The Real Rip-Off Report

It was only after that fiasco that he met Mesa attorney Dale Thorson — and discovered his second act as a consumer advocate and Internet entrepreneur.

Thorson was doing estate planning for Magedson's parents, and got to chatting with Magedson. Thorson was impressed with tax work Magedson had done for another family member and told him so. "The kid is brilliant," Thorson says. "Just very, very intelligent."

A book that Magedson has self-published, now available on his Web site.

Magedson's Rip-Off Revenge guide.

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• Ed Magedson
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Magedson asked Thorson if he had any clients who needed help. Living with his parents, his expenses provided for, he wanted to use his skills to get justice for people who needed it.

Thorson asked him to take a look at a case involving an elderly couple who'd been screwed by a rug cleaner. Magedson ended up recouping their entire investment, Thorson says, and the couple was grateful to have avoided a court case.

As for Thorson, he was thrilled by the energy Magedson devoted to his task — and that the fledgling advocate refused to charge the people anything for his services when he was done.

In no time, Thorson says, he was asking Magedson to assist a number of people who'd come to him needing help. "He's not this slick guy," he says. "He's the Columbo guy" — like the TV detective played by Peter Falk, whose awkward manner can conceal a sharp mind and an uncommon persistence.

"There isn't a challenge he didn't take on," Thorson continues. "I can't think of one where he didn't get positive results. Sometimes the client didn't want to keep going on the case, and they'd drop it. But it was never because Ed wanted to give up."

Magedson began distributing a flier, promising, for $250, to help people fight against a corrupt City Hall or companies that had screwed them. He says he never actually charged the fee; instead, he used it to weed out people who weren't serious about pursuing their claims.

He began to hone a process of just how to fight The Man, to develop a formula that really worked. He was planning to write a book. (Today he sells that book, a slim paperback, from the Rip-Off Report for $21.95. Not to give away a trade secret, but the formula basically comes down to threats to picket, and then picketing.)

One day in the mid-'90s, visiting a shop owned by some of his former swap-meet tenants, he says, he met a woman who designed Web sites. Hearing about his unusual line of work, she asked him, "Why don't you make a Web site?"

And that was the start. Before that, Magedson says, "I didn't even know how to turn a computer on." But the site, a simple ad for his advocacy services, took off: "I got people to call me. I thought, 'Gee whiz!' Because I didn't believe in the Internet."

From Magedson's initial foray into online advertising, the Rip-Off Report may seem like an obvious outgrowth today, with everyone doing business on the Web.

But Magedson was ahead of the curve. In 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal first became public on a Web site called the Drudge Report, many Americans didn't even know how to access the Internet, much less use it to their advantage.

But that's the year Magedson registered the Rip-Off Report Web site. And like the Drudge Report, another early online juggernaut, www.RipOffReport.com wasn't just a static presentation hawking a business. It was the business.

Today, the Rip-Off Report seems old-fashioned next to even the simplest blog. It has none of the clean functionality that Google has perfected; it's a mad jumble, plagued with technical problems. More than half of New Times' searches on any given day ended in futility; the site lacks the technical capability to handle its own content. (Magedson says a long-awaited redesign should be online within the month.)

One reason for the tech problems is the site's massive volume: On top of the 225,000 initial complaints, the site has layer after layer of businesses' rebuttals and readers chiming in. And though it would probably increase the site's user-friendliness if posts of a certain age were deleted, Magedson doesn't like to get rid of anything. You can still get complaints dating back at least six years.

It doesn't help that the Rip-Off Report has a fairly low standard of relevance. An entire category has sprung up with people complaining about adulterous partners. At last count, it had 207 entries.

Magedson pays a team of stay-at-home moms to vet posts for obscenities and social security numbers. But beyond that, he admittedly finds few things too scurrilous for publication.

For example. Consider this post about a man who's identified by first and last name and hometown. The man is, "Lindsey" complains, "nothing but a loser. He steels [sic] from everybody including his own family. Not to mention he beats his own mother. . . . He spends all his time and money on drugs. No wonder he has no life."

Or, less personal but no less toxic, the Maryland hospital where nurses are alleged to "cut bodies open after they kill people" and steal organs. Or the Scottsdale communications company that's alleged to have "scammed millions of dollars from honest people."