20th July 2023
Mr Bernath lacks the courage to contact us directly, so he had one of his current employees/friends in Missouri give us a call. Although he didn’t say so in as many words, it seems he was disappointed that the site had not been updated recently. As such we have added another 16,000 of PHS’s fake businesses to the website. It’s hoped that these will help people when doing their due diligence on selecting a contractor – or indeed a massage business or one of many other areas which Mr Bernath and his family dabble in.
- To see fake businesses in Canada click here.
- To see fake businesses in the USA (Alabama through Delaware) click here.
- To see fake businesses in the USA (Florida through Illinois) click here.
- To see fake businesses in the USA (Indiana through Minnesota) click here.
- To see fake businesses in the USA (Missouri through South Carolina) click here.
- To see fake businesses in the USA (Tennessee through Wisconsin) click here.
2nd April 2023
After the sudden death of Andy Walkington, we are informed by call center staff that ex-manager Ryan Reagan has been brought back to take over call center operations under a new company name. Multiple ex-employees of the Exelcius call center have contacted this site, stating that extensive evidence of gross mis-management of the Exelcius call center has come to light over this period including unpaid staff commissions, and mis-appropriation of funds to support multiple mistresses kept by Mr Walkington.
28th February 2023
Ryan Reagan of the Excelcius call center, who it appears had been taking on multiple “officer-level” responsibilities for Premium Home Service, has resigned from the company citing his discomfort with what he regarded as illegal activities being carried out by PHS, and with the fact that the owner of Excelcius refuses to act on these concerns. He reached out by email and provided a copy of his resignation letter, which can be viewed here.
12th October 2022
More information regarding operations and partners in the Philippines has been added to the website.
10th October 2022
More information is received regarding PHS’s relationship with their now ex-bank, Byline. PHS was kicked out of the bank with not only their business accounts being closed, but also the Bernath family personal accounts; Yosef was even ordered to clean out his safe deposit box. The reason for the closure was given as “failure to abide by the terms and conditions of Byline Bank”. PHS now banks with Bank of America.
9th October 2022
PHS are now on Twitter – although maybe not in the way they’d want. The Twitter account is unrelated to this website, but was sent to us by a supporter.
7th October 2022
Yosef Bernath and PHS (through their legal business name of “Best GDR”) are being sued in the Missouri Small Claims court. The case number is 22SL-SC00542. Mr Bernath was personally served with a summons on October 4th 2022, and the case is currently scheduled to be heard in the St Louis County Court on November 30th, 2022. Case updates can be viewed by searching here.
1st October 2022
Technician manager, Rabbi Sholom Reindorp, is returned to the website after it’s made clear that his claimed departure from the company was a ruse.
1st August 2022
Some positive news from PHS.
- PHS has now introduced live chat to their customer service portfolio. This will hopefully be a positive step, and make it easier for customers to have issues resolved.
- In previous times, if a customer tried to book a job in an area with no appropriate technicians on the PHS list, the customer service agents were instructed to make the appointment for two weeks out. These appointments were almost never filled, as no tech would be found and employed in that timeframe. It now seems that this practice has been discontinued, and customers are to be truthfully told that there is no availability.
26th July 2022
One of PHS’s top technician managers, Rabbi Sholom Reindorp, contacts us to inform him that he has parted ways with all businesses related to PHS, and no longer has any involvement with them. His information is removed from the website.
7th July 2022
PHS’s attempt to take over this domain name is rejected by the arbitration panel. We are informed that PHS refuses to pay the invoice from Armstrong Teasdale, the law firm who managed the case. This must surely be awkward for Mr Bernath’s relative who woks at the law firm, and arranged the connection.
28th June 2022
A PHS technician, called to an HVAC job in Colorado, is reported to have assaulted the customer. The customer calls the police. Shortly afterwards the customer finds this website, through which he is able to contact management at PHS; demonstrating that this site is providing a valuable service to the consumer.
27th June 2022
Information from a credit card dispute case reveals that Maverick Payments is the payment processor behind PHS’s business.
20th June 2022
A response is sent in regards to PHS’s attempt to take over the premiumhomeservice.info domain name. This can be viewed below, with some information redacted.
7th June 2022
A response letter is sent to PHS’s lawyers, Armstrong Teasdale, in relation to their Cease and Desist letter. This letter can be viewed below, with some information redacted.
2nd June 2022
A call is finally arranged with Jeffrey Schultz, the lawyer representing PHS, and his colleague Renee Reuter. They are asked to provide further details around their very vaguely written Cease and Desist letter; specifically, details of the alleged threats, of the alleged untrue information, and of the alleged tortious interference. They are unable to offer any further details on these, either on the call or in response to subsequent requests by email.
The one piece of information that they do offer is that the “threatening” emails have allegedly been received from the help@premiumhomeservice.info email address. Although they refuse to supply any more details it is later determined that this is untrue; the emails have been sent from apparent throwaway addresses at Hotmail and Protonmail, using a name associated with premiumhomeservice.info. It is assumed that these are set up by a party associated with PHS in an attempt to discredit this website, as they have not been sent by anyone involved in permiumhomeservice.info.
1st June 2022
The paperwork from PHS’s petition to ICANN, to take over this domain name, is finally received; their lawyers had filled it in incorrectly the first time around. The submission, with some information redacted, can be viewed below.
The paperwork has apparently been filled in by Renee Reuter of Armstrong Teasdale. The overall arguments are weak, but one in particular stands out. Ms Reuter claims that this website’s use of the “privacy” setting on the domain name registration (this prevents the contact details of the owner being openly published online, although they are still available from the web host) indicates “bad faith”. She apparently fails to check the domain name registration of her client’s website, which uses the exact same “privacy” setting.
On the same day, Mr Bernath from PHS contacts us and informs us that the membership is being raised from $199 to $300, stating that this is to ensure a high staffing level and serve every customer within a day or two.
31st May 2022
Premium Home Service have hired a Private Investigator to look into this website; a curious decision, since we informed PHS management of our identity in April before the website was even fully live. Their choice of Private Investigator is unusual; they have employed Tibor Kovacs of Dallas, Texas.
A brief review of Mr Kovacs’ social media reveals that he seems to be a hardcore “QAnon/Trumper”, believing in such conspiracy theories as the theft of the 2020 US General Election among others. A willingness to believe bizarre conspiracies, while ignoring an abundance of obvious facts, does not seem to be a strong qualifying characteristic for a Private Investigator.
26th May 2022 (pm)
An individual whose IP address places them in Chicago attempts to reset the password to this website, presumably in an attempt to take over access. They are unsuccessful. We are investigating the practicality of compelling the Internet Service Provider in question to hand over the information of the individual involved.
26th May 2022 (am)
A “dispute” is filed with ICANN, the organization responsible for administering domain names. Typically, this is done if a company claims that someone has registered a similar domain name to theirs, for the purpose of confusing customers.
25th May 2022
A Cease and Desist letter is issued by PHS through Jeffrey Schultz of the Armstrong Teasdale law firm, who is based near Mr Bernath in St Louis, Missouri. He extends an invitation in his letter to contact him within any questions, which is good as much of the letter is too vague to allow us to provide any meaningful answer.
Unfortunately attempts over a three day period to contact him, both directly, through his secretary, by phone, and by email, are unanswered.
The Cease and Desist letter can be viewed at the link below, with some contact information redacted.
23 May 2022
Mr Bernath of PHS contacts us, and informs us that he will be raising the membership rate from $150 to $199 to cover the costs of new staff, with the aim of fixing the issues raised on this site.
16 May 2022
PHS sets up a derogatory website about the individual who had the idea for this site. PHS publishes personal information which this individual provided to PHS when initially contacting them and making an appointment for service. They place it on a rather amateurish website along with a quantity of other information; some of which is accurate, but much of which is entirely false. This suggests that any information which a customer provides to PHS may be mis-used at their whims; particularly concerning given that PHS stores information such as customers credit card information.
10th May 2022
A PHS employee accesses, or is provided, the personal information of the individual who had the idea for this site. This employee phones the individual and makes threats to “kick his ass”. He later follows this up with threats to “torture” him, rather unwisely committing these threats to writing.