I hate it when I see companies in our industry acting unprofessional. It makes our whole industry look bad and encourages ill-informed authors to write bad things about this industry. Why am I upset?

Well, I saw a thread at Google Webmaster Help posted by a site owner who is afraid that his old SEO company will hurt his site in the search engines. This SEO company allegedly wrote him the following email:

What should this person do? Here are the things that come to my mind as I write this:

Remove access to their domain nameRemove FTP access or CMS accessRemove their access to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Live Search Webmaster tools (here is why)Report them to the BBBKeep an eye on your links and site for the next month or two

Times may be getting tough in this recession, but to use fear tactics and threats to keep business, seems wrong.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.