UPDATE May13, 2010: Things pertaining to LeapFish.com, their founders and management, along with related startups are no longer of interest to me, therefore no further comments are allowed on this post. There are also more reliable sources out there (such as Better Business Bureau) to help you make an informed decision about LeapFish.
***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.
I was trying hard not to add more embarrassment to the situation surrounding company called LeapFsih.com.
In fact I made several attempts to avoid writing this this post my. I have e-mailed LeapFish’s legal council as well as their marketing director in hopes that they can convince Mr. Behrouzi to remove two posts he made about me. The first tweet Mr. Behrouzi made shortly after TechCrunch exposed LeapFish eployee for committing click fraud:
The above tweet alleges that I am the author of a comment on TechCrunch. The second tweet (see below) was published on Twitter on the day I e-mail to Mr. Cook, the attorney of DontNexInc, the parent company of LeapFish.
I am not sure what CEO of LeapFish is trying to accomplish besides adding more embarrassment to already an embarrassing situation.
UPDATE, March 5, 2009 10:50 AM: I have received following e-mail from Mark Kithcart, the Marketing Direcotr of LeapFish:
Saw your post Vlad you failed to mention the part about you refusing to speak to me. I’ve been here for about 3 months and all of the history is what it is – history.
I don’t typically go back and dwell on things – that’s what will keep us in the economic state we are experienceing in the U.S.
So saying that and stepping into something that has been created by you and Ben I do find it interesting that you would ask me to tell Ben to remove something but then not want to speak with me as if I’m trying to negotiate with you (your words – not mine).
I try to maintain an objective view as I approach each situation as people are not perfect and mistakes can be made by all sides. But I’m starting to wonder about the validity of what is happening here. Especially you going about it the way you did and talking about tweets that are a month old, making an ultimatum and then saying “I won’t negotiate” when that wasn’t even on the table.
No, Ben is not aware of this email to you from me. And I am NOT going to copy him on it. You involved me now and I have questions as I stated before in my last email to you.
If you want to move forward, not waste your time and move on to more productive activities that can help youself and others as we, as a country, naviagte the terrain – then great. I would like to ask you some questions to see if that is indeed what you desire to do. If it is not and you have an agenda (which I don’t think you do) then we will remain in activities that aren’t going to benefit anyone.
Hope you’re having a great day & I look forward to speaking with you at some level.
Mark Kithcart
Director of Marketing
Mark is absolutely correct. I did refuse to answer any of his questions, and frankly do not think I owe him any answers. I involved you because you are Director of Marketing at DotnextInc, whatever your employees do reflects on your company and it also true about your boss.
UPDATE: March 5, 2009 1:23 PM The CEO of LeapFish continues accuse me of stalking him, in-spite the fact he purchased domain names aimed at “exposing me” although in my opinion the purchase of the domains was truly aimed at damaging my Interpreting and Translating Business.
Vlad here is my one and only comment to your post,
With all due respect your post is a little over the top and you failed to mention the part about you refusing to speak to me. You mention that Ben is attacking bloggers – actually no, Ben is reflecting some of the angry and aggressive behavior coming his way.
We have asked you many times to stop attacking us online. I’ve personally watched as someone who is genuinely interested in LeapFish as a search tool tweets about how they love it get railed by you talking about something that has nothing to do with the extremely successful search functionality. In addition, many of our clients and well-known community bloggers have contacted us about the myriad places you have left comments (sometimes extremely inaccurate and extremely aggressive) about Ben and LeapFish.
You have not stopped your pursuit and have negatively spun comments of LeapFish and Ben on twitter, on blogs and elsewhere for several months now. Obviously you do not enjoy being posted about in a perceived negative light, just like everybody else.
I see now that you have deleted many of the negatively spun comments you've made, obviously before you wrote this post, and I thank you for that. However, I also noticed a recent post you left on Ben's blog that does not represent the spirit of blogging or creating value in a community based forum. This is exactly the kind of talk that can be perceived as aggressive, negative and non-value driven.
Apparently you left this on Ben’s MaxStartup.com blog as a comment:
"Just so you know every attempt to call me "predator" on your blogs will be met with a fierce return- as you can tell by a post on my blog today. I have many things I can write about. But you really don't want to go that way, do you?
By the way, I would not recommend to screw around with the this comment as it is being recorded by http://www.cocomment.com/ in real time, you will have real hard time proving otherwise"
I would assume, as a blogger, you would want to focus on the things that grow the community and generate a higher sense of value especially in an economy where people need it. These kinds of posts simply further verify the kinds of behavior that neither us nor anyone else likes to continuously receive or partake in.
Thanks for understanding and thanks for leaving our IP unblocked so I could write this post. This is my one and only response to this post.
Regards,
Mark Kithcart,
Director of Marketing
Mark, thanks for stopping by. There was plenty of time to deal with above described tweets. I don't care how old the tweets are. They certainly do not speak in favourably for the CEO of LeapFish. I believed I offered sufficient amount of time for these tweets to be removed. I understand I can't tell you or your CEO what to do. But I have right to defend myself. As so do you.
<span> Mark, thanks for stopping by. There was plenty of time to deal with above described tweets. I don't care how old the tweets are. They certainly <span class="IL_SPAN"><input name="IL_MARKER" type="hidden">do not</span> speak in favour of the CEO of LeapFish. I believed I offered sufficient amount of time for these tweets to be removed. I understand I can't tell you or your CEO what to do. But I have right to defend myself. As so do you. </span>
Mark, thanks for stopping by. There was plenty of time to deal with above described tweets. I don't care how old the tweets are. They certainly do not speak in favour of the CEO of LeapFish. I believed I offered sufficient amount of time for these tweets to be removed. I understand I can't tell you or your CEO what to do. But I have right to defend myself. As so do you.
Is it me or is this Mark Kithcart a bit of a blow hard?
And a liar. But it is over now. No more posts and visits to my blogs on their IP.
Leapfish is more of a joke that you think or know!!! First off, they don’t give a damn about there employees. I worked there for two months. In the initial interview held by Howel in H.r. I was told that you make NO more than 75 phone calls a day. But, once i accepted the job, and was stranded from going back to my old, I learned quickly that the Leapfish model of success for inside sales is BRUTAL. What they require is this: 300 phone calls and at least 3.5 talk time on the phone a day. Moreover, there is about 60 inside salespeople selling keywords to clients in a manner that collections agents use. They are trained to harass and to be rude. But this is the thing that pissed me off……..This company pretends to be for the employee but indeed they are brutal; bottom line if you don’t make a sell in your first 2 weeks they will fire you. Ha ha, read all the scams posted about Leapfish and you’ll soon understand that it isn’t geometry that Leapfish has fired over 70 percent of the people that have walked though the door. Besides lying about how much money you can make from this great company (as told in the interview)I left there without being fired becasue I felt i was scamming people out of their money.
signed,
Former employee
Paul,
Thanks for stopping by and for your comment. I do not have much respect for LeapFish and it’s management. I hope you find a much better place to work at. Thanks again for your comment.
Editweapon is over it.
@Editweapon
Good. Unfortunately I am not, but that is a long story. Hopefully one day I will be able to let it go and ignore these clowns.
Vlad,
I feel i should make a comment. I am the infamous “Rogue” employee Chris who committed “click fraud” while employed by leapfish.
Bottom line is, the director of sales told me about this sales tactic while in training. He said he used to call prospects during the inception of the company and threaten to click on the PPC ads multiple times if they don’t purchase an advertisement.
This was my first job out of college, so I decided to follow suit. Now, Mark and Ben say that I was a “Rogue” employee and acted on my own accord. You don’t send a soldier into the trenched without the proper tools and that is exactly what they did.
Know salesforce, no specific target market, no nothing; just make 300 calls a day and at least 1 sale in two weeks or you are fired.
These guys are all ridiculous. I even applied for Reply.com (one of Ben’s company’s) three months after my Leapfish tenure, and they wanted to hire me. They had no idea I was the guy at Leapfish. Good thing they keep extensive databases to monitor these sorts of things.
One of my lines in my sales pitch was, “You should purchase a keyword as an investment or a year down the line you will be sorry when Leapfish’s traffic rank skyrockets and the keyword is worth 10 times the value.”
Sitting here a year later with Leapfish still around the same traffic rank and no auction platform put in place…. Wow I’m glad I have a new/better job selling a tangible product.
Chris,
Thanks for stopping by. I am happy things are working out for you. I hope the company you work for now has a higher moral standards than your formal employer. Good luck!