I got a call from this guy George McCoy. The first thing he asked was if I knew who he was. I said: yeah, I've heard of you. He talked some more, but I didn't understand what he said, as I was outdoors and there was too much traffic noise around. He then sent me a message with the link to the listing and said that if I wanted to find out how he could bring me in more business, he'd be in my city the following day - I'm wondering what he meant.
Anyways, he's put up a listing of me on his website. I checked it out and saw that the price was inaccurate - twenty pounds lower than my real half hour fee. He gave me three stars. And then there was a snide remark in the description about my having some "restrictions" in what I offer.
I called him back asking what were the three stars based on. He said that I didn't have many field reports scattered 'round the net, there's one on PN, some feedback on AW... I said:"So? My reviews and feedback are all positive". It turned into a bit of an argument, he saying that he's free to write whatever he fancies on the net, me saying that his three stars were groundless and out of thin air and that he wasn't in a position to review me because he'd never been my client.
I wasn't brazen enough to tell him directly to either give me five stars of else take that unasked-for listing of me down. Instead, I just asked him to take the listing down, but he refused, eventually he said he would take take my picture off from the listing when I complained of copyright infringement.
I don't dare look at the listing again; I guess he's now edited it to give me only one star.
Mr. McCoy, if you're reading this, giving strangers ratings less that 5 stars and wriing fake reviews, especially when you've never had any tangence with the person, is likely to cause upset and is not the way to make friends. May I suggest that dropping the star ratings altogether and keepping just the description perhaps would avoid a lot of unnecessary offense and conflict.