To date, the most popular post on this blog has been the true story of how I got abused by yaari.com. Yesterday, the number of visitors to this post hit a record peak after a much more popular blog linked to it.

I wasn’t the first blogger to start complaining about Yaari.com, and certainly wasn’t the last. You can find evidence that the blogosphere is getting  increasingly fed up with Yaari here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. One of the most prominent bloggers to complain about Yaari is Arun Gupta who ironically has the same last name as Yaari’s founder Prena. His post on the Yaari scam which creatively labels it “Spam 2.0″ is the second link that shows up on a google search for “Yaari.com”! Another creative label is “Social Spamworking”. Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff has also warned about Yaari.com and has done some impressive background search on it’s founders.

From the comments on my post, you can see that people have tired many ways to fight Yaari.com. Some people tried writing emails to Yaari.com which predictably, did not result in any behavior change on Yaari’s part. I never even bothered to email them. And I feel absolutely no regrets when Prena Gupta, Yaari’s founder emailed me on February 14, 2009 and said “I would have greatly appreciated if you could have contacted me directly and spoken to me about your grievances, so that we could have used your input to improve our process.” Many other people did Prena, and you did not improve your process.

Prena Gupta has apparently sent similar emails to some of the bloggers that wrote in criticism of Yaari, asking them to remove her partner’s contact information, and trying to half-apologize but in such an arrogant manner that it seems actually rude. Allan Herman writes extensively on the letter he recieved from Prena and his response. Aalaap Ghag who has writtern this about Yaari, has had a much shorter response. Prena’s efforts may have been more than just emails since her name appears among the commentators on my post, but I have doubts whether that is really her.

What is important is that Prena Gupta has finally realized that these honest blog posts are really hurting her company, herself and her partner Parag who should be especially worried for the sake of his reputation as a university professor. But I think Prena is doing way too little, way too late. Negative word on Yaari.com is spreading fast, and is too out of control to be contained with these ill-informed, arrogant sounding, semi-apology emails (read the full text of her emails here).

Yaari.com had it coming. You cannot simultaneously be a scam and be high profile, and live through it in one piece. Some research shows that people who hate your product tell 11 people; people who like your product tell three people. One report found that after a negative experience with a company or organization: 80% of US adults decided to never go back to that company; 74% registered a complaint or told others; 47% swore and/or shouted; 29% have had a headache, felt their chest tighten and/or cried; 13% posted a negative online review or blog entry. In addition, after a negative customer experience, 34% have fantasised about emailing friends, family or colleagues asking them to boycott the company or organization. 12% have dreamed of picketing and/or defacing a company/organization’s headquarters.

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