Complaint Review: 1stgroup.ca - Abbotsford British Columbia

Todd Herman of Canada SEO Pro from Vancouver Canada used extortion techniques by threatening to publicly list my name in on line websites such as this one to place harmful, slanderous, false claims on my person and the company I worked for, to gain monetary benefits from me or my employer, without doing the work he has agreed upon… and also purposefully delaying and blocking our ability to work on our website for several days. He also wrongly accused our web designer of installing a malicious virus on our web site so that He, Todd Herman may gain the right to be our web designer in addition to SEO.

I am a victim of being wrongfully accused: including defamation of character, verbal threats, abusive vulgar language, and extortion attempts by Todd Herman of Canada SEO Pro.

In the month of April 2012, I was asked by my employer, Sam Dhaliwal of Abottsford Security Alarms In British Columbia Canada to locate a local Vancouver SEO company (Search Engine Optimization) to help us get the website to the top of Google search engine rankings.

I had also that same month, been actively working with a highly qualified “web site designer” to update the look of our site and to change the content of the text (4 weeks prior to meeting Todd Herman of Canada SEO Pro).

Todd Herman told me over the phone, that he would give our website over 2000 back links manually  installed (one at a time with no Robot) to optimize our rankings with Google and he would also change the wording, by adding “Key words” in specific places on each page of the website.

I told Todd Herman that he could start the work under certain conditions.

First: That he send me “before and after screen shots” of his work at the end of each working day, including screen shots of the links he was going to give us and before and after screen shots of the pages that included the key words he had added for the day.

Second: He was to communicate and co-operate fully with our web designer each day.

Third: I would give him the administration password and that he was going to be “sharing” the password with our web site designer.

Fourth: That Todd Herman would complete the project in Two Weeks.

Fifth: He would be paid in full the amount agreed upon, by Sam Dhaliwal the company owner( I did not have signing authority to pay anyone), when the job was fully completed by Todd and the job completed to Sam Dhaliwals satisfaction.

Todd Herman of Canada SEO Pro from Vancouver Canada agreed over the office speaker phone to Sam the owner of the site and me (Sam’s employee) to these five conditions.

Todd said he would start working on it right away.

The next day Todd Herman calls our office and “claimed” that he found and removed a virus that was planted on our site and claimed he had traced it back to our web designers’ web address and that he had records of everything. I asked him to send me screen shots of the virus and the location from which it was sent.

He did not send any screen shots back to me. However on the third day Todd  calls and tells me my web designer is no good and that he wants me to let him (Todd Herman) take over the web design. I repeated to Todd to send me the screen shots of the alleged virus he had found and removed.

He then started to argue with me using profane language, insisting that he do the job of web design and that we get rid of our designer. I told him we are keeping our designer and the agreement was that he co-operate with him. I asked him again for the third time to send me screen shots of the virus that our web designer had supposedly installed. Todd abruptly terminated the call.

Five days after our last conversation with Todd, I still did not receive any screen shots of this virus or the key words or the back links he promised to send on a daily basis. I called him three times over the five days and he did not answer. Each time I was not able to leave a message as I was very busy answering all incoming calls for the office.  

I called my web designer and he told me that Todd would not return his (the web designers) calls and that he (was not able to log in to our site as the password had been changed. I tried to log on to the site and I was locked out also. I called Todd several more times and he finally answered.

I told Todd we could not log in and Todd said he changed the password to our site because he thought our web designer was corrupting his work. I asked him again where is your proof of this and the proof of your work, where are the daily screen shots you had promised. At that point Todd began to raise his voice and accused me trying to make an excuse not to pay him. Todd said; “ I have been working on your site night and day and if you’re trying to get out of paying me I will put your name , your bosses name and your company name all over the web telling everyone you ripped me off.”

I said, Sam the owner wants all of the screen shots of the virus and all the shots of your work, and when you can prove to us as agreed that your work is completed, you will get paid. I relayed this conversation back to Sam the owner of the website.

After carefully reviewing the site, we only found a couple of small changes in the wording that may have taken a few minutes to complete. We could not see that Todd had done any other work on the site to that date and he did not fulfill his obligations. Todd then continued to call me and Sam for three more days, Harassing and threatening to ruin our names if we did not pay him 2000 dollars.

Sam ordered me to direct any calls from Todd directly to Sam from now on .(at that point I was removed from communicating with Todd and the matter was now between Todd and Sam)  Sam told Todd, when Todd finished the job as agreed, he would be happy to pay  Todd and he would get paid and that I did not have authority or access to any company funds and Todd was informed to do all business with Sam from that point forward.

Todd Herman of Canada SEO Pro from Surrey Canada, Vancouver Canada, White Rock Canada used extortion techniques by publishing my name in on line websites such as this one in order to place harmful, slanderous, false claims on my person and the company I worked for, so that Todd Herman might illegally gain monetary benefits from the company and or me, without Todd Herman doing the work in full, that he has agreed upon…