Can you believe that a hired legal counsel of ConvrtX would send a client what they deem to be sexually harassing emails during negotiations? No? Neither would I have if I hadn't been the recipient of the emails.
Back in July 2022, I personally had major issues with ConvrtX - I had ordered a website to be built a year prior. A whole year prior! They had given me an estimate of 4-8 weeks completion for a website facelift. So why did I still have nothing in July 2022? It wasn't for lack of chasing on my part. But that is a blog post for another day.
Why did ConvrtX get legal counsel involved when dealing with me? I left some very negative reviews, justly so. They had given me deadline after deadline, and promises that the website would be finished and live by the end of June. My web hosting at the time was due to expire in early July, so it was absolutely essential to me to have my new website and hosting organised for then. I chased, I was given assurances it would be sorted. Was it? Well, obviously not.
With my deadline fast approaching, I was finally told that my website was not complete. Josh Adler advised they could transfer my website to other hosting - I begrudgingly agreed and was advised there may be a short outage (up to 72 hours) on my website. Again, not convenient but I agreed. Except; there was absolute mayhem with the transition. My website was down, emails went down, orders were coming through sporadically on my payment merchant with no order numbers, some were missing entirely, the website would go up and the emails would stay down. It was pandemonium and I eventually had to insist that I return to my old hosts. The havoc caused me to close my order books for around 3 weeks causing huge losses to my business. The only thing I will concede is that Josh paid for my hosting to be renewed; by it is a drop in the ocean compared to the losses caused.
I left my negative reviews, and ConvrtX were not happy. I refused to remove them and advised that we needed to discuss compensation. ConvrtX gave me a very insulting offer (less than 15% of what I estimate my losses to be) - and I still had no products!
Enter Julius Clarke, previous legal counsel to ConvrtX.
Julius had been tasked with getting me to remove my negative reviews, but I was not prepared to at this stage. He sent me some very uncomfortable emails.
An email from Julius Clarke using a ConvrtX email address, dated 16th July 2022.
"I actually researched you also and to be honest your professional profile doesn't match your beauty". Is this an appropriate email for a legal counsel to send someone? Would they have sent this to a male client of ConvrtX?
What is sexual harassment? According to Rape Crisis, sexual harassment includes "commenting on someone's body or appearance" which can result in offence. My physical appearance was not relevant to communications regarding negative reviews. This should not happen, especially in a professional context. Also, what exactly does this comment Julius made even mean? That someone with my looks isn't expected to have a professional profile? That only women without beauty can be professional? Let's be clear; I am in no way agreeing that I am beautiful or that any perceived beauty isn't relative to my profession. I am simply unable to understand Julius Clarke's line of thinking here.
He goes on to say that he would be giving up his Saturday night for me. That doesn't seem an entirely appropriate comment. Nor is his claim that his company Coastal State Solutions could assist me in more ways than I could imagine! What do I imagine? What is he insinuating here?
That email made me feel rather uneasy. Without a response, he followed up with the following:
An email from Julius Clarke using a ConvrtX email address, dated 17th July 2022.
Now we're talking about Horoscopes Julius? Really? And you want to make sure that I know your star sign sticks to the chase? What chase was Julius referring to? He doesn't state. I can only assume that he means getting the negative reviews down, because anything else is very unsettling. But regardless; this comment was particularly creepy to me. Followed by that he needs an audience with me, and resorted to 'pretty please'!
Needless to say - these emails made me very uncomfortable and I deem them to be sexually harassing given their content and tone.
Now, is Julius alone to be named here, or can the company ConvrtX and Josh Adler be held responsible? Surely Josh wouldn't approve of something like this? If I addressed it with him, he would surely apologise and agree to Julius no longer contacting me?
Well...
A text to Josh Adler from Gemma Martin, dated 17th July 2022.
As the image shows, I contacted Josh on the 17th of July 2022 to inform him of Julius' conduct and that I did not want contact from him again due to my discomfort. As you can see from the message he sent me on the 19th of July 2022, he did not acknowledge my text. In fact...
Email list from Julius Clarke to Gemma Martin. You can see he continued to email me! Have a look at the email dated 26th July 2022. He addresses a Daniel. Daniel is my husband. He had messaged Julius given the situation, and as you can see - Julius insisted that the correspondence was for me only! So my wishes to not talk with someone who had sexually harassed me were not being respected. Josh was aware, and therefor complicit in causing my discomfort and forcing my hand in responding to Julius. Have a look at the email on the 4th of August 2022 - this was ConvrtX trying to insist I sign an NDA to receive my products at that time. I of course refused. So... it appears Mr. Josh Adler is ok with his employees sexually harassing clients, will ignore reports of it, and will authorise such employees to continue messaging their complainer. If you're wondering why the emails say 'Police Scotland - ConvrtX' at the side - well, I'll let you come to your own assumptions on that one.
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