So… this morning, I woke up to an email from Yelp. I was actually kind of excited to see what it said because I had recently flagged a completely false comment made by a business owner on one of my reviews. I eagerly opened the email, come to find out that Yelp had decided to remove my review!

Let’s back up a little bit…

On 12/08/2009, I had posted the following review for Anna’s Pet Grooming on Yelp:

Thanks to Anna, I went through one of the worst experiences of my life (no exaggeration).  I’m not going to go through the entire story because that would take awhile.  Plus, it still saddens me to think about it…

In short, about five years ago, I bought a poodle and chihuahua mix from Anna.  I named him Hendrix and had the best time with him for all of about five days before he was showing symptoms that just weren’t normal.  I took him back to Anna who said she was going to have her vet check him out.  I called at least once a day after that, and after a few days of Anna avoiding my questions and changing her stories, I just wanted him back so I could get him checked out myself.  I never saw him again.

Come to find out, many others have had horrible problems dealing with Anna.  I would not want anyone else going through what I did, so here are a few links that may help inform you about Anna’s Pet Grooming…

The experiences told in these Ripoff Reports are not very different from what I dealt with:
-http://j.mp/6p3E7e
-http://j.mp/67rYB0
-http://j.mp/5FfY7q

“NORWALK PET STORE RAIDED – 2ND TIME IN TWO YEARS” (SEAACA):
-http://j.mp/7p5oA7

“Selling Sick Pets?” (CBS2 undercover investigation)
-http://j.mp/7sitM5

There is a lot more about Anna that you can find online.  She has operated under many names:
-Anna Berardini
-Anna Beradini
-Anna Bernadini
-Anna Gabriel
-Anna’s Pet Grooming
-Norwalk Pet Grooming
-California Cockapoos
-Cockapoo Connection
-MaltiPoos and More

Also, here are more reviews that Yelp’s algorithm has filtered out:
-http://j.mp/cEzqsB

It’s obvious to me that some of these reviews are fake, but I’ll let you make your own decisions. I just urge you to please do your due diligence if you are inclined to do business with Anna. If you do end up with a pet from her, please get them checked out by a vet as soon as possible.

I’m writing this now because something made me think of Hendrix while I was on Yelp, and I saw that Anna’s Pet Grooming had one 5-star review.  It seems like Jill S. is lucky to have had a good experience.  I just wanted to make sure that others are aware of the other side of the story.  So, hopefully Hendrix helped save people some grief and heartache.  I just wish there was more we could do for all of those sick puppies.

Now, fast-forward almost nine months later to 8/31/2010 when Anna, herself, left the following comment in response to my review:

This is one of those customers, that make you wish you had never met him. He killed my tea-cup puppy by taking him to the vet 2 days after purchase, never showed the vet his shot reord, the vet told me, and the vet vaccinated him again, when it was already done 3 days earllier. then he takes him the same day on a 8 hour trip to Arizona. which he tried to cover up. then he told me the puppy died, but wouldn;t show me the body, or give me a reciept from a vet, because he never seeked help when the puppy went sugar down.  the law says you have to show the breeder some proof. common sense,,, Then he came screaming to my store and stole my puppy contract out of my hand. who knows what this idiot was thinking. God help puppies with stupid, people who buy them… you never know.

That brought back a whole bunch of emotions and added even more. On 9/1/2010 I flagged her comment and updated my original review with the following, in response:

There is nothing in her comment that is accurate to my experience with her. Of course she didn’t acknowledge the reports and news investigations I referenced. Her comment, along with my past experiences, other reviews, and numerous reports leads me to believe that there is something seriously wrong with this woman. I can’t believe she has the audacity to stir up these emotions after all these years, let alone making up stories using childish language and telling complete lies. I seriously don’t understand how she is still in business.

As of today, you can still see all of this in Google’s cache of the Yelp page. I have also taken a screenshot of the cached page, as Google will update their cache soon (click on the image to enlarge):

If you go through the cached page, you can see that there was also a reviewer who mentioned that they saw an ad for Anna’s Pet Grooming in the OC Register. So, I took it upon myself to contact OCReggie on Twitter to notify them of this advertiser’s atrocious business practices and see if there is anything they could do. Much to my delight, they responded promptly and I gave them the lowdown. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I was satisfied that I was able to put it on their radar.

With all that being done, I thought I would be able to move past this whole issue and not have to relive all of these horrible emotions again. Of course, that wouldn’t happen.

That brings us to this morning and Yelp’s email, which read:

Hi CK,

We’re writing to let you know about our decision to remove your review of Anna’s Pet Grooming. Your review was flagged by the Yelp community, and our Support team has determined that it falls outside our Review Guidelines (http://www.yelp.com/faq#great_review) because it relies on hearsay.

We review every situation with detail and take the removal of reviews very seriously.

Regards,
Miranda
Yelp User Support
San Francisco, California

Yelp Official Blog | http://officialblog.yelp.com
Yelp Frequently Asked Questions | http://www.yelp.com/faq

Hearsay??? According to Dictionary.com, the definition of hearsay is:

1. unverified, unofficial information gained or acquired from another and not part of one’s direct knowledge: I pay no attention to hearsay.
2. an item of idle or unverified information or gossip; rumor: a malicious hearsay.

If you have read my review, it wouldn’t take much to realize that I wrote about my own personal experience. Also, wouldn’t one consider CBS2 and SEAACA reports as verified and official information?

Sure, I linked out to three Ripoff Reports, but they are simply additional references I included that related to my own personal experience. If you take out those links, surely you can see that my review did not rely on that information.

Here is a screenshot of the full email which also contained the contents of my removed review (click on the image to enlarge):

If you look at my email conversation, you can see that I tried to reply to Miranda with the following message:

Are you kidding? Hearsay? Did you even read the review? How did you construe my own personal experience in addition to CBS and SEECA reports as hearsay? Please advise.
—cK

To that, I received the following auto-response:

Thanks for emailing Yelp.

Unfortunately, you have reached an email address that is not in use.

If you’d like to contact us please go to http://www.yelp.com/contact

SYOY (See You On Yelp)
The Yelp Team

So, I go to their contact page and find the following:

Reviews may come or go for a few different reasons:

1. A user may have removed his or her review.
2. Yelp may have removed the review for violating our Review Guidelines or Terms of Service (in which case we will typically notify the reviewer).
3. The review may have been suppressed by Yelp’s review filter. The filter decides how established a particular reviewer is and whether a review will be shown based on the reviewer’s involvement on Yelp. The process is entirely automated to avoid human bias, and it affects both positive and negative reviews. Since users can become more or less established over time, their reviews can disappear and reappear over time as well. Either way, we never actually delete these reviews, and they can still be found on the reviewer’s personal profile page. These filtered reviews are also viewable by clicking on the link at the bottom of your business page.

Note: Our support team cannot manually restore reviews that are not currently displayed, should you contact us about missing reviews you will receive the information above.

I can’t even contact Yelp regarding my review that they removed for no good reason! That is why I took to Twitter, and why I am writing this post.

Yelp may be able to use a lesson in online reputation management.

The kicker for me is the last line of Miranda’s email:

We review every situation with detail and take the removal of reviews very seriously.

How seriously? Let’s get the story straight…

Fact: I wrote about my personal experience.

Fact: I included references to a news investigation and a raid involving law enforcement.

Fact: My review was up for almost nine months and was found the most “Useful” by other Yelpers.

Fact: The business owner made her first appearance on Yelp on 8/31/2010.

Fact: Yelp removed my review on 9/1/2010.

Fact: Yelp incorrectly claimed that my review fell outside of their Review Guidelines because it relied on hearsay.

Fact: My review was based on personal experience.

Considering all of this information, I have yet to find a good reason for Yelp to take down my review. I won’t even get into the glaring notion of whether or not I think Yelp had been paid off in this case…

So, that leads me to the conclusion that Yelp supports animal abuse.

I can’t seem to find a definitive resource for these Twitter World Cup hashflags, so I decided to list them here for my own reference.  Maybe others will find it useful, as well!

You can sort the various columns by clicking on the table headers.  I will update the table as the tournament progresses so that you may also sort by the teams that have made it through to the second round (2), quarterfinals (Q), semifinals (S), and finals (F).

Country	Hashtag	Hashflag	Group	2	Q	S	F
Algeria	#ALG		C	-	-	-	-
Argentina	#ARG		B	+	+	-	-
Australia	#AUS		D	-	-	-	-
Brazil	#BRA		G	+	+	-	-
Cameroon	#CMR		E	-	-	-	-
Chile	#CHI		H	+	-	-	-
Denmark	#DEN		E	-	-	-	-
England	#ENG		C	+	-	-	-
France	#FRA		A	-	-	-	-
Germany	#GER		D	+	+	+	-
Ghana	#GHA		D	+	+	-	-
Greece	#GRE		B	-	-	-	-
Honduras	#HON		H	-	-	-	-
Italy	#ITA		F	-	-	-	-
Ivory Coast	#CIV		G	-	-	-	-
Japan	#JPN		E	+	-	-	-
Mexico	#MEX		A	+	-	-	-
Netherlands	#NED		E	+	+	+	+
New Zealand	#NZL		F	-	-	-	-
Nigeria	#NGA		B	-	-	-	-
North Korea	#PRK		G	-	-	-	-
Paraguay	#PAR		F	+	+	-	-
Portugal	#POR		G	+	-	-	-
Serbia	#SRB		D	-	-	-	-
Slovakia	#SVK		F	+	-	-	-
Slovenia	#SVN		C	-	-	-	-
South Africa	#RSA		A	-	-	-	-
South Korea	#KOR		B	+	-	-	-
Spain	#ESP		H	+	+	+	+
Switzerland	#SUI		H	-	-	-	-
United States	#USA		C	+	-	-	-
Uruguay	#URU		A	+	+	+	-

Maecenas eleifend hendrerit augue, eget egestas nunc cursus quis. Maecenas ac nulla leo. Praesent a vehicula velit. Donec ut dui in quam accumsan imperdiet non sit amet dui. Praesent dictum suscipit elementum. Aenean at felis orci. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Etiam aliquam congue pretium. Mauris eu ligula dictum urna facilisis lobortis vel vel justo. Proin aliquet suscipit est, non lacinia arcu lobortis et. Fusce sit amet orci leo, ac luctus mauris. Donec fermentum, nisi mollis tempor aliquam, enim massa volutpat lectus, vitae porta lectus orci at nisl. Curabitur nec metus erat, aliquet congue lectus. Etiam nibh ligula, volutpat a molestie ut, sagittis et felis. Ut vehicula, dolor vitae pharetra viverra, tortor lacus dictum turpis, ut rutrum augue quam a nulla. Suspendisse orci arcu, pharetra at fermentum ac, laoreet sed felis. Aliquam erat volutpat. Suspendisse bibendum, tellus quis ornare tempus, erat felis aliquet sapien, quis consequat lorem est nec libero. Nam lectus mauris, iaculis sit amet luctus eget, tincidunt sit amet nibh.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer faucibus lorem eu eros accumsan tempus. Donec blandit facilisis nunc, ac posuere neque pharetra at. In interdum sapien mauris. Sed rhoncus vehicula mauris, et luctus arcu ornare id. Cras interdum massa eu lectus viverra pretium. Nunc ultricies enim vestibulum ligula adipiscing suscipit. Maecenas ornare dictum molestie. Donec quis mi elit, ac sodales ipsum. Proin dictum purus et ligula feugiat eget dapibus odio volutpat. Sed gravida enim vel nibh hendrerit sit amet ultricies nibh eleifend. Vivamus semper auctor ante rhoncus ultricies. Sed molestie, mauris vitae suscipit luctus, risus magna accumsan sem, at elementum purus quam ac erat. Cras ullamcorper tellus et neque feugiat tristique. Nam non nisl non massa accumsan volutpat quis vitae nulla. Nam nec lacus ac massa viverra viverra.

Aliquam interdum, nulla tempus pellentesque iaculis, erat ipsum semper augue, sit amet egestas quam lorem eu magna. Ut sit amet lacinia erat. Phasellus vel mi id quam consectetur consequat. Vivamus vitae lacus ut nisi tempus interdum. Suspendisse nibh justo, tincidunt eget tempus id, dapibus in nulla. Vivamus eget lacus accumsan justo eleifend rhoncus. Nulla facilisi. Sed id diam tellus, consectetur accumsan diam. Sed convallis mollis quam. Integer viverra justo at odio tincidunt id pharetra justo sodales. Aliquam libero quam, tincidunt vitae ultricies nec, tristique vel ante. Ut placerat fringilla varius. Nunc iaculis dui consectetur quam commodo pharetra lobortis mi consectetur. Nullam pretium, mi vitae fringilla mollis, magna elit pharetra odio, eu hendrerit elit nisl id nulla. Donec a lobortis orci. Sed in sem arcu.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

– Tyler Durden

Check it,
—cK

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-DaihqlHMo[/youtube]

Apparently, the ad launched in March of 2005… From what I’ve read, I’m guessing that it launched in Germany, because I’ve just started seeing the commercial over the past few weeks.

There seems to be a lot of confusion over the music for the ad. I was able to find the most comprehensive information on TheInspirationRoom.com:

The music for the Sprite Liquid Freedom ad was created exclusively by staff at sound and music company Human Worldwide, New York. The music was not written or played by New Zealand band, Evermore, despite the attribution of a Limewire track to them. I stated earlier here that the music was performed by an unknown Australian band. People jumped to conclusions and assumed it was Evermore, even though Evermore are from New Zealand and not Australia.

Benjamin Pacheco wrote and recorded the music for the first track. See the Boards article from April 1, 2006 and credits for the Australian version. Pacheco told Boards that he wrote and recorded the music at home. For more of Pacheco’s work see his band site Mus-OK and Mus-OK MySpace site. The track is now hosted at the Union Devo MySpace site, named Counting Backwards, and can be downloaded there as an mp3 audio file.

The ‘Falling Away’ track was written by Lindsay Jehan, Hugh Wilson, Andy Bloch, and Morgan Visconti at Human Worldwide. The song was recorded at Human Worldwide’s studio by Hugh Wilson (vocals) and Lindsay Jehan (instruments), Australians living in New York at the time. Wilson is performing the full song at his live shows. Hugh Wilson has the track available to play on his MySpace site.

“Falling Away” Lyrics

I’m falling away
I’m falling away with you

We can’t always say
In the cool light of day what’s true

Time may heal your wounds
I’ll see you through

I thought we’d create
hearts in a sea of blue
We’d give and not take
I said I believed in you

But I’m falling away
I’m falling away with you
Time may heal your wounds
I’m seeing you through
Your eyes may fade from view
I’m seeing you through..

I’m torn at the seams
It pains me to breathe
You think you’re not needed
But I feel your pain
It’s alway the same
But let’s not feed it
Yet here in my soul
I want you to know
I’ll never leave

There’s nothing to say
No more charades for fools
I came here to stay
I’m falling away with you
I’m falling away
I’m falling away with you..

Time may heal your wounds
I’ll see you through
Your eyes may fade from view
I’ll see you through
Time may heal your wounds
I’ll see you through

I’m falling away
I’m falling away with you
I’m falling away

Enjoy,
—cK

In my last post, I wrote about my unexpectedly fun first night. I spent most of the next day (Friday) recovering on the couch, while watching Euro 2008 among doing other things that didn’t require much movement.

Paul & Kari’s Wedding

Paul is one of my SAE pledge brothers (DELTA CLASS!!!) and I’ve known Kari for quite awhile, too, as she is an ASA. Both have been great friends of mine and we have all been eagerly anticipating this wedding for awhile. The ceremony was held in the Peace Chapel at the SAE Levere Memorial Temple, which is one of my favorite buildings of all time and the home of our fraternity’s national headquarters. Both Paul and Kari looked great, and the ceremony was wonderful… though, I thought the minister did make some questionable remarks. I found out later that I was not the only one who thought the minister brought up something that shouldn’t be mentioned at a wedding!

The reception was held at the Victoria, which sits at the top of the Holiday Inn at O’Hare. There were so many friends there who I haven’t seen since my visits last year and many others who I haven’t seen for even longer! It was such a great time. The food was great, the music was great, the people were great… it all just went by too fast! After being treated to a wonderful midnight snack of White Castle at the end of the reception, we went out to the bar next door until the wee hours of the night.

It was as much fun as we expected and more. Congrats to Paul & Kari Dobbelhoff!

More Recovery

So, it took me a little longer to recover from the wedding. The Sunday after, Zoobs and I hit up Denny’s for breakfast. I actually felt pretty good and devoured an Ultimate Omelette. We caught up and talked about a lot of stuff. Zoobs is actually thinking about trying out life in Cali for a year, which would ROCK!

After breakfast, I headed back to the city and hung out at Kartik’s new place in the West Loop. He just closed on it within the past few weeks… his place is PIMP! Kartik, Stephanie, and I just chilled on his big, comfy couch and Ali came over since I haven’t seen him, yet. Later, we headed out to West End, next door, for some appetizers. This is when I really started to feel the effects of the wedding. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t do anything.

We headed back to Kartik’s and watched The Great Debaters, which got a thumbs up from me. Then we watched the Lakers BLOW game 4 and I finally headed back to my little bro’s place in Southport.

I got a lot of work done on Monday, since I really couldn’t do anything else. I did start to feel human again and got in all my meals…

Flag Football

On Tuesday, I was needed to fill in on a flag football team that Kartik, Stephanie, and Samp are on. I haven’t played organized sports for about a year-and-a-half, so I was excited to get out there… We lost BIG, but it was hella FUN. It sounds like I may be playing with them for a few more games, so I’m looking forward to that!

After the game, we headed out to Victory Liquors, who sponsors the team. Beer, food, Cubbies, NBA Finals, and trivia was had. We ended up writing a dirty limerick that I don’t care to publish, but I’ll welcome it in the comments if anyone remembers it…

The Next Few Days

Tonight, I’m going out for some drinks with my good friend, Shelley. Tomorrow, I think Alli and I are going to be hanging out again. On Friday, I’ll be heading up to Bill’s new house with Kartik (and maybe Obed) to help him out with some things before his housewarming party on Saturday.

Four more weeks to go!
—cK

I have to give props to my friend who originally came up with the “Summer of Jessica” when she recently had a long break from work.

Ever since I graduated from college in 2003 and moved out to the OC, I have been traveling back to the Chicagoland area every summer to catch up and party with my friends. Year after year, my stay in the Chi seems to get longer and longer. The first year, my stay was 10 days… Last year, I visited twice for a total of nine weeks!

So, for this year… I just got in to Chi City late on Wednesday-night/Thurday-morning and I’ll be staying for 5 weeks. Then, I’ll be back again in September – I haven’t decided how long I’ll be staying, yet.

Last night, my first night in town, turned into quite the night. I just wanted to go out for a few beers and chill. My bro came with and we met up with my good friend, Alli. My brother and Alli both had to work today, so they didn’t want to make it too late of a night, either.

So, we chilled at Red Ivy in Wrigleyville for awhile and chatted, while watching the Lakers blow Game 4. Then we played trivia – props to Alli for knowing that a hippopatamus can run up to 18 miles per hour and is one of the deadliest animals in Africa!

She also knew one of the bartenders, so before we knew it, we were downing complimentary shots of Jager. The beginning of the end, it was.

My brother’s roomate, Lindsey, met up with us and we went next door to Moxie to meet up with more of her friends. Three of them were 3rd-year law students and I ended up having some great conversations about a myriad of topics. We ended the night at an afterhours bar called Big City.

We all ended up getting completely HAMMERED. It was quite the unexpected night and a stellar welcome back to Chi City!

Late!
—cK

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted on here… Over half a year, in fact!

Since I haven’t been posting, I integrated Twitter Tools, which takes my all of my updates on Twitter and creates a blog post out of them each day. They are those Tidbits From Twitterland posts that you may have seen.

cKdisco.com 2.0

Now, I am in the process of redesigning this site. I’m changing A LOT of stuff. Before, this site took on the blog format. Now, I’m designing it to be more of a complete site that features a blog. One of the things I’m doing is consolidating some of my other neglected, personal sites into this one – it just makes more sense now. I’m also integrating a photo gallery. It’s a work in progress, but I like where everything is heading, so far.

There have been many things that I have wanted to write about since my last post, but I just couldn’t justify taking the time to think and write. More and more time passed, and it just got harder and harder to write. I haven’t been posting at my SEO blog either, though I try to get in at least 1 or 2 posts a month there. Those posts require some thought, though, since it’s a representation of me and my profession. For this blog, my new goal is to think less and write more. It’s just a personal site, after all…

2008 So Far…

So, 2008 is almost halfway over… and so I write…

So much has happened already, this year, and I feel like I’ve grown more over the past few months than I have over any other equivalent length of time since I graduated from college in 2003.

• Towards the beginning of the year, a very big aspect of my personal life went to shit. I was a mess. That’s all I have to say about that…
• In addition, I had a bunch of expensive electronics crap out on me… and a bunch of things in my house kept falling apart…
• Not only that, Beckham almost got eaten by a rottweiler.

Yeah… The year really did not start off very well for me… and I felt like I was continuously fighting off nervous breakdowns. Fortunately, I like to think of myself as a strong and positive person, and I couldn’t help challenging myself to extract the “good” that has come out of these events, and focusing on making everything better. EVERYTHING.

My friends helped me a lot, too… even though most of them don’t know half the stuff I’ve been trying to deal with, since I have a tough time opening up and would rather solve my own problems myself. Nonetheless, my friends are honorably unselfish and they do what they can to make me happy. I try my best to do the same for them.

A long overdue trip to South Korea with my parents and my little brother at the end of April tends to be the time I reference as my turning point to all things awesome. Things were getting better already, but the events that occurred during that trip really blew me away. With no hesitation of sounding cheesy, I would have to say that it was LIFE CHANGING.

I will have to write about it more, later. Right now, I need to get ready to head out for another trip, which I have no doubt will blow me away… CHI CITY, here I come!

Stay tuned for SocK
—cK