Hellopeter.com - more than meets the eye.

[Chatmaster]

Just a note.

Peter is currently surveying his subscribers for feedback on his site. He is handling it pretty well, but the main issue to me is, he is intending to make changes. Maybe he has heard the voices and are planning something to fix all this. I personally will now sit back and see what happens.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

Will you keep us updated please?

[Chatmaster]

I certainly will. He received feedback from over 4,000 subscribers on how to improve his site. I have been receiving these emails daily now, so hopefully that means he is in a hurry to make changes.

[Dave A]

Consulting the market is a good PR move. A survey so that you get what you want.

Let's face it - he wrote the book!

[RKS Computer Solutions]

Receiving feedback from subscribers is great. Whether or not he will implement those things close to his heart, is another story...

Consulting the market is a good PR move, agreed, but how about surveying those companies that hasn't paid his fees, finding out how he can make it easier for them. How about surveying businesses in SA to get their feedback?

He might have wrote the book on PR, but will his lies come back to haunt him?

[Chatmaster]

Riaan, to be honest I foresee that he will come out on top. He is going to turn all this bad publicity into good publicity and still charge fees in the same way he did before. I can't wait to learn from the master. It starts to feel like I am watching a world champion chess player outsmart his opponent.

[duncan drennan]

I think this post on MyBroadband is quite relevant,

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.

How it is determined how much you pay, that I'm not too sure about...

Does anyone know anything about "right of reply" in the journalistic sense? Is this just an ethical thing that journalist do?

[Chatmaster]

Something stinks here Duncan. I heard Peter make a clear statement on 702 confirming that he had a sliding scale costing structure. He clearly said so.

[duncan drennan]

Something stinks here Duncan. I heard Peter make a clear statement on 702 confirming that he had a sliding scale costing structure. He clearly said so.

I'm not too sure I follow (the smell that is). The post would confirm that it is a sliding scale - a small business pays a smaller fee than a large one. I'm guessing that the sliding scale is a function of (a) number of complaints, (b) size of company, (c) perceived value for company.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

Riaan, to be honest I foresee that he will come out on top.

It's not so much about him coming out on top as it is that business in general in SA should come out on top... And for the customer to know that if they complain about something, that the company concerned actually has the same rights as them in answering, and not having to pay for the chance...

I think this post on MyBroadband is quite relevant,

How it is determined how much you pay, that I'm not too sure about...

That is a question asked above before, and if CM can pass that question through to Peter, and get a decent answer and not just "determined by your market and size"...

[Chatmaster]

Unfortunately I do not have contact with Peter in any way to ask him anything. The discussion with John Robbie was handled in a very clever way. John specifically confronted him with figures and he didn't deny the figures. If I remember correctly it was between R13,000 and R65,000. Peter never admitted this, instead he explained why the fees are there and tried to explain the story about acting as a PR department for the company and the costs are based on the amount of complaints a company get. So it is as simple as I didn't admit it so I can deny the fees structures at any time. Nor can my existing customers say I lied by denying it.

Then just remember. Charging any fee, no matter how small, still defeats the purpose!

[Dave A]

Peter can wriggle, squirm and tap dance all he likes. For me the core issues remain the same:

• Consumers can publish unsubstantiated complaints for free
• Companies may only respond for a fee
• That fee seems to be based on a what-the-market-can-bear model
• Companies that don't pay are branded as companies that do not respond/don't care.

No matter how financially brilliant this might be, the modus operandi is rather uncomfortably similar to that of a blackmailer.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

Ditto Dave! and Bravo!

What do you guys make of this?

http://hellopeter.wetpaint.com/page/...be+blackmailed.

Anonymous Today, 2:14 AM EDT 1 Annual registration is what he wants , idiot you are paying for it
2 wow getting the customers details is great i wouldnt expect anything less,idiot you are paying for it
3 wow you gwt an email, give me an address for yourself ill send you one, idiot you are paying for it
4 geez a free sms wow even FNB will do it for "free" idiot you are paying for it
5 supplier response idiot you are paying for it
6 update response idiot you are paying for it
7 Hyperlink idiot you are paying for it
8 Customer response rating idiot you are paying for it
9 Newsflash "have you seen how many companies are on his HomePage" only the companies that are working for him GO CHECK
10 10% discount for what 50 - minute Explosive Experience. WOW! R 15 000.00

2 - hour Power-Packed Presentation. R 21 000.00

3 - hour complete performance. R 25 000.00

International Presentations U.S. $ 11 000.00 you must be kidding because he also charges you for travel and accomadation 50mins R15000 you must be joking

IN CONCLUSION YOU ARE AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Marq]

The latest email / spam from hellopeter starts off with this:-

We’re moving! Afrihost is about to be our new ISP. I was approached a while ago by Gian Visser at Afrihost who proposed some exciting ideas. And he couldn’t have come along at a better time. We were tearing our hair out with DataPro – a young Gary Sweidan instructed his team to supply us with nothing more than a box. “It’s not our job to help you …”. Strange, but true.

So how much did Afrihost pay Peter Cheales to get the benefits of the thousands of names that hellopeter should have by now?

Do you think He used the hellopeter site to complain against Datapro? There is one complaint without a user being named there, that could be. He didnt get a response then either. The only funny entry was the one I found complaining about hellopeter who had registered this Datapro as a company who responded, when they had not responded to the complaints at all.

Do you think it's immoral, that a site of this nature, who harvests emails from the various parties in a complaining and vulnerable position should be able to use those email addresses to praise and abuse suppliers in this fashion for their own gratification?

Is it any different to me complaining about my isp and telling the forum and the world out there not to use Webstorm as I got a bum deal there?

[Ann Williams]

Let me get this straight?

HelloPeter actually sends out an e-mail to all of the people on its list saying that DataPro sucks and therefore they are moving?!

Even if DataPro was pretty bad with their service in comparison to the new guys, do they deserve this kind of dissing? He's jolly lucky that DataPro are not suing him in the same way that Oprah got sued by beef farmers for exclaiming on her show that she didn't realise that "hamburgers are that bad for us".

I think that anyone with the kind of public clout that Peter Cheales has needs to be more responsible than targeting one particular supplier. Quite frankly I don't think most murderers in South Africa get as much negative publicity as what this may have done for DataPro.