This Person Filing a Report on Chris McElroy aka NameCritic is a Scammer

First of all, my name is Chris McElroy. My nickname online is NameCritic. NameCritic is also my company's name. I've done business on the web for 12 years and have a couple of people pissed off at me. It happens. But instead of dealing with me directly to resolve any problems they have, they choose to slander me on anonymous blogs and now here at ripoffreport.com.

It's ok. I'll respond. One of the first things that should be noted is that my phone number is on every website I own or manage. My phone number is even in search engine results for my websites in the description. The people who make these complaints here and on anonymous blogs have not once called me to complain about anything. Funny how they say I did business with them and that I ripped them off yet they don't even make that one little phone call to try and resolve the problem.

The person who wrote this post says their name is Peter Arrington or Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. A search of the Internet shows no results for this person unless they are the one that lived in the civil war era. I searched whitepages.com for a Peter Arrington in Atlanta, Georgia and no one was listed.

I've never heard of this person. Is it possible I could forget one name out of all the people I have ever done business with? Sure. But I do not believe this is the case. I believe that the same person who writes anonymous blogs attacking me also wrote this report and submitted it here under a fake name.

Unfortunately that doesn't say much for the validity of reports made here since anyone can do it whether they exist or not. I happen to like ripoffreport.com. I think the web needs a good whistleblower website like this. I just wish that there was some confirmation of what is posted to be sure it's real. Without that, people's reputation can be damaged by their competitors or anyone else who makes up a name and writes a report.

Back to the issues in the report; I will quote each part and respond to it.

'I am not the only person who has been ripped off by the company that claims to be called NameCritic Inc. This may well be there name now, but at the time by troubles came about I had to make payments to Chris McElroy directly - not the company name.'

Since I am the owner of the company, making payments to me is perfectly fine. When you file a business name it is stated this way. 'Chris McElroy doing business as NameCritic'. So why this is in a report I don't know.

'Chris claims to be a great guy who runs a charity in his spare time.'

I don't claim to be a great guy. But I'm certainly not a bad guy. I don't claim to run a charity in my spare time. I did run a missing children organization. I did actually find missing children. I did it personally. I did it by working directly with police departments in the searches. I still help parents find runaway teens. I still profile missing children on http://www.missingchildrenblog.com and profile runaway teens at http://www.runawayteens.org/blog/ and provide information for teens and parents at http://www.runawayteens.org.

'He has admitted in a blog comment that he uses this charity to pay his writers.'

I had a paypal account with an email address for a domain name I own. The email address was info@kidsearchnetwork.org. So this person believes that money came from the charity because I used that paypal address to send them money when they worked for me. Anyone who understands domain names and email addresses would know this. The anonymous blogger who wrote that post also wrote the comments. This person is not above impersonating me and using my nickname to attack me. They do it anonymously. Consider the source.

'The blogger believes this is a techique he uses to avoid tax and steal donations. There is no proof his money has been used for anything constructive.'

1. It is no longer a charity.
2. It does not receive any donations. Zero. Zilch. The only money that was ever put into it was from me. I paid for everything. So how the money is used is entirely up to me. It was used to find missing children. But since the money did not come from donors I don't even need to justify that.
3. No tax exemption was ever claimed.
4. There were no donations so nothing to steal.

Again, this person does not bother to use facts. They simply assume whatever they want and try to make it appear that something is wrong.

'He tells his customers to search for his name in Google in order to find out about how well known he is on the internet. If you do this you will see results coming up from sites that say he is a scammer.'

Yes, you see results like this report filed under a fake name and anonymous blogs posted by cowards among the results.

'No sites that come up for his results indicate that third parties recommend his services or even link to articles that he and his writers are commissioned to do.'

Now the person writing this report tells outright lies. Do the search in Google and you will find around 40,000 results. Most of them are about my web business, things I do for clients, etc. You will also find the 4 or 5 results out of 40,000 that say bad things about me.

Also on the articles I am commissioned to do; We do ghostwriting for clients. We write articles and their name goes on the byline. So my name should never show up for articles that my clients own the rights to. Obviously the person that wrote the report doesn't know much about this business.

'This is very suprising considering he has been blogging for years and, according to his site, he has been doing business online for 12 years.'

The results show that I have been blogging for years and that I have been doing business on the web since 1995. I started by buying, selling, and appraising domain names, thus the nickname 'NameCritic'.

'As you can see from the URLs above, Chris has made more than a few enemies.'

No it doesn't. One person can start 100 blogs. Still makes them one person. It might even be 2 or 3 people. Out of the number of clients I have done business with I'll take 3 unhappy people, one of which used to work for me who was fired for good reason and was not a client.

'Many businesses have been ripped off by Chris and his business partner Chuck Crawford.'

This is a lie. Many businesses are very very happy with the services my company provides and I have no business partners. I am the sole owner. I am responsible for the services I provide to clients and Chuck Crawford is responsible for anyone he does business with. He runs his own company.

'Chris and Chuck always recommend clients to each other. If you have been recommend to work with Chris through Chuck, or vice versa then take a step back and read the blogs listed above first.'

I also recommend clients to a number of other people depending on what they are looking for. I recommend clients to coders, designers, etc. as needed for services I do not provide.

'What was my experience with Chris?'

Absolutely none since this report is completely false and this person is using a made up name.

'My company publishes articles on a wide variety of topics across many domains. For example, we own a site on car rentals. When someone wants to find out information about renting a car they visit our site. We then sell targetted advertising to companies. We're a publisher, and felt that the services Chris offers could be helpful. We were wrong.'

Considering how this report was written and all of the misspellings, we could have helped.

'We paid him to help us promote our sites and also bought articles from him to put on our sites. The content was obviously completed by someone who does not speak English as their native langauge.'

No you did not. You were never a client and made this up. We do not have any writers that are not based in the UK, Australia, or the US. They all write English very well.

I tried a service once and bought content from someone that employed Indian writers and found the quality was extremely poor so we do not ever hire them now.

'For a writing company this is concerning. I would have assumed their writers would have been better at writing than me.'

Anyone who can use a keyboard can likely write better than you.

'This was not the case! After complaining, Chris told me he could not make changes to those articles but in future they would be done by an American writer. I was really releaved as I had signed up for a 12 month contract.'

We have no contracts with anyone. We do not hold clients to a contract. If they are unhappy with our content they are welcome to find another source. This has always been the case. Another lie from this report.

Also we always edit articles we provide to clients if they ask us to. They have to approve the content for the job to be complete. So yet another falsehood in the report.

'The writing did improve, but was still very poor. Put it this way, Chris employs writers who target search engine traffic. They do not know how to write for visitors.'

We stress writing for visitors and on improving sales over strictly writing keyword content. My clients know this and have benefitted from it. Read my blog at http://www.seoserviceprovider.com/seoblog and you will see how much i stress sales first and seo second. Once again, this person makes stuff up.

'Anyway, the real nature of my complaint is how Chris got our site banned from Google.'

I've never gotten any website, mine or clients, banned from Google. Notice how the person did not list the so-called 'banned' domain name? I ask for proof that this person has a website that was banned by Google and ask for proof that my company ever did any work for this person.

'He decided to interlink our site with all the other sites that belong to him and his clients.'

This is never done for any client.

'I have since learned that this is a black-hat SEO tactic.'

If I was to provide a link from each of my websites to a client's website, it would not be a black hat seo tactic. It would get the site crawled fast.

'And what was worse, after he got us banned we were still in a contract so he told us we had to pay the rest of the money. We have refused.'

And what is really, really worse is that we don't have any clients sign a contract for articles and this person has chosen to lie about that.

We don't have them sign a contract for blogs. We don't have them sign a contract for seo work. I would ask this person to show me a contract that I signed with him holding him to any amount of articles.

This is a very poor attempt at attacking me, my company, and those who work for us. The author of the report provides no proof whatsoever to any claim made in the report. I commend Ripoff Report for excluding links to anonymous cowardly blog posts that were likely written by this same person.

Why do I say likely? Because those blogs had not been written to in months until recently . . . right about the same time this report was made. File that under things that make you want to say hmmm.

Anyway, this person has succeeded in wasting some of my time today to write this rebuttal. They couldn't get me to comment on their anonymous blogs, even going to the length of impersonating me on them, but I will respond here or on any respected website, forum, or blog.

This person does not deserve the time I spent to write this, but other people deserve an answer, so you have my response. Something I would like to repeat though is that my phone number 786-317-8774 is all over the websites I own. If this had been a real customer with a complaint, I believe they would have called me.

You be the judge.