[jamesbritt]

The article says, "Up to now, HelpHive has been free for both consumers and businesses that sign up to be on the site."

But, according to to plumber, "These local business listings are not placed there by the business but have been harvested from other sources."

And, "If it isn’t illegal to place ads or listings to the public using our company’s name without permission and faking our phone numbers, we need a law now."

I see nothing that says the plumber signed up for anything, had any agreement, or paid any money. It appears that HelpHive took upon themselves to "help" this guy.

Unless I'm missing something, Karim Meghji's rebuttal completely skipped over the claim that HelpHive was harvesting company data from other sources and listing businesses without prior approval.