Is Kijiji collaborating with cyber criminals to steal your thoughts and money?

From the Tin Foil Hat department ...

In an unrelated thread on the Kijiji Canada Forums about someone copying someone else's ad, a poster has appeared with a lengthy tirade accusing Kijiji of assorted commercial crimes, violations of Charter freedoms and conspiring with criminals to use radio frequencies to track people down for harassment and offline stalking.

Oh, he or she might have had me 10% convinced, if not for the transparently stereotypical schizophrenic acting-out.

For your entertainment, or perhaps litigious and paranoid indulgence, here is the award-winningly well-researched treatise against the Evil Overlord Kijiji. As originally posted by fastnfreeware@hotmail.com ...


The "rules" at Kijiji are too absurd to be reasonable or legal.

The fact that your company name is the same in all cities where your different branches (owned by different crews) have PAID to advertise does not entitle Kijiji to steal your money by cancelling your ads. NOR do I believe that in law they could destroy your ads even if they returned your money.

I think ONE of the problems at Kijiji is that they have set up automated "bots" (robots) which are bits of software designed to TARGET certain features of all ads and attack them and remove them automatically. Which is to say arbitrarily. Kijiji also stalks and targets people over the internet, so that even if your ad is perfectly legal and breaks NONE of their rules, they destroy your ads for NO REASON and refuse to explain themselves. They will identify your browser, computer, etc., remotely and target you for stalking and abuse, and take your ads offline just to screw you for their own amusement. One of their new tricks is to manually block your ads from appearing in the site, even though you have the ad number and the actual url of your ad, and they have never sent you a notice that your ad has been removed. They will do this if you have a perfectly valid ad, but they just want to target and screw you. Kijiji collaborates with third-party cyber-stalkers, such as the scum at city-owned library wireless internet locations who typically watch and record all activities of their patrons on their patrons' OWN LAPTOPS. If somebody at the city doesn't like your face, or wants to screw your business, a whisper in the ear of Kijiji is all it takes for Kijiji to quietly collaborate to shut you offline, COMMUNIST style, in the great Soviet republic that was formerly free and democratic Canada.

I am too poor for a phone line. I therefore found a FREE number on the internet, but it's based in Washington, DC. I live in Montreal. I put up LOCAL Montreal ads last year, looking for work, and using the FREE online phone number. Kijiji destroyed all my ads because of the washington number, although all their BOTS can clearly tell I am posting from Montreal. These people are abusive, inhumane, and I wish you would sue them.

Clearly, if a company takes your money to advertise in different CITIES, where you have a company in EACH city, and your company name is the same in each city, they are attacking the name, reputation, GOODWILL (legal term) and rights of your company to DO BUSINESS.

If I were you, I would take Kijiji to SMALL CLAIMS COURT in EACH CITY in Quebec where they took your ads down abusively. Not only should you get your MONEY back for the period covered by the ads they destroyed, they should pay you for LOST BUSINESS ("Goodwill") that their abuses have cost you.

Kijiji's so-called "rules" cannot override fundamental freedoms enshrined in Canada. You have a right to do business; you have a right to freedom of expression, communication, association; people who own branches of your company in other cities have a right to do business, too, including under the name of your franchise. Kijiji cannot STOP YOU from doing business just because you are the SAME company name franchised in different locations. Who do they think they are, God? I have news!

I really encourage you to seek out FREE legal advice on this, and then take steps to kick Kijiji in the backside, they deserve it.

You can get FREE legal consultations from various places. For example:

1. McGill Legal Information Clinic: supervised law students
http://mlic.mcgill.ca/MLIC.html

2. Mile End Legal Clinic, Montreal, Free Consultations
http://www.justicemontreal.org/

3. You can also try the PRIVACY Commissioner of Canada for some free advice - you can send an inquiry by e-mail, and if they think you should file a complaint, they will ask you to do so in writing by regular mail:

http://www.priv.gc.ca/resource/io_e.cfm

F.y.i., lawyers are not allowed to appear and plead at Small Claims, but you CAN hire a lawyer to advise you on how best to set up your Small Claim suit. A lawyer would first tell you on what basis you need to sue, and then advise you on what kind of REGISTERED LETTER to send to Kijiji. Each of your crews in each city would have to send a separate letter to initiate separate small claims suits for damages. You might be able to get a student lawyer at McGill (above) to help you with the grounds of your suit, and in drafting the letter. The students are supervised by law professors. It's FREE.

Kijiji has an extremely abusive attitude, they treat their clients like dog-doo, and it's about time the public stood up to them. Kijiji clearly has the resources to commandeer a vast amount of "public" space over the internet. In return, they need to have the DECENCY to treat the public like human beings, and with professionalism and respect for the rights of individuals and companies to run branches of their business in various cities. It's about time they learned a lesson about being a good corporate citizen.

I would also suggest you take out FREE ADS in the "community" and "events" sections of all the other FREE classifieds in the same towns, announcing your law-suits against Kjiiji, and inviting people to BOYCOTT Kijiji until they change their tune. You might even find other people who have been screwed by Kjiji who would like to join your suit and thus convert it into a CLASS ACTION. At that point, you could telephone the Quebec Bar Association for a REFERRAL to a lawyer. Referrals are done on the basis that you get 30 minutes' FREE consultation with whichever lawyer they suggest; and you can try more than one until you find someone who suits your needs.

Various free legal resources for self-representers are online here:
http://www.freewebs.com/administrationdelajustice/index.html#resources

If you need to know WHO owns Kjiji so you can SUE the right party, there is a web site by the Quebec government which lists all companies operating in Quebec and their OWNERS:

https://ssl.req.gouv.qc.ca/slc0110_eng.html

I looked up Kijiji for you, and here's the information:

COMPANY MATRICULE: 1161822862
COMPANY'S LEGAL NAME: ENTREPRISES KIJIJI CANADA INC.
INCORPORATED ON : 2003-10-22
FORMED ON : 2003-10-17 CONSTITUTION
LOCATION : QUÉBEC

HEAD OFFICE ADRESSE: 1, PLACE VILLE-MARIE, 37E ÉTAGE CODE POSTAL: H3B 3P4 MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC)

That head office address of theirs is a law firm (details below).
Companies often use a lawyer's address to guard the privacy of their own administrators.

Kijiji is incorporated under PART 1A of the COMPANIES ACT

Kijiji's "ECONMIC ACTIVITIES" are listed as (I'm translating) :

7721 HOSTING OF WEB SITES FOR THE BENEFIT OF A SUPPLIER WHO CONDUCTS:
7721 ADVERTISING TO SELL USED GOODS. (that's what it says)

PERSONS CONNECTED WITH THE INCORPORATION "KIJIJI":

These guys aren't even Canadian! The gall of them to take over OUR market place and SCREW US in it. There's a BOB in Norway, and a RAFIK in Belmont, California, USA: And there's a company in the Netherlands that's a part owner and the major shareholder:

MARKTPLAATS B.V. (majority shareholder)
8304 BC EMMELOORD
PAYS BAS (NETHERLANDS)

Kijiji's President and Administrator is:
BOB VAN DIJK
OVRE ALLE 21
7030 TRONDHEIM
NORVÈGE (that's NORWAY)

Kijiji's Administrator-Secretary is:
RAFIK BAWA
2618 PONCE AVENUE
BELMONT CA 94002
USA

This is another reason that they would have a LAW FIRM as their "head office" in Quebec, because that is probably the address you need to serve them with the proceedings. The internet tells me that Gowlings Lafleur Henderson is possibly the law firm at 1 Place Ville-Marie #37, Montreal, Quebec H3B 3P4, 514-878-9641. This would seem to be correct, here's the GOWLINGS web site:

http://www.gowlings.com/ContactUs/

That should save your student lawyers a bit of time, they just have to review this and determine the proper grounds on which you ought to sue Kijiji for hampering your right to do BUSINESS in your own COUNTRY.

When you DO take them to Small Claims court, SCAN each of the proceedings taken in each city, PDF it, and put it ONLINE! You can do this for free at www.scribd.com, and at www.calameo.com -- you can basically open FREE document-hosting accounts, upload every single scanned document from the law suits, as they progress, and scribd and calameo instantly publish them all over the internet. The news will be spread far and wide, very fast, that Kijiji is screwing its customers, including its PAID customers.

Good luck!