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Utility Wants $17,500 Refund After Failure To Scrub Negative Search Results
mpicpp Points out this story about Seattle City Light's anger over negative search results and its inability to get them removed. Seattle's publicly-owned electrical utility, City Light, is now demanding a refund for the $17,500 that it paid to Brand.com in a botched effort to boost the online reputation of its highly-paid chief executive, Jorge Carrasco. Brand.com "enhances online branding and clears negatives by blanketing search results with positive content" in an attempt to counteract unwanted search engine results. City Light signed a contract with the company in October 2013 and extended it in February 2014. The contracts authorized payments of up to $47,500. Hamilton said that he first raised the issue of the utility's online reputation when he was interviewing for the chief of staff job in early 2013. "All I saw were negative stories about storms, outages and pay increases and I raised it as a concern during that interview," he said. "And then after I started, [CEO Jorge Carrasco] and I discussed what we could do to more accurately represent the utility and what the utility is all about, because we didn't feel it was well represented online." Thus, the Brand.com contract. City Light says that it only ever thought Brand.com would help it place legitimate material in legitimate outlets—talking up some of the positive changes that have taken place at City Light during Carrasco's tenure. Instead, it appears to have received mostly bogus blog posts.
The Mythbusters showed us you CAN polish a turd. This suggests you still can't polish a CEO.
The natural conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.
On the one hand, it was a dumb purchase on the part of Seattle City Light. But on the other hand, I do think there needs to be some crackdown on bullshit advertising in the SEO/PR sector. Maybe if a few companies get sued for breach of contract, they'll be more careful what services they claim to offer in the future.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Jorge Carrasco sounds like a real moron. Maybe he'll try to get this article suppressed.
That sounds like a legitimate way to attempt to alter search rank results, mentioning the link and name repeatedly. Did they actually speak to and control what was happening? It sounds like they threw money at someone and yelled GO FIX THIS with no direction or oversight and so the company just did the basic job with no instructions. I'm taking a wild guess that the mostly negative online reviews are a result of this type of hands off old boys club 'let the peons work while we master architects go play golf' attitude when it comes to important projects. If they gave a damn they would have been hands on instructing the company which avenues to pursue to alter their brand online and how to go about doing that.
Don't take a contract you can't handle. If you claim to be able to do something, and you can't, you're in breach of contract. It doesn't matter how retarded the whole situation was - you agreed to do something and took money for it, then failed to follow through.
Have fun with the Streisand Effect.
People have hated utilities for as long as I can remember along with oil companies and starting in the 90's drug companies. And most recently ISP's and tv companies
*shrug* I don't live in Seattle, so I don't know anything about it, but the internets say they suck pretty hard. I'm guessing their SEO company kind of sucks, too. Birds of a feather, eh?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I would imagine if Brand.com is actually effective Rick Santorum would already have used it back in 2012.
Seattle CIty and Light has some *new* search engine results that have displaced any previous negative results. All of the controversy about the CEO's conduct regarding this and a few other recent scandals have completely obscured the previous negative stuff they were worried about!
Maybe they should have just went with the Repairer of Reputations, as outlined in The King in Yellow...
Repairer of Reputations?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Interviewer: So what can you do for this company...
Interviewee: There's this dude down the street with Magic beans!
Interviewer: You're hired! Now go get them beans!
Interviewee: You really bought that? er... ok... you realize that was an interview and much like televisions commercials I'm expected to exaggerate right?
Interviewer: You promised me beans give me some beans!
Interviewee: ooook... here ya go...
*2yrs later*
Interviewer: These beans aren't growing!... lets just sue that bean salesman, clearly these beans were defective..
Interviewee: I really need to find a new job but I don't want to go through another interview like that last one...
Quote: "City Light says that it only ever thought Brand.com would help it place legitimate material in legitimate outletsÃ"talking up some of the positive changes that have taken place at City Light during Carrasco's tenure. Instead, it appears to have received mostly bogus blog posts."
Is Carrasco really that stupid? It'd cost a fortune to persuade even a few people to legitimately post good things about Seattle City Light. They'd have to be located and persuaded, a process that might include a payment that'd still make the posting illegal. Bogus post are far cheaper.
Seattle City Light does have problems. It's rate problems flow from selling off a coal-fired plant that supplemented the city's hydro-power. Replacing that lost power has driven up prices. They also come from expensively subsidizing high-capacity electric car outlets in homes. In addition, a lot of people get ticked off because ice and wind storms can mean they lose power for a week or more. And last but not least is the fact that Seattle City Light's management seems more interesting in drowning out criticism than listening to it.
The reality is that Seattle and the King County that surrounds it are badly governed, with politicians mostly beholden to special interests from land developers and construction unions to 'save our salmon' environmentalists.
remember to thank our lucky star wars wmd on credit cabals http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=public+utilty+hostage 'weather' watchers http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+weather etc....
Im a little disappointed in these comments! I dont see anyone complaining that a utility is even spending money on this sorta thing, much less a publicly owned utility....did I miss the part where we started enjoying abuses from the mono/duopolies to which we are all conscripted?? From the rich right down to the poorest or poor in our citizenry, we all pay for utilities, one way or another. It could even be argued that the brand of gravy fed the homeless is one slot cheaper because soup kitchens pay these bills too. Has the world gone mad?? Since when can a public resource use funds in this way? Where is the outrage? Where is the inquisition? I would even go so far as to say even were this service offered for free of charge to this utility that they are engaging in a cover-up! Fraud! Deceit! Pitchfork, anyone? Hello? Anyone?
will work for dragon quest localization
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customers want $175.00 refund for failure to provide good quality power
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Here in BC we have BC hydro and Fortis. BC hyrdo provides power usage statistics for your home per hour on their web page with a ton of ways of looking at the data trends. This type of data can really make it clear where you are wasting power such as usage during the day due to leaving AC on. They also provide an incentive if you reduce power usage below a personalized target.
Unfortunately an area is serviced by one or the other and I don't have the these features with Fortis.
FYI: These features required a new generation of power meters which communicate over the internet so it is definitely not a quick thing for a utility to add.
$17,500 to polish your CEO's reputation? The CEO and the Chief of Staff should both be fired. Or, in keeping with the CEO's resume, encouraged to "resign." And suing to recover the money is likely to cost the public more than just giving up on the wasted funds. Just cut your losses, Seattle.
Short Fuse: Jorge Carrasco's Polarizing Tenure at the Top of City Light
I also see that the deal with brand.com has cost Jorge Fiasco a six figure pay raise: The Seattle Times: No pay raise for City Light CEO Jorge Carrasco
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray says he will not give City Light CEO Jorge Carrasco a pay raise, citing “judgment” issues, including a contract aimed partly at boosting Carrasco’s online image.
Murray made the comments at a City Hall news conference Wednesday.
The Seattle City Council had authorized a pay increase of up to $119,000 for Carrasco, who currently makes $245,000. Murray’s office previously had said he was considering raising Carrasco’s pay by $60,000.
Let's see:
1. ousted from his last three jobs
2. trying to scrub his reputation to get a $60k/year raise
3, just happens to 'fall' for a con that gets $120k worth of materials
Sounds more like the con is in the hen house if you know what I mean ;)
Instead, it appears to have received mostly bogus blog posts.
This worked so well for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Why wouldn't it work for a public utility?
Everyone who runs sites where users can post comments should add language to terms of service forbidding using your service to spread paid propaganda.
Adding a dialogue asking if you are operating on behalf of a reputation firm would be even better because then they become guilty of circumventing an access control when they lie to gain access.
Using insane corporate laws against corporations = priceless.
Does anyone else question the legality of a public entity spending funds on reputation management? Sounds a lot like the NSA.
I think this falls under the "gaslighting" utility service.
Seriously it's a no-win business model. There was a reason they had bad publicity in the first place. There is a reason they'll turn on you.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They should have just hired Barbara Streisand to handle the situation instead. She's have the same results, just at a lower price.
You can't polish a turd.
the soul crushing experience it must be working there...
What's a publicly-owned utility doing trying to hide the negative reputation of its CEO? Leave aside the question of whether the folks they hired to do it could do the job at the price they were charging, they still should have the guts to admit that the CEO they hired is the CEO they hired, and if they don't have the guts to do that, they should have hired somebody who didn't need reputation-washing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What I found more interesting was the story mentioned in the SEO story that Carrasco got scammed by a couple of faux "Native Americans," who made off with 41 thousand pounds of the utility's scrap copper after conning Carrasco into donating it to their non-existent children's crafts program. Even though originally it was supposed to be a "small amount", since Seattle City Lights is publicly owned, I would think donations, unless authorized by the city government, would be considered gifts of public funds. I can see why this guy wants to scrub his record, cuz it ain't good. And amazingly, City Lights keeps paying him a quarter of a mil a year.
The fact that a company blatantly states that they try to "enhance online branding and clear negatives by blanketing search results with positive content" means that are bold-faced EVIL. They are no longer even trying to hide it. That have accepted that society is malleable and that they can make a buck distorting the truth for the highest bidder.
They are mercenaries. They might not be shooting people in the face for money, but they're destroying the truth for money. They are paid to go censor people in the open square. It's not even the polite sort of lie of an advertisement or a commercial. No. They are paid to suppress the statements of others. To effectively gag them.
This company and ones like them are not just leeches on society, they are ACTIVELY WORKING AGAINST SOCIETY. I have no better definition of evil. Their existence is detrimental to the rest of us. Anyone who does business with them should be scorned and their names remembered.
There are two parts to a review, there's service and there's product.
Beyond the power itself, there's quality of customer service, wait times for calls or technicians, etc. Up-time is also a consideration
Say what you want about how forgetful and impressionable the public is, but once an opinion has been established, spamming the internet with tons of bogus feedback isn't going to reverse it (and fuck you for thinking you can gloss over your bad rep or ruin the good rep of others). Anyone who takes the time to ask actual people is still going to get the real story.
You want to fix your reputation? Impress your customers with excellent services and prices. If you can't do that... who needs you.
At any rate, it's funny that these rebranding people are, themselves, being called out on their shitty work.