Yelp hiding all reviews of Dr. David Shields

A week ago, I received this message from Yelp:

Hi Paul,

We’re writing to let you know about our decision to remove your review of Shields David S MD. Your review was flagged by the Yelp community, and our Yelp Support team has determined that it falls outside our Terms of Service (http://www.yelp.com/static?p=tos), specifically as it relates to privacy.

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

Regards,
Casper
Yelp User Support
San Francisco, California

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

Removed Review: Stay away!

Dr. Shields is unhelpful. He spent very little time listening to me, had no interest in solving my problem and schedules unnecessary tests and procedures.

His office staff is rude, uncaring and unhelpful. They have all the empathy of a soggy burrito.

He doesn’t return phone calls.

He pawns you off on his nurse, Betty Bennett-Morse, who has no idea what she was doing — he scheduled me for a lactose intolerance test too — Bennett performed the procedure incorrectly and attempted to misinterpret the results (which I didn’t fall for).

ref:00D3vCN.5004A310E:ref

I replied, asking:

What does “specifically as it relates to privacy” mean? What words or lines in my review were objectionable?

So far, now answer. Today, I checked out Dr. Shields’ Yelp page. There are eight reviews and all of them are filtered. Strangely, most of them are positive.

Two additional reviews (mine, which is negative, and another, which is positive) were removed “for Violating our Review Guidelines or Terms of Service.”

There was another negative review, but it’s disappeared completely.

The Google cache shows three reviews, including mine.

What’s going on here?

Update: 19 April 2010. Current status: 2 visible, 6 filtered, 2 removed.

DNS weirdness

smokinhotprogressives.com was changed from 204.15.194.116 to .118. The change hadn’t propagated yet.


$ host smokinhotprogressives.com
smokinhotprogressives.com has address 204.15.194.116
smokinhotprogressives.com mail is handled by 50 shrub.ca.

$ host secure.smokinhotprogressives.com
secure.smokinhotprogressives.com is an alias for smokinhotprogressives.com.
smokinhotprogressives.com has address 204.15.194.118
smokinhotprogressives.com mail is handled by 50 shrub.ca.

$ host smokinhotprogressives.com
smokinhotprogressives.com has address 204.15.194.118
smokinhotprogressives.com mail is handled by 50 shrub.ca.

That didn’t last long:

$ host smokinhotprogressives.com
smokinhotprogressives.com has address 204.15.194.116
smokinhotprogressives.com mail is handled by 50 shrub.ca.

What’s going on here?

Who is NAC SKI?

So the NAC SKI people try really hard to hide their contact information. There’s no phone number on the site or their Yelp page Why? Who knows.

Update 2012-02-17: NAC SKI has now updated their Yelp page with contact information:
2635 N 1st St
Ste 242
San Jose, CA 95131
(408) 922-0182

 

They even hide their information in the whois database:

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: NACSKI.COM
Created on: 10-Dec-03
Expires on: 10-Dec-10
Last Updated on: 28-Aug-08

But nacski.org shows the contact information:

Charlie Ma
NAC SKI, LLC
1376 Tanaka Drive
San Jose CA 95131
+1 408-802-7889
[email protected]

This is the same information listed in the California Secretary of State‘s business entity detail page:

Entity Name: NAC SKI, LLC
Entity Number: 200407010124
Date Filed: 03/10/2004
Status: ACTIVE
Jurisdiction: CALIFORNIA
Entity Address: 1376 TANAKA DR
Entity City, State, Zip: SAN JOSE CA 95131
Agent for Service of Process: CHARLIE MA
Agent Address: 1376 TANAKA DR
Agent City, State, Zip: SAN JOSE CA 95131

Chase is ruining Amazon’s good name

A couple years ago, I switched my Wells Fargo MasterCard to an Amazon Rewards Visa card. Unfortunately, Amazon’s Visa card is managed by Chase, who has no idea how to run a business, build a web site or provide customer service.

The complaints piled up in my mind, but it wasn’t until I returned from my overseas trip that I was aggravated enough to write them down.

Here’s the letter I sent to Jeff Bezos:

Hi Jeff,

I have been a customer of Amazon’s for a decade. I’ve been very satisfied with the products I’ve ordered from Amazon and the customer service I’ve received. I’ve purchased products directly from Amazon, from other vendors who use Amazon’s web interface and from storefront merchants.

Three years ago, I re-evaluated all of my banking relationships. When picking a no-fee rewards card, I considered two options: Amazon and REI. I chose Amazon.

I’ve been quite disappointed with Chase. My problems with them fall in to four categories, the last of which was disturbing enough to prompt me to write.

  1. The process for redeeming rewards certificates is broken. Here’s how it works:
    1. I spend enough money to earn an Amazon gift certificate
    2. They mail me a paper gift certificate
    3. I enter this information in to the Amazon web site
    4. I recycle the gift certificate.

    Paper? Really? What a waste. At a minimum, they could email me the gift certificate code. Ideally, you’d just credit my account directly.

    Recently, Chase replaced my Visa card with a Visa Signature card. They claimed they had improved the rewards program. I haven’t figured out what they’ve improved, but it’s not the important part (getting the Amazon gift certificate).

  2. Chase’s purchase protection and extended warranty services are poor.
    1. The damage protection covers a very limited number of sources of damage, (AmEx covers damage, regardless of its cause.)
    2. The process for filing a claim is slow and involves lots of paper forms and mailing this. (AmEx lets you do this online or by fax.)

  3. Last year, I went to New Zealand and Australia. Before I left, I called my credit card companies to inform them I would be out of the country.

    AmEx:

    • Told me it wasn’t necessary to call, and I would have been fine.
    • Charges 2.7% on transactions

    Chase:

    • Told me it was essential to call
    • Charges 3% on transactions
    • Tried to upsell me on some bullshit identity theft protection service, and tried to make me feel guilty/scared when I declined

  4. Chase provides exceptionally limited transaction information.

    Before the statement arrives, you see:

    • Transaction Date
    • Posting Date
    • Amount, in USD
    • Transaction Number
    • Company name

    At the end of the month, you finally see:

    • Foreign currency amount and exchange rate

    With AmEx, you immediately see:

    • Date
    • Amount, in USD
    • Transaction Number
    • Company name
    • Company address
    • Company phone number
    • Company DBA name
    • Company category
    • Foreign currency amount

    Having the company DBA name and address were exceptionally valuable in allowing me to verify the transactions on my trip. In the case of Chase, I had to go over my schedule and make overseas phone calls to figure out who, for example, AUSTCORP NO 605 PTY, was.

Overall, Chase provides a subpar customer experience that isn’t in line with Amazon’s. It’s both frustrating your customers and sullying your good name.

I urge you to drop Chase for a more capable, friendly bank for your Amazon Visa card.

Paul

Aperture batch export AppleScript

While in Australia and New Zealand, I shot a ton of photos.

Normally, my photos sit on a hard drive and no one sees them. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen this time.

First, I grouped the photos in to folders in the Finder. Then, I created a new project in Aperture and imported all of the folders as albums. Then, I went through each folder and rated the photos. If a photo was 4 or 5 stars, I deemed it good enough for flickr.

I wrote the following AppleScript to find the albums, iterate through them, and export JPEGs of all the photos I had starred.

property basePath : “harddrive:Users:me:some_photos:”

with timeout of 600 seconds
  tell application “Aperture”
    set myProject to get project “some_project”
    set myAlbums to every album of myProject whose name starts with “NZ”
    set albumCount to count items in myAlbums
    –set myAlbums to items 16 through albumCount of myAlbums
   
    repeat with currentAlbum in myAlbums
      set folderName to name of currentAlbum & ” selects”
     
      set imageList to (every image version in currentAlbum whose main rating is greater than 3)
     
      try
        tell application “Finder” to make new folder at basePath with properties {name:folderName}
      end try
     
      export imageList to basePath & folderName using export setting “JPEG – 50% of Original Size”
    end repeat
  end tell
end timeout

Privacy by Design

The latest CDT Policy Post discusses the importance Privacy by Design. They extensively reference Anne Cavoukian (Ontario’s kickass Privacy Commissioner and author of Who Knows).

The seven principles of Privacy by Design are:

  • Proactive, not Reactive; Preventative, not Remedial
  • Privacy as the Default
  • Privacy Embedded into Design
  • Full Functionality – Positive-Sum, not Zero-Sum
  • End-to-End Lifecycle Protection
  • Visibility and Transparency
  • Respect for User Privacy

Any system you build should take these in to account.

Good help is hard to find (or: Nancy Pelosi annexes Canada)

I wrote Nancy Pelosi, letting her know that electronic voting machines are problematic and voter-verified paper ballots are essential.

She wrote me back:
Pelosi letter

Like her colleague Diane Feinstein, she is having trouble finding competent correspondence staff.

Note the key paragraph here:

Senator Bill Nelson (D-NB) introduced the companion Senate bill, S. 1431, on July 9th, which was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

NB is New Brunswick, Canada. Last time I checked, Canada was a sovereign country. Bill Nelson is the senator from Florida.