UPDATE: Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.

This has been cleared to send and I said I would make no comments - Scott
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From: Moujan Kazerani [mailto:moujan@dandb.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 2:08 PM
To: Scott Hauge
Subject: Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.

Mr. Hague,


I want to commend you again for trying to help small businesses. Both of our respective companies are focused on helping businesses succeed. I suspect that after having seen our website and speaking with me, you realize that our goals are largely the same. We talk to thousands of businesses each week, have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and offer a value to businesses that we believe is unmatched in our industry.



That said, I want to make sure both of us are doing the right thing here. You have brought to our attention an issue involving our sales team and I am working with my team to address that.



I want to caution you to use good judgment in how you work toward resolving this. If the goal is to help small businesses, then that is what our focus should be. But if your goal is simply to slander us, that is not acceptable. I suspect that is not your aim but through impetuous action and rash judgment, you have repeatedly submitted inaccurate information to the public. Each time you have taken corrective action but the issues continue to mount. This is, ironically, precisely what concerned you about us.



You informed us that a letter was sent out from you to thousands of businesses first calling our business a fraud. This is consistent with the heading on the email you sent which was “Re: Scam Dunn& Bradstreet.” It is also obvious from some of the responses to your email that you projected our company as fraudulent. As you now are aware, this is not accurate. We advised you of the truth - that we acquired D&B’s Credit-on-Self business with a perpetual right to use the D&B brand and to sell certain D&B products exclusively. You let us know that a follow up email with corrections was sent, hopefully before any damage was done. However, at least 5 of yourcontacts specifically state or infer that they thought we were legitimate (some of these businesses are or were customers of ours) until they received youremail. This is not only damaging to Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. but to D&B and other partners of both companies as well.



You also submitted a complaint on a review board despite the fact that you haven’t actually used any of our products or services. In the “review,” you made misleading statements, named and potentially slandered an individual and incorrectly implied that your experience with a sales person was a global problem. That same review, along with a follow up, alluded to us not carrying the D&B name legitimately. Worse yet, it lookslike you modified the quoted chat dialogue on the review to fit your purpose. We pulled the records and the actual chat is different than what you submitted. As an example, you stated that you asked our Credit Advisor “Are you Dunn & Bradstreet, the company that deals with company credit?” when in truth, you had asked “Is this Dunn & Bradstreet where I can get something called a Dunn Number and check the credit of my company?” Our Credit Advisor correctly informed you that “Absolutely” (as you know, we are indeed the Dun & Bradstreet representative for establishing your business credit with a D&B D-U-N-S Number and selling any productsrelated to your business credit). We had this review removed for privacy, inaccuracy and relevance violations. It appears that you have resubmitted your review, merely modifying the chat yet again to your needs. If you have a complaint, I think it is clear we are a willing and ready to help address it without resorting to these tactics.



Finally, we received a copy of an article from the San Francisco Chronicle that you asked to have written. In that article, you made at best misleading statements that we haveconfirmed with you are not accurate. You stated that you shared your story with small business America and then received “53 responses from around the state with similar complaints.” This is clearly not true as you have sent those to us and after a brief review, many of those complaints had nothing whatsoever to do with us, others were focused on the fact that you told people the company was a fake and not offering D&B products, and still others were unrelated responses or simply thanking you for the email. While we did find a few situations that we are not happy with, we are addressing those and any broader issues we find, and will reach out directly to each and every individual you identified. But to say what you were quoted as having said in the article is blatantly wrong.



I believe you are a man of character and suspect that you jumped into something aggressively because you thought an injustice was being done to small businesses. However, the best way to help resolve that is to work with us, as we have been trying to do and continue to be willing to do. We do not want to see your integrity damaged by stretching the truth, lying or exaggerating, nor will we allow any wrongful acts on anyone’s part (ourselves included) to go unresolved.



Sincerely,



Moujan Kazerani





_________________

Moujan Kazerani

General Counsel

Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.

22761 Pacific Coast Highway

Malibu, California 90265

Phone: 310-919-2244

Fax: 310-919-3693

Email: Moujan@DandB.com