Homestars Nancy Peterson HomeStars SCAM Nancy Peterson GarCon Group Adam Gardin Fake operation. fake feedbacks Toronto Internet

Each month, contractors pay large fees to the HomeStars Company, and to Nancy Peterson, in return for direct advertisement to viewers and an alleged increase in positive reviews to increase clientele. Selected private contractor companies such as the GarCon Group and Adam Gardin deal directly with Nancy Peterson – HomeStars’ CEO and founder– paying her directly for services beyond those stated by HomeStars, including advertising on the site and having a hand in posting reviews. This type of dishonest business interaction between Ms. Peterson and these contractors resulted in unhappy clients who paid for poor service, and who felt betrayed and left with little voice to express their concern. In a CBC interview from January (2015), a homeowner allegedly defrauded by the Garcon group said “homeowners should rely on word of mouth when selecting a contractor”, indicating that the reviews on HomeStars are essentially useless. Nancy Peterson played, and continues to play an integral role in this appalling business model. HomeStars is already named in many court cases in addition to GarCon group as a scam operation.

Ms. Peterson was black listed from main stream consumer industries after speculations of her dishonest business exchanges surfaced, specifically those involved in her receiving a kickback from suppliers while working for Kraft Canada. Following Ms. Peterson’s career termination as an executive product manager, she founded HomeStars. It is at this company where Ms. Peterson continues to compromise business ethics for profits, with little regard for neither the companies, nor the private contractors whose sole income is based off of the reviews from her company.

Ms. Peterson was suspected to have a suspicious arrangement with Garcon Group president in which she would receive a portion of the initial deposit paid by homeowners to Garcon to post false positive reviews on the HomeStars site and advertise to the site viewers. Ms. Peterson has said to make similar deals with other contractors around the GTA.

Negative reviews for contractors were posted by HomeStars immediately after homeowners would post them without verifying if they are legitimate or not. No action is taken by HomeStars to authenticate these reviews. Conversely, hundreds of positive reviews each week are not posted for those contractors who are not paying HomeStars. Worse, many false positive reviews are posted under accounts connected directly to Ms. Peterson to positively influence these accounts for her person financial. In addition, Ms. Peterson chooses to punish contractors seemingly arbitrarily by withholding positive client reviews from being posted on the HomeStars website as part of a flag list that she controls directly. This flag list is supposedly used to filter out companies who post false reviews on the website.
One of the flags used by HomeStars to “detect” false reviews is via software that infringes on Canadian privacy laws including, but not limited to, locating the exact address of homeowners posting reviews through an IP address locator and photo location system. Upon contacting HomeStars, the company refuses to discuss anything regarding their software or privacy invasions. This software collects the user’s private information without consent including full names, exact addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and personal photos of the homes. The software also collects other marketing information sold to the highest contracting bid, from which Ms. Peterson directly profits. This is in contradiction with the Canadian privacy act:

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-21/page-3.html#h-6.

HomeStars claims to help clients find the best-rated contractors. This is a laughable statement, considering the disreputable business founded and ran by Nancy Peterson, where ratings are useless. Through HomeStars, Ms. Peterson knowingly hurts many homeowners and contractors. Through HomeStars, homeowners lose, honest contractors lose, and Nancy Peterson wins.

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