Hellopeter.com - more than meets the eye.

[Chris B]

"...You may be Wrong, You may be Right..."

I must first say that I have never used or heard of hellopeter.com untill I've read this thread.
On the outsiders point of view I can say the following:
If I had to be seen under the same light you will probably find that to an extend my business and infact most businesses work on the same principle.
We see a demand for a service or product, we find a way to force customers to use it which in itself makes it viable for other companies to use us...
Peter went and did the same thing as an estate agent would do, being a middle man in a pressing situiation as having to get two parties to agree on something and walk away happy.
Yes, there will be people who has not found satisfaction in his creation but show me the business that hasn't got unhappy clients. And yes there will always be ways to improve on what he/we do in our ethics, sales technics etc. to improve the perception from the public. I know sales reps who projects far worse promises just to get a sale and some of you know that their in you companies too, but we use them because they get the sales...

To tell you the truth, I think that everyone that doesn't agree with the idea might just be a little bit jelous that they din't think of it first...

[Chatmaster]

Interesting reply Chris B,

I listened to Peter's response on 702 the other day. It all made sense to me. He is in it to make money and he honestly feel he is delivering an honest service that are worth the fees he charges as he is fulfilling a pr function for the company. There is clearly allot of people supporting his website. Both on the side of the consumer and from business. This also makes sense depending on how you look at it.

Companies should be excited as the site allow them to easily communicate with their consumers and resolve possible problems. This should benefit both small and large pr departments and especially companies without any pr departments. Hellopeter simply SMS or email them the moment there is a complaint about them.
Further Peter made it clear that he calculates the costs based on the amount of complaints they get. The more complaints there is a for a company, the more they will pay. He said the allegations that hellopeter request documentation with the turnover of the business was completely false and that the costs are purely calculated based on the number of complaints they get.

No here is the catch!

If my PR department handles every case they have in public it will be a disaster! I might be able to get some positive marketing out of some complaints. But most people will look at it in the long run and remember all the complaints, apposed to me having a pr department that only response to public complaints and do the washing in public when it is absolutely required. The rest of the complaints are resolved in private. It is also important to note that many complaints can be the fault of the complainant and very often the company the complaint is against did nothing wrong.

Now what role does hellopeter play? All complaints are public, whether or not you as a business have paid the fee or not. You can only respond if you pay the fee which goes to Peter based on his reasoning that he assists you with a pr function at a fraction of the cost. Is this true however?
IMO the answer is no. PR strategies whereby washing is done in public is highly risky. Companies will avoid it all costs as it can be a very complicated thing to handle. You will note that Peter has a very small (but profitable) representation of companies on his site. This makes sense as fortunately only the 400 on his site either felt the heat he generated against them or perhaps they feel they can do with his service, or maybe a few that feels that this is a very successful way of handling PR.

My problem is this. What is the real issue here?

I sold biltong to Billy from my butchery. A week down the line Billy decides to make a post on Hellopeter because he put the biltong in his fridge and it was filled with maggots this morning. Anny reads it there and realize it is the butchery in her suburb we she buys from. Now the story runs! I find out about the issue from my daughter because someone called her a magget farmer at school. Finally I realize that Billy has reported me on Hellopeter. My butchery is very small and infact I have allot of debt just to get it up and running a few weeks ago. Now Peter wants to charge me R500 to respond and say, guys! This is nonsense, I will give you a new piece of biltong.

The point here is that the concept is flawed, the problem is that peter is getting support from people on both business and consumer and I do not think Peter has the right to charge business any fees as that is not fair to expect it from them.

[duncan drennan]

Seems like there is a growing tide of resentment towards HelloPeter,

Some call him an extortionist, others a champion of customer service. An anti-Hellopeter website was even started.

HelloPeter – and its owner Peter Cheales – is in the firing line from a group of consumers and some companies who feel that the website is an extortion scheme which forces companies to pay to respond to consumers.

Criticism has also been leveled at the information supplied by the website about its traffic and statistics. An anti-HelloPeter website, hosted at http://hellopeter.wetpaint.com/?t=anon, was started highlighting many of the criticisms aimed at the website in the past.

Full story on MyBroadBand

If you read the whole article there are a number of interesting comments. This stuck out to me,

Consumers have also accused the site for deleting comments, something which can get a disgruntled customer hot under the collar. In one such case – aimed at HelloPeter itself – Cheales simply replied “Sunday afternoon and I really can’t be bothered to respond to childish drivel – Peter�, something which drew sharp criticism from some observers.

Now, whatever the particular case was is not so important, but the way things are handled is. I've seen this type of behaviour elsewhere before and it breaks down community in the long run - and the basis of this type of site is a strong community. Lose that, and there is no reason for customers to use it, or companies to respond.

Interesting times ahead.

[Chatmaster]

Consumers have also accused the site for deleting comments, something which can get a disgruntled customer hot under the collar. In one such case – aimed at HelloPeter itself – Cheales simply replied “Sunday afternoon and I really can’t be bothered to respond to childish drivel – Peter�, something which drew sharp criticism from some observers.

Well Peter did admit to this in his radio interview with 702. His explanation was that he deleted repeated posts to prevent duplication.

Ironically the so called "PR genius" has his own PR problem to deal with. I am also afraid that this time he might not be able to sort it out, the Internet doesn't take kindly on people that underestimates its power.

[Chatmaster]

I also would like to comment on the Traffic stats that Peter claims he is getting. Many people has had things to say about it.



10mil Hits?
This is absolutely possible if you look at the definition of a hit. I mean if he has a mountain of images, .js files etc that loads with every page, he can easily get that amount of hits, regardless of the amount of unique visitors he gets.

From my experience, I would estimate Hellopeter's traffic at no more than 15,000 unique visitors a day. That is about 10,000 over what I really believe it is, just because Google has over 70,000 pages indexed, and that means that they can probably rank for any kind of keyword and get all kinds of untargeted traffic. (The SEO on this site is really poorly done)

For example if you take his customer with the largest amount of complaints and do searches on it, SA Only results on Google, you will not find his site under the top 10. The keyword is "Telkom"

2,000 comments each day?

His own website reveals the truth here.

Go to VIEW COMMENTS
Ensure that you select "all" Countries and "2 days ago", then click search.
Result is 510 results (FOR 2 DAYS). My maths says that this is a bit short of 2,000 per day.
Ensure that you select "all" Countries and "10 days ago", then click search.
Result is 1853 results (FOR 10 DAYS). My maths says that this is a bit short of 2,000 per day.
Over 90 days there has been 17311 complaints added. The average per day is then 192 per day!

Now something that completely bugs me about Peter.
If you look at the play of words on his site! Is this guy serious about everything he says? I mean seriously! If there is one thing I HATE, it is if someone treats me as a fool. He is doing exactly that. It started for the first time in 2001, In one of these speaker books. But let me take this example now!

At the bottom of his home page.
"The world's most viewed comments" "The world's most"
Please define this for me Peter! You have NOTHING, nadda, none, no idea what this means! You do not even have one comment from any other country available through your search! Only South Africa! His world is really tiny

Sorry guys I am loosing it here! Time to go for a swim.

[Dave A]

Maybe a swim is a good idea, Chatmaster. Summer is coming fast

My original unease was borne from the conditions around the classification of companies that don't respond. Now it's been a while since I last looked so I took a quick peek now.

Certainly no shortage of companies listed, but there is also this piece of text at the top:

The companies listed below have had a minimum of five comments written about them in the last year. As they are not subscribers, they cannot respond to your comments, because they are not provided with your contact details.

Once a Company subscribes and becomes a Company Who Responds, it is removed from this list and transferred onto the list of Companies Who Respond, so enjoying all the benefits of existing Companies Who Respond.
from this page

They might not be able to respond directly to the person, but Peter (if I've got this right) does not allow them to respond in the form of a message on the site either without coughing up a fee.

Ironically the so called "PR genius" has his own PR problem to deal with.

Well there's not much wrong with his marketing! The old saying goes "There's no such thing as bad publicity." I wonder how many hits he got today.

[Chatmaster]

I often like to argue that bad publicity is a fantastic opportunity for any business. There are some examples where I would much rather NOT have bad publicity though

I think Peter has a serious problem here. He has clearly made several false statements and it is coming back to haunt him. Under such circumstances bad publicity might hurt you rather than help you. I think it is time he reinvent his business model and listen to what people are trying to tell him. He has an excellent site, but an unfair business model. Fix it and he will not look back!

[RKS Computer Solutions]

Isn't it funny how the "champion of consumer service" is a SCAM ARTIST himself? I agree with you CM that any publicity is good for a business, but what Peter has gotten himself into will see his ship slowly sinking... preferable somewhere offshore in deep waters...

I posted a message on the wetpaint wiki, stating that if I should have to pay R13,500 right now, I might as well close my doors... I still believe that if a client doesn't contact me first to try and sort out a problem, then they haven't really tried at all.

In todays corporate environment where companies plough through their customers first and make amends later, it's not an unlikely situation where a company will ignore a client until they go public about their issues. Then only will the company respond and sort it out...

But, like the poster on the wiki said, having to pay an exuberant fee to only reply to a client who was in breach of contract, makes them seem as if they were the faulty party.

For small companies who are watching their budget, I still believe that if a client doesn't contact you directly first, and makes sure he speaks to the owner/manager to get it sorted, then they have reason to go to someone like hellopeter...

For myself, also being a small company, I reckon it's rather a case of byebyepeter than hellopeter... I'd rather a client phone me up at 2am in the morning stating that he got the wrong stuff or his new build is not happening because of faulty stuff, than have my company name smeared over the internet without a chance of me sorting it out first...

Even though I have never had issues with any of my clients, I dread the day when I get a SCAMmail from byebyepeter instead of a phone call from my client first...

so, byebyepeter

[RKS Computer Solutions]

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=www.hellopeter.com&url=www.hellopeter.com/

the alexa stats for the site shows it's in decline... he might get a few spikes about the news stories flying around, but it will die a slow death indeed...

[RKS Computer Solutions]

another thought...

why is hellopeter themselves not listed under companies who don't respond?

[Chatmaster]

Well reading the article on MyADSL. He is getting in the region of 34 416 Unique visitors per month. This is very realistic, but makes me ask even more questions about what Peter is saying on his website. OK, so lets be honest about one thing. Hellopeter definitely has successes with consumer complaints, and many people are extremely happy about their service. It will definitely not just disappear of the map, just like that!

[RKS Computer Solutions]

But he will be a null on a contract in the eyes of the small company...

Would you trust any details regarding visitors he's given through to anyone after his story keeps on changing? I personally would trust only figures I see when logged onto his server and call pull those stats directly...

[duncan drennan]

For small companies who are watching their budget, I still believe that if a client doesn't contact you directly first, and makes sure he speaks to the owner/manager to get it sorted, then they have reason to go to someone like hellopeter...

I think for most clients they have already exhausted their options by the time they go to a site like HelloPeter. The problem is when they don't get through to the manager/owner/etc. Most companies big/small would respond if an unhappy client got through to the owner, and what would the owner do? Probably crap out the person that should have dealt with it. And what is the direct consequence of that? The person who should deal with it will go out of their way to ensure that the client does not get through to the owner/manger....which leads to them going to HelloPeter.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

I agree with you Duncan, but then how do I go about proving that my customer service is better than any other company in SA?

I will be the first to tell you that general customer service in SA is crap, but having spent 5 years in Europe and the surrounds, I've picked up a thing or two in regards to how a customer should be treated and I brought that mentality to SA with me...

All the contact details on my site leads directly to the mobile phone I carry by me 100% of the time, so anyone saying they couldn't reach me, must be pretty sure the cell networks were completely dead and the internet destroyed before they can claim that...

Ho do I then, as a small business owner, go about business in such a way as to be the first option a client thinks of contacting?

[duncan drennan]

I agree with you Duncan, but then how do I go about proving that my customer service is better than any other company in SA?

Is this really something that can be promoted effectively directly?