HelpHive has altered the way it displays information about the local businesses in its online directory, including the elimination of an unique phone number that it previously assigned to every listing on the site. As part of the changes, HelpHive will now only list the special phone numbers where the business has actively claimed a profile page and chosen to participate in the customer acquisition program. The company also has decided to remove business listings altogether from the directory when requested by the business owner.

The changes come five days after TechFlash reported on complaints from a Seattle plumber who didn't like the idea of HelpHive promoting a separate phone number for his business. The story led to an active debate on TechFlash about whether an online directory service like HelpHive had the right to assign a separate phone number to local service providers. Many readers said it did not without the consent of the business owner.

Based on some of that "constructive feedback," HelpHive co-founder Karim Meghji this evening said that they've allowed the businesses to choose whether to participate or not.

"All unclaimed businesses go into the state of no HelpHive contact information on their pages," he said. "When a business claims their business profile, they are given an option to have the HelpHive business contact information on their page, or turn it off."

Meghji said the original idea was to "delight" small business owners by passing on qualified job referrals that they may not have known about otherwise. But the former RealNetworks employee said that concept "obviously was not working." Part of the problem was that some local service providers had not heard of HelpHive, which caused anger and confusion when they discovered the new phone numbers on the site.

That was a different reaction from what HelpHive saw in tests and focus groups, but Meghji said that sometimes happens when you roll out new services to a larger audience.

"We sort of realized as we spoke to a lot of businesses that right-wrong, good-bad with the local businesses is not yet a great approach because until they have heard about you or know something about you, the situation you find yourself in is at best you may be considered neutral .... and you may be considered as a negative part of the landscape," he said.

That was never HelpHive's intent, with Meghji saying they did not set out to do "anything nefarious." He stressed that HelpHive's referrals are exclusive to local service provider, and leads are not resold or passed along to competitors. He also noted that HelpHive is not trying to sell businesses leads on their own customers.

"We want to win your business and hope you’ll give us that chance – our entire reason for being is to provide a significantly better alternative to the prevailing non-performance-oriented advertising options that you’ve historically been limited to," the company wrote in a blog post. "If you’ve heard or read recent rumors or claims about HelpHive, we hope you’ll read our “Setting the Record Straight” document and give us a chance to make sure you have all the facts before making a judgment."