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It Happened to Me

At Last, My Blog Lands Me in Hot Water!

It took over 4,000 entries and almost four years, but it finally happened: my blog has finally gotten me into trouble. I’m finally a player!

Yesterday morning, as I was working at my desk, I got a phone call:

Female voice with Eastern European accent: Hello, I have some questions about your web site.

Me: Go ahead…

FV: How do you create your website?

Me: With Blogware, our weblogging software. Is there anything in particular you’d like to know?

FV: And how are comments added to the website? Do they email you, and then you add them?

Me: No, that’s handled automatically by Blogware. Every article has a link that you can click on to add a comment. You type it in, click a button, and it’s there.

FV: And if there were a comment you wanted to delete, could anyone do that?

Me: No, only the owner and people the owner sets up as administrators can do that.

At this point, it was beginning to dawn on me that the person on the other end of the line wasn’t a customer. What was going on?

FV: I am asking because I would like a comment removed. Someone left a comment that is not true.

Me: Not true? Which one?

FV: The one in the thing about movers. Someone left a comment about our company that is not true. They said we did things, but they signed a paper clearing us. If you do not remove this comment, we will send our lawyers after you.

I sighed. I needed to get a lot of work done, and dealing with non-work headaches, especially the threat of legal action, was the last thing I needed.

I decided the best thing to do for the time being would be to copy the comment, take it down and evaluate the situation when I had more time. I pointed my browser at the Blogware control panel, found the article and called up its comment-editing page.

Me: So which comment is it?

FV: The one about Quick Boys.

For the record, here’s the comment:

Re: Anyone Know any Good Toronto Movers?
by Anonymous on 2005.06.27 02:00PM EDT  |  IP: 70.29.128.20

No good ones to recommend but two to avoid at all costs:

Moveworks: Hired them in 2001 to move between two units in the same building. They showed up 3 hours late, failed to bring wardrobe boxes, and sent two 16 year old kids with one of their girlfriends. They moved about four things into the service elevator and then took off, leaving two moving dollies behind and me to do the entire move without assistance. Thank god for friends.

Quick Boys Moving & Storage: Avoid like the plague. Hired in April to move my girlfriend into our place. They took seven hours to load a one bedroom apartment into the truck and drive about ten minutes (they were, of course, being paid hourly). Held her stuff hostage at this end until we paid for the full move. Damaged a substantial percentage of the furniture with scratches, etc. “Forgot” to unload two boxes of crystalware and took three weeks to deliver it to us. The movers were surly, unpleasant, and stank of body odour.

Good luck! A lot of the companies out there really exist to rip you off so be careful. I’ve heard good things about El Cheapo and Two Small Guys With Big Hearts but have never used either. If I ever hire movers again, I’ll just swallow my cost-saving needs and go with the big guys.

It was written by my friend Jay Goldman. I’ve known Jay for about three years and I’ve worked with him on a couple of occasions. He’s always dealt straight with me.

Me: And you say that this comment is not true?

FV: It is a lie. Let me put my boss on the line.

Gruff Male Voice with Eastern European Accent: Remove that comment. That’s all I’m going to say. (click)

Niiiiice. A real sweetheart, that one. There was a bit of an edge to the “That’s all I’m going to say” bit.

FV: So if you could remove that comment, it would be appreciated. I will check to confirm that they have been deleted.

And with that, she hung up.

I noticed that someone had recently added a new comment about Quick Boys. Here it is:

Re: Anyone Know any Good Toronto Movers?
by Anonymous on 2005.07.28 10:45AM EDT  |  IP: 64.229.26.252

I have used Quick Boys Movnig Storage i think they were the best and they have moved couple of my friends as well and they were all
happy. I belive no one is perfect even big van line make mistakes as well.

I think whats up there is not true. I highly recomend Quick Boys Moving storage.

Thank you Julian.m

In light of the phone call, the time when the comment was posted and its English-as-a-second-language wording, this comment seemed very suspicious, almost as if it were planted by a shill.

I Googled, using “Quick Boys” and “movers” as search terms. It turns out that the blog entry was the number 2 result. So that’s why they were unhappy.

I saved copies of both Quick Boys-related comments to deal with them later and then deleted them.

Five minutes later, she called back.

Female Voice: I am looking at your site and I see that the comments have not been deleted. I am going to talk to your employer.

Me: Have you reloaded the web page?

FV: Reloaded?

Me: On the toolbar of your browser, there should be a picture of a piece of paper with arrows going in circles. That’s the “refresh” button. Click it, and you’ll reload the page.

FV: Ah. I see. Good.

Me: Now wait a minute. I’m only doing this because I don’t have time to deal with you idiots right now. When I get a moment, I’m going to look into this. Now if your complaint is legitimate, I’ll gladly do as you ask, because I’m not into smearing people. But the way you’re acting, that’s just plain thuggery. This is a personal web site; my employer has nothing to do with this. The person who made the comment is voicing his opinion and he’s not the sort to lie.

FV: But he signed a contract saying he was satisfied.

Me: And if he did, there won’t be a problem. But if he wasn’t satisfied, his comment is going back up. You can’t go pushing people around like this. Do I make myself clear?

FV: I understand.

I gave Jay a ring. He was in a meeting, so I simply left a message. He called me back later that afternoon:

Jay: Hey, Joey, I hear Quick Boys is on your case.

Me: Heh. Yeah. So, what happened?

Jay: Pretty much what I wrote — my girlfriend was moving in and hired them. They arrived over an hour late and in the end took a grand total of nine hours to move a single bedroom a short distance. When they got to my place, they refused to unload the truck until she paid up and signed the contract.

They took so long that they had to run somewhere else and left a lot of her stuff on the ground floor of the building; we had to take it up ourselves. Plus, they damaged some of her furniture and held onto some her stuff until we complained. They say that she signed something that clears them of any responsibility. I asked them for a copy of this document, and after stalling, said they’d mail it to me. I never received it. It’s worthless anyway; I talked to my lawyer and he said that a contract signed under duress like that isn’t valid.

Me: Huh.

Jay: Hey, sorry to cause you all this trouble. You can take down the comments —

Me: No. I trust you, and they way they’ve treated me, I can’t say I trust these guys. Those comments are going back up. For me to take them down…

Jay: …would be pretty bad.

Me: That’s right. In fact, I’m going to post a whole damned blog entry about it.

As I mentioned before, I know Jay, and based on his actions and my dealing with him, trust him. On the other hand, my (admittedly and thankfully) brief experience with Quick Boys has been filled with subterfuge and threats. Thus far, I have no reason to trust them.

The worst thing I can do as a high-profile Toronto blogger, an employee of a company that makes blogging software and a card-carrying member of the EFF is to back down in the face of idle threats like those made by the people at Quick Boys. When someone kowtows to bullying like this, we all lose.

If any representative of Quick Boys wishes to respond to this, they can do so in the comments or give me a ring at the office. I believe they know the number.

114 replies on “At Last, My Blog Lands Me in Hot Water!”

Joey,

You are getting married soon and you have your whole life ahead of you. Why mess around with a bunch of Eastern European thugs like this?

When a person’s livlihood is messed with, they can get really nasty. I think the last thing you should do is expand the story. Think of you fiance, your future children, and yourself.

Expanding the story is only going to mess up their google search even more and enrage them further.

Forget all this macho stuff and be a real man.

Joey,

You are getting married soon and you have your whole life ahead of you. Why mess around with a bunch of Eastern European thugs like this?

When a person’s livlihood is messed with, they can get really nasty. I think the last thing you should do is expand the story. Think of you fiance, your future children, and yourself.

Expanding the story is only going to mess up their google search even more and enrage them further.

Forget all this macho stuff and be a real man.

Cool, I guess I’m a player too. I had a similar experience when I groused about an online code-breaking “challenge” that seemed a little fishy, and I got a series of pseudo-legal threats as a result. Considering that the would-be plaintiff obviously had no legal knowledge and would have had to solve trans-national jurisdiction issues, and that the total amount of damages they could have claimed was only about $200, I called their bluff. I think my last email to them ended with “go to hell” or something very much like it, and of course they caved…not before they attempted to sow a little disinformation in my comments section, but still. I also have the #3 Google spot for the name of an online chess site plus “problems” because the proprietors there (Russian thugs in this case) also seem more interested in blackmail than in improving their product. It seems to be an all-too-common phenomenon.

Joey and I discussed this last night and even though I am a Berkman Center hippie I tend to agree that broadcasting it isn’t the best idea, but it’s what Joey wanted, and I couldn’t really think of what law he was breaking by allowing a review of a business to be posted on his site by someone else. Good test case for various organizations should they actually find a tort or something.

I ended up not asking him not to post it because I have to practice what I preach here at work or I’d be a giant hypocrite. I know a crapload of lawyers who specialize in just this sort of thing, too.

But we did discuss it, which is the point of this comment.

I admire your courage, J. This IS pretty stupid stuff for these guys to get worked up about (and a little odd they know enough to trawl the web for what ppl might be saying about them but nothing about how to properly counter that). Then again, who sez movers have the market cornered on brains or savoir-faire.

Good move to ‘out’ the whole shituation here. I’d stay in heavily populated areas and avoid dark alleyways for while tho.

Hmm, the movers post you linked to still seems to be missing the comment. I thought you’d put it back? Or did you mean that by putting the comment in this entry, you’ve put it back on the web?

-RW

Most entertaining post in awhile 🙂

I really like the fact that they, “Quick Boys Movers” (let’s mention them as much as possible to get this posting also high on google 🙂 created more bad publicity by treatening you poorly. I should create a posting myself, mention them and link to this post.

I’ve heard of Dooced, but are you going coin de Villa’d?

de Villa’d: verb, to protect one’s blog from threat of lawsuit from a Eastern European moving company

Way to stand up for free speech all that is right and good. May kittens, puppies and children rejoice, and statues be raised on your honor.

I once received a phone call on a Sunday morning asking me to (stay with me) delete a comment made on my weblog to a posting linking to a newspaper article about a Rochester-area armored car robbery that the commenters father was a suspect in. Neither my post nor the linked article mentioned the commenters father. He wasn’t menacing, and not from Eastern Europe, but I was still a little shaken by the incident.

I couldn’t delete the comment, it turns out, because I lost my login to the control page for the service I was using. He hasn’t called since, but I still avoid mentioning the robbery.

What is it about movers that they inspire such ire? I recently looked up Boris the Mover (if you have an answering machine, you know him or his consumptive partner, Yanosch) and found a gripe page with myriad stories that sounded freakishly similar to your friend Jay’s.

For hours of Schadenfreude, visit Apartment 606

bunny

Is it just me, or does this comment (posted twice) have a sort of “I’d hate to see anything happen to your lovely fianc�e, know what I’m sayin'” kind of tone?

Maybe some kind of distributed-free-speech-chill-thwarter could be of use here. The rest of us bloggers can run A.G.’s story, and let A.G. drop it or bowdlerize it. If Bastards, Inc. bully another one of us, we can drop/bowdlerize it too, assured that some other blogger has picked it up, and that the story’s prominence has only grown.

How do Bastards, Inc. prevent and/or stop this? By laying off of A.G., thus minimizing the damage their doing to themselves.

“True, Without Malice, and for the Public Benefit” is a complete defence vs. Libel in the US (and even in the UK). They have no further tortious claim after that.

Further– even if it were not true, it is up to them to demonstrate to you that their assertions (“he has signed a paper”) are correct, and you are under no obligation to act until you have reasonable grounds to believe their assertions. Mere “hearsay” by phone is not sufficient. Specifically, you were under no legal obligation to act until you had seen a (believable) copy of their “Paper”.

You had reasonable grounds to believe the Comment was True, you had no Malice towards “Quick Boys”, and there are clear grounds for the Comment being considered both Fair Comment and In The Public Benefit.

You’re safe.

cheers

Sal

Does anyone know the law wrt publishing a comment not your own? I mean, if Joey or even The Toronto Star published a ‘letter’ from, say, Ernst Zundel about that holocaust business, is he liable for anything?

I’m inclined to think that legally, in this case, Joey’s in the clear b/c he had no reason to believe it was false information.

Just for the record, I met two of the “Two Small Guys with Big Hearts” company and they were really nice.

By the way, this is an awesome post…

Excellent timing on this post; I’ll be moving down to Toronto in September and was going to be searching out movers over the next few days. I think I’ll be avoiding Quick Boy movers.

As I was reading your post I couldn’t help but have Boris and Natasha‘s voices in my head. I don’t think I’d want Boris and Natasha moving my stuff…

Cheers, and thanks for the heads up.

Lee

Joey did you find out the legalities yet? I’m just curious as to what the law is concerning things like that. I mean all Jay was doing was giving his opinion, his testimonial; he wasn’t intentionally going out to try and ruin a business.

Kim

Uh… why is everyone fretting about the legal? Can we not apply some common sense? There are review sites all over the internet. IMDB for movies. Amazon for other products. Computer sites were people share their experiences on, not just hardware, but services (much like a moving company provides a service). Much of it loaded with negative. The experience reader can spot the bogus entry, the exaggerated claim, the hypersensitive consumer, or the shill.

Most of these comments dump on major corporations, not Little Boris Movers and Shakers. Don’t you think, with all their millions, if there was a legal way to shut down comment sections, they would?

Good for you Joey! I’m glad you stood up for yourself. Try not to get too concerned by idol threats from these unprofessional bulldozers.

I guess business is slow at Quick Boy Movers for them to find the time to track you down at work to tell you what to do with your own personal blog.

What a crazy story?

Can you take a look at your logs and determine from what IP the “amended” posting was made (by Julian M.)? Sometimes reverse DNS is a lovely tool.

I wonder if they know that the police can easily track this kind of stuff, even if they posted anon. Not, you know, like I’m threatening the threateners…

Re: IP

Have a look again. It’s posted right above the original Jullian-post.

did you check to see if that second post has the same IP as the original pro-boys post? 😉

-lumie

You mentioned that you were a card holding member of the EFF: are they based in the US? Does anyone know if there’s a Canadian equivalent?

David Magda

They deserve to lose business over that. It’s ridiculous that they think they can get away with threatening people for stating the truth.

Hey! You made boingboing. These assholes are going to go so far down in Google rank we’ll never see them again.

Hurrah free speach! Thanks Jay.

(It would be nice if I could comment here without having to “log in.”)

Truth is not an absolute defense in Canadian defamation law. You can make true statements with the intent to defame and be found guilty of defamation. – Joe Clark

A “Real Man” has INTEGRITY, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH RUSSIAN/UKRANIAN SCUM THAT THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO ENTER YOUR COUNTRY TO DO Illegal and unethical things.

This is the case in most Western jurisdictions, actually, although I believe that the UK allows for Truth as an absolute defence where there is Defamation but no Publication (“Slander”).

But the key phrase is “with intent to defame”. Without this Intent, Truth can form part of a valid defence.

Sal

I too have gotten screwed by a moving company and applaud your blog and jay for bringing this to the public’s attention. Even seemingly reputable companies can scam you. National Moving Company showed up so late that I didn’t get to visit with my mother before I moved cross country, then showed up late on the other end. They claimed we owed an additional $2000 because we were “over weight”, and the truck was a different truck than we had packed into and there were different guys that showed up with our stuff than the movers that originally packed our stuff. Then, when I refused to pay, they said they would not give me my stuff and instead would take it to a storage unit where I would be charged rent until I paid up. Since my dad is a lawyer (ok, actually accountant), I had him call the company. They answered the phone the first two times and were absolutely unhelpful and refused to follow the signed contract, then started not answering the phone. I finally convinced the guys to unload the truck by literally standing in front of the truck and pitching a very public fit, after I had called the cops. I gave them my remaining deposit in cash and told them that a lawsuit would be filed the next day. The next day they had changed the company name and shut off the phone. My stuff was badly damaged: scratched, back of the couch broken, box springs broken and torn. They also “lost” my couch. I was a poor graduate student then and still haven’t been able to replace all the furniture that was damaged. Check the BBB and do your research. Screw the bullies from “Quick Boys Moving”. They are only out to get your money!

Joey, I’m sympathetic to your situation for sure, but your mention of the “Eastern European accent” was kind of irrelevant and most unfortunately sparked a whole bunch of extremely xenophobic comments on your otherwise very eclectic blog. As a regular reader, I understand you were just trying to paint the picture in vivid way and that in itself didn’t bother me, but I have to say it’s really disappointing to read what others have written here as a result.

There is a famous net.kook in Utah, Jeff V. Merkey, who is also trying to silence his critics that have high Google rankings with lawsuits.

Now wait a damn minute! I’m not a slavic person but I must speak in their defense.

1) I have never met any of these sketchy crime-type russians or ukranians, but it seems to me you are making a generalization. Almost every minority group has a seedy underbelly (ever been to Montreal? Everybody’s got a mafia there!)

2) The Canadian gov’t didn’t “let” them in, slavic immigrants helped build this country, and that is why the prairies are peppered with communities full of them.

3) Slavic girls are hot. Nuff said.

the mafia does not appreciate your use of the word “seedy”. if this comment is not removed immediately we will be forced to take action against you. and we dont mean leagal action…

Depends on the jurisdiction. Truth is no defence in some jurisdictions. And the precedents being delivered in some of those places mean that libel doesn’t have to have occurred in the place of the business operation, or among an intended audience.

Having said that, I’m rather glad Joey has posted this. A test case on this issue would turn all those precedents on their head and prevent the stupidity of internet censorship.

Who do you think we’re going to believe, Joey or Quick Boys? Around here, we trust what Joey has to say. What we’ve heard of Quick Boys means we aren’t likely to trust them at all. I suspect that the positive comments on the Quick Boys site were put there by the guys who run that company.

Nice, but I’ll doubt they’ll get very far with Google picking up Joey’s link as the number one result for Quick Boys Moving.

Ball’s back in your court, fraud of a moving company.

So you would have preferred if he had left that detail out? Do you have a problem with the facts?

However, there’s an important difference between US and UK libel law. In the US, the plaintiff must prove that the publication is libelous (false, malicious, etc). In the UK, the defendant must prove that it is not libelous (meaning that you’ve got to be able to prove that every last sentence is strictly true).

Any Canadian lawyers out there? Which is the case in Canada?

The funny thing, though, is that the UK press is far more fearless and aggressive than the US press is, even though publishing anything critical is much more legally risky in the UK.

Quick Boys moving Is very good moving company they have great moving and best customer service.”

June,2003 Sara Mori

Fake. So fake.

If you go to their web page and read their “testimonials” most of them are written in the same english-as-a-second-language style as the double-posted comment.

I’ll be posting a blurb and a link about this in my blog and encouraging others to do the same. Everyone who blogs and allows comments should be concerned about this subject. Hats off to you, Joey!

You obviously didn’t read the comment, did you? Read it again. The person said he understood why Joey said what he said, but that he was disappointed at the reactions of some Xenophobes who read it. Which I think is a valid point: I was disappointed (and disgusted) too.

Weblog:

Mixed Up Socks

Excerpt:

“…It looks like Quick Boys Moving and Storage company in Canada doesn’t like people complaining about their service. They make you sign a waiver saying you’re satisfied with their service before they’ll unload your stuff. If you comment about their less than perfect service in a friends blog later, they’ll track down your friend at work, tell him to remove the comment, threaten him with lawsuits and even say they will contact his employer. They might have even make veiled threats toward your friend and his fiance in the blog’s comments…

Sure, this sounds a little far fetched, but I’m buying it.

Read about it here, and when you’re done, blog about it. If you have a comments section open to the public, you should be interested in this.”

Posted:

07.29.05 9:36 pm

I can see a grand total of ONE xenophobic comment, and it’s in all-caps and quite ranty. And it was immediately stepped on by another commenter.

Mentioning someone’s race is not the same as xenophobia. And if your knee-jerk reaction so completely colours everything you read, your opinion is not safe to rely on or even consider.

Nothing substantial to this post — I’m just seeing if I can put a close italics tag here to fix the mass italicization.

You’re right; mentioning someone’s race isn’t xenophobia unless it’s followed by the word “scum” or “thug”, the latter of which appears more than once in this discussion as if the association is completely normal.

Go here; http://www.quickboysmoving.com/quickboys/index.html and theres a full list of contact numbers under contact us. The american number was answered by an american who had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about intimidating people. When I called a couple of the candian numbers they were answered by russians or at least people who knew russian (I know a little russian and spoke it with them briefly). As soon as I mentioned google results or intimidating people they said…not-nice russian words and hung up. I guess they’ve been getting similar calls 🙂 Keep kicking ass.

From their testimonial page:

i have had very good experience with these people.
Quick Boys moving Is very good moving company
i well always recommend Quick boys moving,Thank you so much.”

Funny how all of their testimonials share a lack of grammar… almost like…. they’re the same person.

I once contacted the EFF for legal advice regarding a torrent site. The EFF referenced me to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). The CIPPIC wrote an official legal opinion for me. Very well researched, and free.

http://www.cippic.ca/

I once contacted the EFF for legal advice regarding a torrent site. The EFF referenced me to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). The CIPPIC wrote an official legal opinion for me. Very well researched, and free.

http://www.cippic.ca/

I suspect Quick Boys is one of the many “moving companies” that are actually Mossad front operations for carrying out spying and other dirty tricks; they don’t like any attention brought to their activities.

Joey:

Congrats on your achievement.

I live in T.O. and have never heard of these villains, I mean substandard movers. What a nightmare to have to endure if you are unfortunate enough to hire them.

Kudos on your failure to be intimidated by their english speaking representative. It is good to fight EVIL with GOOD because many web-savvy individuals will now not be hiring them or using their pathetic services.

On a practical note, these people can just rename their company and start swindling others of their possessions and money. It would have been better had your friend also posted their license plate number and the full names of the people that were moving his stuff. This is something we should all do to protect our interests at the outset of a move. In this manner you have the names and particulars of anyone that wants to intimidate you or not perform the contract as agreed.

Cheers,

Alex

In the past, mainstream media would do the occasional expose and embarrass only the most obvious corruption. This moving company will be immortalized for eternity on the pages of google which should have a much better success rate when it comes to keeping shady businesses in line.

On the other hand, it’d be scary as a small business owner if my significant other’s ex decided to defame me on his blog and it lead to the demise of my business.

Sheee-it. So you expect him just to completely leave out large gaping details in a narrative so some people don’t say mean things about Eastern Europeans?

WTF?

Dude, if everyone spent their entire lives trying not to inspire dislike in others, no one would get anything done.

Do ya know? Some sub-continent in origin young lady called me a snob on the train the other day. Is it because I is a cracker?

Dear Anon,

Beware that nobody actually knows if these people are from eastern Europe. Even if they are, does that make any difference in the least? Don’t let nationalism fool you.

Cheers,

Niklas

Question though…

What good is “legal protection” going to do if they break your legs or something stupid like that? Its like saying, “sure pedestrians have the right of way – but are you stupid enough to j-walk the freeway?” You get your ass hurt or killed – you think a lawsuit will help bring something back?

That’s the case where I say, for all the crap DRM and such has – it could actually come in handy because then EVERYONE is easily tracable – and we have at least better protection on our own personal PHYSICAL security, as for our rights? Well that’s another matter.

Cudos Joey – if only more people would stand up to those who believe that force and intimidation will get them anything good in this world.

The problem is that in this particular case, the use of “Eastern European accent” implies some kind of cold-war-era badnik shadiness instead of just being a narrative detail. Like the dark music following the bad guys in a movie that’s supposed to further convince you of their badness.

this is absolutely bizarre. i have never seen such a big fuss over a small comment! tough – the guy had a bad experience with the movers. he�s not the first and certainly won�t be the last. and a comment posted on this blog brought on such anger? don�t these moving people have enough business so as not to have so much free time and check out blogs for negative comments on their work??? do they realize this is a democracy and people are actually free to come forward with their opinions? opinions are not right or wrong! hellooooo movers? anyway, when this is over and done with it will turn out to be a great short story or a short film. really.

cheers!

I’m a lawyer. Truth is ALWAYS a defense to libel because a statement cannot be libelous if it is true.

To play devil’s advocate, if the original commenter knowingly posted a false account of what happened, it would be libelous and, yes, wrong in every sense of the word.

And you say it’s just a “small comment”, but as you can tell from this brouhaha, Google scores aren’t that hard to influence (and checking your Google entry is good business, IMHO). It wouldn’t be that hard to sabotage a competitor with malicious blog comments.

In the immortal words of Chris Rock, I’m not saying it’s right, but I understand.

That said, I do hope legal action is taken against the movers. Or at least file a complaint with BBB (or Canadian equivalent) so it’s on the record. Fraud and intimidation by moving companies go unpunished too often.

yt

I’m a lawyer as well, and the writer who stated it depends upon jurisdiction is correct. I just wrapped up a libel case. In at least one U.S. jurisdiction (Florida – the state who brought you the 2000 election fiasco), a true statement uttered for an “improper reason” is actionable.

The post might be anonymous because there’s no way to “login” to the blog software:

“You are not currently logged in. If you would like your user information to be displayed with your comment, please enter your login information below.”

So, uh, where do I get my login information?

I am Alan Gutierrez, by the way, not trying to hide behind anonymity.

Seriously, do I have to sign up for a blogware blog or something? I already have a blog.

Bingo – you’ve got it. There were no personal names mentioned?

No libel.

This is ostensibly a business enterprise, and if incorporated is subject to the whims of the market.

Yes, I’m sure xenophobic people are just waiting in the wings of Joey’s blog to descend and wreak havoc with the comments…

Joey, you should be ashamed you redneck jerk! Oh, wait… 😉

Alan, again.

Okay, I don’t know how to log in, but…

“You are getting married soon and you have your whole life ahead of you. Why mess around with a bunch of Eastern European thugs like this?”

Pathetic. Utterly, pathetic.

Thanks for posting this story. It’s hilarious.

i too have had a very similiar, very bad experience with a moving company here in victoria, b.c. Diamond Moving is owned and operated by an apparently accentless white man who appears to have been born and raised a canadian even though he(suspiciously) goes by the name of “Diamond Dave”. i’m sure he is not representative of mosy other white, unaccented canadians and i do not mean to disparage them(i mean us). He was personally involved in my disasterous move but even though i was paying by the number of men on the job, of which he was one, he sat in his truck and smoked all day. when i complained about damage he showed me the form i had signed before the move which excused them if things were not properly packed. In this case probably about six inches of foam around everything would have helped a lot. i quit complaining when i began to fear from their aggressive attitudes that violence was part of their negotiating tactics. my friend who has worked in the moving industry tells me that these small fly by nighters don’t really care because their is always enough new vicims (whoops, i mean customers) who have not heard of them, to keep their business going and if it gets really bad there is always the name change option. i also spoke with one of his former employees who ionformed me that this diamond dave guy gets 5 to 10 complaints a month and most are settled in the same way as mine was. be careful what you sign, and have witnesses and/or protection around if you are disputing anything

I was searching for a way to send some feedback to quick boys and have spent the last hour reading this blog. Great reading. Since I now intuit that the company is probably not interested in post payment feedback, I’ll just comment here. I moved last weekend (August long weekend) and used quickboys. All in all they were pretty good. The only thing they did wrong in my move was squeeze an extra 1/2 hour of payment ($45) by dragging their feet on a couple of things. When they showed up, on time, the driver took 1/2 an hour explaining how he was going to charge me. He borrowed a piece of paper and proceeded to do multiplication long form. When they were done the job he went to his truck and pulled out his calculator to tally the bill, at which point I asked him why he didn’t use that to begin with. They also ended up getting a couch stuck in a doorway which they only had to move a grand total of 9 feet since I was throwing it out and only needed to go from the front room to the porch…ended up costing me $30 to move that one piece of furniture.

Like I said though, all in all they did a pretty decent job. I’m sorry other’s have had such a problem with them. Moving sucks no matter how well the process goes. Next time I’m just going to throw out all my stuff and start fresh in the new place. I like the idea of being a minimalist.

I double-checked my sources. Truth is an absolute defense everywhere in Canada but Quebec, as it turns out. – Joe Clark

From Cody Saunders (www.tk23.com/www.tkblog.com):

I like this section … it seems like the shill got his college dropout son to be a secondary shill:

“Like I said though, all in all they did a pretty decent job. I’m sorry other’s have had such a problem with them. Moving sucks no matter how well the process goes. Next time I’m just going to throw out all my stuff and start fresh in the new place. I like the idea of being a minimalist.”

The sarcasm in the next to last sentence seems to be a way of saying “aw, come on, give ’em a break..”

But I’m into subtelty. I hate the idea of being a minimalist.

Joey,

It’s nice that even blogging can expose these half-cracked businesses that exist only to rip people off. The day of the ‘threatening phone calls’ to straighten things out is bullsh**. I hope you and Jay do NOT back down, and that more people learn about this business and eventually shut them down.

I for one know for a fact Jay is telling the truth. For some reason the owners of Quick Boys seem to think that it is ok to intimidate people. As first generation Canadians emigrated from Iran, I believe that they feel this behaviour is acceptable. They often lose things and then try to get out of having to pay for or replace said items. As far as movers and drivers, there is absolutely no training and u will be lucky if they speak or understand english at all. General labour is all they will hire. My advise is to never ever use this company. As a matter of fact I advise is to pack and move your own things that way no one can take advantage and u will have no one to blame for broken items but yourself!

Hey, everyone has their own way of living life and everyone needs to make a buck in their own way. Some people take advantage of others and some people get taken advantage of. That is the cyle of life. I’m sure from the Quick Boys’ perspective, they were taken advantage of here. The point is everyone is able to justify their own reality one way or another.

The beat goes on so there is no sense in trying to stop it. Thump. Thump. Thump. Do you hear it? It is the great heart of life pumping in the only way it knows how.

Besides, this Quick Boy story is dead. Take a look at The Soundtrack from My Personal Coming-Of-Age Film, Part Deux – wow!

So that it’s documented for those searching. I too got screwed over by Quick Boys (recently). They showed up an hour late, took 8 hours to move a one bedroom apartment, and damaged almost every piece of furniture that we own. The movers didn’t know how to pack the truck, so they ended up not having enough room for all of our possessions (again, this is a one bedroom apartment, and a normal sized truck) – we had to leave stuff behind.

Avoid Quick Boys moving at all costs…

Being offended = intelligent.

I’d elaborate, but that would mean I’d have to describe your post. And there’s nothing worse than describing someone’s words, or how they sound on the phone.

Being offended = intelligent.

I’d elaborate, but that would mean I’d have to describe your post. And there’s nothing worse than describing someone’s words, or how they sound on the phone.

Joey,

I am glad you stood up to those people. Movers can be such a pain. I have moved multiple times and each time my mover seems to suck. This last time I moved I found my mover on one of these get quote things I think it was

They sent me a mover that was slightly better then my last mover. But I have come to the conclusion that all moving companies try to rip you off in one way or another.

Misty

I wish I read this blog earlier! I used Quick Boys Moving a few years ago and I also had a terrible experience with them! They sent 3 guys who didn’t know the first thing about moving. They were inexperienced, slower than molasses, ruined some of my expensive furniture, scraped up the wood floors in the house I was moving out of, and over-charged me several hundred dollars. But it got worse. They stored my stuff for a few months. When they came to deliver my things to my new house, before they even unloaded the truck, they told me that I had to pay and sign the contract saying that my things were delivered in good condition. When I told them that was illegal, the guy yelled at the top of his lungs, “IF YOU DON’T SIGN IT IN 5MIN I’ll DRIVE THIS TRUCK AWAY!!” So I had no choice but to sign it. When they unpacked my stuff it was completely damaged from moths, despite their claims that their storage was a pest-controlled environment. The saga continued for months and they became more and more incompetent and threatening so finally I gave up. But when I saw this blog today, I wanted to back-up Jay’s original complaint. If you value your furniture, money and peace of mind, don’t use Quick Boys Moving!

Nobody should ever use Quick boys I had to call the police as they doubled their original invoice and would not unload the truck unless I agreed to the outrageous overcharge

Bob Garbutt Newmarket Ontario myplumber@rogers.com

Avoud these thieves

Screw you, “Quick Boys Movers” and your PATHETIC bullshit.

I’m going to TELL EVERYONE I KNOW not to use you. And then I’m going to tell people I don’t even know NOT to use you.

You’re russian mafia tactics won’t fly in this town. I’ll see to it personally.

Oh, and if you’re thinking about changing the name of your company to another name…I’ll be on it and then tell EVERYONE NOT TO USE you under your new name.

You’re done in this town. Done. Done. Done.

Elite Moving Service.. Another scamming company.. sounds very familiar from what happened to you guys..

So, instead of writting out the whole story, I will brief you.. I found them on craigslist, and when they scammed me for $300 I promised the guy i spoke to on the phone that I would post on Craigslist and KIJIJI (their main places to recruit business) every day telling people about my expereience with them, and to warn others not to use them..

Here is my latest post:

Hello again Everyone,

Seems that Elite Moving Service is starting to change their ads a little bit!

AM I RUINING YOUR BUSINESS?? OR WAS IT YOU WHO RUINED IT THROUGH YOUR DISHONESTY??

KARMA SUCKS!!

So, to let everyone know.. they quoted me $180-200 over the phone to move in to a one bedroom house. I told him exactly what was being moved, and left out no details.

I got concerned when the movers arrived and refused to tell me a round about figure regarding how much is would cost (I had $300 on me just in case). When we were leaving the loading area, I asked again, they wouldn’t answer. I thought I better borrow $100 from my dad. I WAS STILL SHORT!!!

when it came time to offload.. they refused to offload until I paid them >>>$515<<<< A big difference from 200, no?

Well ELITE MOVING SERVICE..

AS I PROMISED, I WILL CONTINUE POSTING EVERYDAY UNTIL YOU REFUND ME $300..

I HAVE NOW BEEN ABLE TO GET MOST OF YOUR ADS REMOVED FROM KIJIJI, AND NOW CRAIGSLIST IS NEXT..

YOU BETTER PAY UP SOON, UNTIL YOU HAVE NOTHING LEFT..

FYI.. (FOR YOUR INFORMATION – AS YOUR PROBABLY DON’T UNDERSTAND MUCH)

I HAVE RECEIVED OVER 30 EMAILS NOW THANKING ME FOR THESE POSTINGS AND WARNINGS ABOUT USING YOUR SERVICE.. YOU ARE LOSING BUSINESS FAST!!!!!!

On second thought, maybe the $300 is worth making you suffer!! Too bad I have more patience than most people in the world, and as promised, I WILL continue to post EVERYDAY!!!!!

P.S. At this point, I am getting great satisfaction in knowing that KARMA IS KICKING YOU IN THE ASS!!!

416-919-6683 <<<< thats their number as they seem to be changing their company name as a result of my now over 40 posts

I used Quick Boy Movers recently and they loaded the truck and held it for randsom. Insisted that I pay them $1500 or they would not move the truck. In hind sight I should have called the cops. Tried to deal with the person in the office tht gave me the quote and she was the most rude unreasonable person. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY

Interestingly enough, when you Google “Quick Boys Movers” their website is first, but Google warns you not to visit it because it might harm your computer! So be careful – it’s not just your furniture at stake.

Thanks for the great post. Looking for movers I came across this. I will avoid aforementioned moving services. Now can anyone suggest a good mover? 1 bedroom apartment. bedroom suite, living room suite, one dinner table (no chairs), and a big screen tv (still have the box)… plus about 20 boxes. Local move from Etobicoke to Downtown.

[…] What’s interesting is that the original blog entry, Anyone Know any Good Toronto Movers?, is still getting comments from readers relating their (mostly bad) experiences with moving companies. The last comment the article got came in yesterday, and it was about a bad experience with Yellow Moving Company. The resulting article about Quick Boys’ vaguely threatening phone call received comments as late as February of this year, the last comment being about how someone had to call the cops on Quick Boys. […]

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