TRUSTJACKED, Trust is Hijacked by Trustpilot – The Trustpilot Reality

The Data Recovery Blog

My name is Andy Butler (you can contact me through the webform on the contact page). I operate a real data recovery lab which Fields and TrustPilot through their actions have tried to put out of business.

Other data recovery companies and resellers have gone under, others have been held back because they more wisely kept their heads down. Still more data recovery specialists and resellers of Fields Associates operate as a web-marketing cartel and quietly undermine real data recovery labs.  My operations were of a size to notice the scale and significance of the scam.

I originally sold the data-recovery-blog.com and data-recovery-blog.co.uk domain names to Rowland Ferraro who ran a charity – His drive was allegedly irreversibly damaged by Rapid Data because he complained that they were trying to take advantage of him. I saw the report by another data recovery lab and refused to allow the drive into my lab. It was a waste of time. He came back to me with a list of other "victims" I basically said "so what" but I realised that my previous run-ins with Fields where we were recovering drives they declared unrecoverable was part of a much bigger issue.

I was already fighting to get fake comparison websites taken down, one www.comparedatarecovery.co.uk I now own the domain, but in 2008 / 9 it was owned by Compare IT Ltd who it was said were paid £15,000 to create the site. Since the company never declared any accounts I suspect it was more likely that the £230,000 of WAGMoney given to Fields during 2007 and 2011 was likely spent on the comparison site, its adwords campaign and to bolster Fields Associates plans for "sector domination through unrelenting growth" welsh assembly supported scam.

Why is it Called the Fields Data Recovery Scam?

I guess it is because they have attempted to defraud not just consumers, but also all their competitors. The only way to really compete with a scam is to join it, or to expose it.. I chose to expose it (more fool me some will say.. as it costs more and makes less).

Fields had tried many tricks in their belief that they owned the net and with their network of web-marketers and that they effectively controlled the adwords advertising for the data recovery market – and to be frank they did at certain times, but I was able to foil them on occasions. I just did not have the Welsh assembly grant money to use. Fields secured £230,000 plus other tax benefits and with the money they were defrauding from consumers and businesses whilst partying in Dubai, and Thailand with one of their sales advisors claiming to have been given £1million golden handshake for his contribution to the planning and setup of the psychological warfare system of marketing and "salesmanship" , document spooling thousands of template data recovery reports which have contributed to a £50million personal fortune for the UKs foremost computer forensics Dr Daryl Hamilton Wallis.

The Present

So that was some of the past – Jump to early 2016 and I notice a number of fake negative reviews against my company, I know they are fake, that is not to say we are perfect and do not get negative reviews, but we are a very good company if under pressure for time and budget constraints due to spending more money marketing for the work we do, and having to compete against Fields stealing work from underneath us, then making up their marketing budgets by selling the fake reports or as has been identified in 2017 holding one company to ransom for £20,000 and a school for £40,000. Only to then be contacted by victims of Fields Data Recovery Specialists and Rapid Data who have been defrauded, misled or damaged by Fields.

Do not underestimate how much money Fields Group, Associates, Members Partners and reseller companies are making from the scams and operating as a cartel, they employ 200 People and they are building their own Law Firm, despite being sanctioned by the Ministry of Justice. And there are numerous allegations of bribery, corruption, political back scratching and Cross Border TAX Evasion.

The TrustPilot Reality

So I am a very concerned that TrustPilot is either complicit with the scams or has been Trustjacked by Fields because of a data breach and is being held to ransom.

For a decade I have been dealing with the consequences of not taking the Fields Data Recovery scam seriously. In thinking I am helping victims of the Fields Data Recovery Scams I have also been making myself and my companies a victim of their sector domination through unrelenting growth approach to business and I stubbornly refuse to use Trustpilot for my company despite the advantages for GSR / lower adwords costs and enhanced search optimisation. As well as the TRUSTStars.... But I disagree with fake reviews and the ethos that corporations have the right to deceive the masses and contribute to the distress and disruption to individual lives and commerce that allowing fake reviews causes.

The Fight With Fields

In 2010 I nearly lost my life because of fake reviews and fake reviewer profiles on various blogs and forums. If you want to read about it after this page look for "A hard drive broke my back" post.

I was left damaged for donating this domains name to Rowland Ferraro whose charity was destroyed by Fields trying to scam him out of £300. Fields had to pay out £70,000 after super lawyer Mark Lewis intervened and the exParte High Court Injunction costing Fields an estimated £200,000 in legal costs was dismissed. But who really footed the bill for it and did the Judge who originally signed it understand that she was being lied to?

For me I would have preferred to have had my day in court to expose DR Daryl Hamilton Wallis and his Son Dr Jamie Hamilton Wallis (Westminster Conservative MP for Bridgend Wales) for their unprecedented assault on the niche market of data recovery across Europe and North America. Leaving a trail of destruction, fraud, perjury, deception, political influence and miscarriage of justice.

After being effectively left for dead in October 2010 I was left a "dead man walking" fighting for my life and my business not realising how damaged I was.

I was also defending another vexatious claim from Fields which started out as a £250,000 threat to put me out of business. Despite their belief that their litigation expertise would "buy" a result in court, they were "Mulcted" and made to pay me more than they had claimed. I won the case despite being in a partial stroke, having a prolapsed disk pushing on the back of my throat and living on pain killers which all combined to cause my existing brain tumour and epilepsy to become difficult to manage.

So there I was already severely damaged, in partial stroke, stenosis of the spine and still reeling from the previous few years building one of the best data recovery labs against the back drop of Fields "web-marketing onslaughts", finding my staff being offered bribes and one in particular brought in from another company having his own agenda which nearly completed Daryl Hamilton Wallis threat to put me out of business and out of my home.

This is much more than competitive rivalry, but make no mistake the rewards of winning and losing mean the difference. Dr Daryl Hamilton Wallis has claimed to have made a personal £50million fortune from his system, leaving a trail of thousands of defrauded consumers and businesses and even at least one wrongly convicted individual who is still fighting to get his case to appeal.

I recognised TriustPilot was first a scam when they were approaching companies and saying they had reviews for my company – but they made a mistake. I was already fighting a daily battle and retaliated because of a fake data recovery comparison website which was paid for by Fields at a time when they securing WAGMoney from the welsh assembly (I had over 30 websites taken down because they were proven to be fake reviews).

The Fields Data Recovery Scams were started in 2002 UK Digital Solutions gave up trying to secure web development business and started developing dozens of sites at a time when the government was encouraging web development with grants. They managed their own fake reviews and reviews websites up to 2009/ 10. Since around 2014 they have been helped by Truspilot. Fields websites were being Trustjacked as TrustPilot scraped reviews from other review sites which had negative reviews. Reputation Management and fake TrustPilot reviews commenced. But it was 2016 when they were challenged after they attacked my companies reviews.

The trustpilotreality website is nothing to do with this site but I do hope the owner reads this to see another aspect of why as a business owner I cannot allow my companies good reputation to enhance TrustPilot despite the advantages it would give to me. If TrustPilot publically show that they realise where mistakes have been made and offer to compensate all those affected then that would be a start.. but the $110million dollars investment raised plus the effectively black mail money they have secured from Trust-Jacking many companies into paying them for reputation management is for me a corporate scam which is permeating through every company who joins TrustPilot.

TRUSTJACKED

• Fake Positive and Fake Negative reviews.
• Reviews scraped from other review websites.
• Fake customer profiles over 35 removed early 2017 just for Fields Group websites.
• Customer profiles hacked and fake reviews left in their names. Is this a TrustPilot data breach?

The TrustScores on Websites are not kept up to date with the websites Trustscore or the wrong Trustscore is used to help with the description.

Websites on Trustpilot are used to reduce the effect of negative reviews by collection management.. Using several websites for the same company but making out they are a different company keeping the positive ones on the site that is promoted for dominating Google Adwords and allowing the other site to be the alternative with a poor reputation.

TrustPilot themselves have realised that their own use of multiple domains with so many complaints being left across sites that they could not remove because they are all TrustPilot.

By combining all their reviews into just Trustpilot.com (the European and Worldwide ones are all combined) they have over 35,000 reviews and offset some of the very low trustscores and bring their average score up from 6.2 to 6.9 to closer to 8.

Some of the hidden reviews from directors of companies that are TrusJacked is that Trustpilot staff create new signups by looking for the websites that use adwords. In other words ones already paying money to get noticed on google. I was first contacted by Trustpilot in 2008 we declined to join, a year later they contacted again saying did we know about the negative reviews damaging our reputation.

TrustPilot of course deny this, but there are other review sites who have flagged TrustPilots staff posting fake reviews. With the IP address captured.

More too follow: next week..