Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

I wanted to follow up and address some concerns mentioned in this thread, and acknowledge that I definitely made mistakes.

How did you get my information? We acquired Homejoy’s domain and customer information through an ABC process. Our intention is to improve and then relaunch Homejoy’s cleaning service. We were testing a new model using Fly Maids, one of our testing brands. As evidenced today, we made some mistakes.

Why is your email and website so misleading? When we contacted customers, we didn’t tell them we were Homejoy relaunching because we wanted to gauge reception to our new model without the influence of Homejoy’s brand.

As a result, we scared many customers, who expected the worst had happened to their data. We should have told customers upfront who we were, what we were testing, and used original content.

Do you have my credit card info? No, as of Oct 28 2015, we deleted all credit card info, including the last 4 digits. Also, the Homejoy Stripe account has been permanently shut down so no one can get access to it in any manner.

At no point did we ever charge a Homejoy customer’s credit card.

How do I delete my account information to ensure that it is not used in any way? Please go here http://goo.gl/forms/YPdJlYJ9Pn

Since you're fielding questions now; why did you copy Handy's website (including testimonials)?

You can't write that off as simply being an honest mistake or testing new ideas.

You went to college. That's plagiarism.

Regarding the last point on continued access to account information: opting-out from this is much worse than opting-in. Think of all the people who used homejoy and don't read HN - wouldn't they want the same?

I was not a Homejoy customer but from a general point of view I reckon you need to communicate to all the customers in your file and clearly let them know the truth about everything. That is the only way that you can redeem yourself from this.

Good luck.

If I was party to a lawsuit in which a company like Homejoy was the defendant, and a similar situation happened, I'd definitely be interested in finding out how one of it's co-founders "acquired" the customer database / IP, for how much, if it went to public tender, and if not, why not -- and I'd certainly be asking a judge to join whatever the new entity is called to the case as a co-defendant with shared liability.

It's at the very least dishonest if not of questionable legality to shut down your old company to try to avoid lawsuits and / or debts, start a new company and sell yourself your old assets. I really hope that isn't what you're doing / did. Because that would be pretty low-brow kind of stuff.

Why is a Google form required to ensure that my information is never used in any way?

Aaron Cheung, I would appreciate it if you didn't taint YC's brand with your questionable business practices.

Instead of posting the opt-out link on hn, shouldn't you send that out to all the former Homejoy users which were just emailed?

Uh! This is making things worse, not better!!!!

1. You now acknowledge you intentionally lied to customers by saying you were redirecting them to a "partner", but it's the same company under a different name.

2. You don't hold that data under a payment provider like Stripe, and yet you claim to have PCI-DSS compliance but are violating it and risking a lot of customer credit card data!

You now say you have deleted that data, but how are we meant to believe you? Where was that data stored? Locally or with Stripe? Why didn't you encrypt it?

How did you "acquire Homejoy’s domain and customer information through an ABC process"? How does that even work?!

>Aaron Cheung, I would appreciate it if you didn't taint YC's brand with your questionable business practices.

You could say the same about bigger "success" stories (let's say Airbnb). They're actively ignoring laws that make their business look better. Regardless of how you feel about whether the laws are just or not, how does that reflect on YC to have one of their biggest success stories blatantly ignoring laws?

ABC process - http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/business-bankr...

Oh! That's what that is... Thanks for the link Rob.

robhunter has pointed out that ABC is something entirely different, and explained here: http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/business-bankr...