and damaged almost every piece of furniture that we own. The movers didn’t know how to pack the truck, so they ended up not having enough room for all of our possessions (again, this is a one bedroom apartment, and a normal sized truck) – we had to leave stuff behind.
Avoid Quick Boys moving at all costs…
I have no idea how I stumbled on this, but the whole thing is hilarious.
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