Purpose of this section

lionelator

Hi I wonder if anyone could help me out I was under the impression a proportion of this website was devoted to warning people about potential scams and cowboys hence this entire section, yet a few days ago there was a quite reasonable thread started by a customer of a paint company with her experiences. The next few days, the claimed owner of the company came on and was abusive towards everyone and his dog, calling us all liars and saying we were trying to hijack his company or something. He also posted this on his twitter feed which seems official as it today lists discounts and 'positive' reviews.
Even if the original claim were false the postings highlighted the lack of customer service from the company as well as personal details of a customer being posted which ought to have served as a massive warning against ever dealing with this company.
After threats and abuse, suddenly the thread has vanished off the face of the site.
I tried messaging a mod but have had no answer, seems strange that threats and vulgar abuse leads to threads being discontinued whereas plenty of other sites are listed in this section as dubious. If the site is not going to keep warnings up when the owners come in and are threatening/abusive, surely they ought not to keep any warnings in this section at all, as its a disservice to the remaining companies that are listed here.

competitionscafe

Sounds familiar - similar thing happened with the camerabox thread a while ago. The owner/director came on here and started spouting all sorts of nonsense and digging himself into an ever bigger hole while failing to do anything about the complaint.

Other threads warning about alleged scams have vanished too (eg:BiteSizeDeals) even though they have since been investigated by the FTC and the thread probably helped a lot of people avoid being scammed.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/08/bestpriced.shtm

It seems that the MSE tagline of "Consumer Revenge' does not stand up to scrutiny when genuine, polite complaints can vanish from this board just because the company being complained about complains to MSE that they are not true.

BlueAngelCV

Why has my post/thread been removed without telling me? Posts/threads are deleted so we're no longer "publishing" them. While you may have posted it once we are made aware of it - we are legally liable too as the publisher. When something is deleted, it's removed from public view but it's still viewable by the Forum Team and can be reinstated if it needs to be. It won't show up in a forum search.
We never contact people when their posts are deleted. The sheer numbers of posts removed every day means it's simply impossible to contact everyone.
The Forum Team won't respond to aggressive emails demanding to know why a post/thread's been removed but if you send a polite email asking, it may review or explain the decision where possible (sometimes legal reasons prevent this).

It's not fair to expect MSE to open themselves up to possible legal action for something they have no first hand knowledge of.

If a stranger told you that company X was no good would you feel comfortable printing that in your newspaper (for example) with no hard evidence if you knew that if it wasn't true you could be sued?

dinglebert

BlueAngelCV wrote: »

It's not fair to expect MSE to open themselves up to possible legal action for something they have no first hand knowledge of.

If a stranger told you that company X was no good would you feel comfortable printing that in your newspaper (for example) with no hard evidence if you knew that if it wasn't true you could be sued?

In which case close this section down as almost every post which is negative about a company does not come with supporting evidence other than the sayso of the poster.

Of course then we would lose a valuable source of hearing about customer service.

S4sugar

dinglebert wrote: »

In which case close this section down as almost every post which is negative about a company does not come with supporting evidence other than the sayso of the poster.

Of course then we would lose a valuable source of hearing about customer service.

Oh what a shame..The whole forum is now pointless.
The Experian dodgy free trial thread has been removed also
without a word.I would expect a 'mod' to a least draw a line under the last post and explain that the thread is now closed .
The Experian thread was in no way libellous and only closed when an Experian Rep ran out of user names to drum up support.

I dont think its any coincidence that Martin Lewis pushes the service when doing radio interviews either.

stephen77

Martin Lewis was discussing this issue on the radio a while ago about having delete threads.

He was discussing a court case regarding a small hotel owner whose hotel had a bad review on a different web site.

He did say he has delete a few threads when challenged by the company as he can prove either way whose is right. You who writes the post will not get in trouble, but he (web site) will get in trouble.

Just because the company complains does not mean it gets taken down either.
At the end of the day we never really know.

Shelldean

I brought something from a show, and the goods failed to arrive.
I posted on here just asking if the company was real? In otherwords had joe bloogs set up a stall at the show and simply run away with my money or did i actually stand a chance of getting my goods?
I did have some help which showed the company whilst real was doing some dodgy dealings.
Then one day I came on to find a PM from the person who'd been helping me, to tell me thread gone? and all because the person who I'd brought from had complained I was being unfair!!! hang on a minute... I'd brought goods in good faith, nothing turned up calls and emails unanswered etc. His webiste was dodgy address and post code differing amoungst many other things.
But hey rather than stop another person being conned MSE decided the easiest thing to do was to delete!!!
Oh and BTW I wasn't alone in being conned plenty of others have come forward via another forum.
He is a serial con man!!
Although on a postive note I DID finally get my goods, as did a few others tho we are def in the minority. Most people just lose their cash!!!!

Shelldean

BlueAngelCV wrote: »

It's not fair to expect MSE to open themselves up to possible legal action for something they have no first hand knowledge of.

If a stranger told you that company X was no good would you feel comfortable printing that in your newspaper (for example) with no hard evidence if you knew that if it wasn't true you could be sued?

In my case as mentioned above, I wasn't alone in hvaing problems and the thread on here brought us together. So it was several people complaing.
Also the person who was conning had ALREADY been mentioned in at least two local papers. So surely if he was going to sue, he'd sue them first.
Oh no he came on here and whinged I was ruining his business, when in actually fact his dodgy dealings were whats ruining his buisness

zppp

Shelldean wrote: »

In my case as mentioned above, I wasn't alone in hvaing problems and the thread on here brought us together. So it was several people complaing.
Also the person who was conning had ALREADY been mentioned in at least two local papers. So surely if he was going to sue, he'd sue them first.
Oh no he came on here and whinged I was ruining his business, when in actually fact his dodgy dealings were whats ruining his buisness

Fact of the matter is though, it could be mentioned in loads of regional newspapers but it doesn't mean the MSE site team can verify the truth.

The MSE team have to step in when a company states that posts are libellous. With thousands of threads to go through daily, it is not possible for them to search for hours to decide who is right.

I think you forget one of the main rules of this forum;

• Posting is a privilege not a right. This is a privately owned site. Posting is a privilege, not a right. Any inappropriate posts or any issues that take up a disproportionate amount of site resources or make it a worse place to be will be stopped at our discretion - with or without explanation. No one pays to use this site; when there are issues we pay to resolve them. And sometimes we need to prioritise spending money on the site, other issues or better resources.

Shelldean

zppp wrote: »

Fact of the matter is though, it could be mentioned in loads of regional newspapers but it doesn't mean the MSE site team can verify the truth.

The MSE team have to step in when a company states that posts are libellous. With thousands of threads to go through daily, it is not possible for them to search for hours to decide who is right.

I think you forget one of the main rules of this forum;

[/LIST]

Yes I know it's not a god given right to be able to post.

BUT there was nothing Libelious in my posts.
My questions were are this company real?? Given I had no knowledge of how to trace a company!! All I had was a basic website, email and two phone numbers.
And if they are what can i do to get either my goods or a refund??

The next few posts were from a long time member of the forum who pointed out the problems with address and post code. Plus some other bits telling me in fact yes they was a 'real' company. and advising me how to get my money or goods.

Yes I named the company how else would i get help?
The long time forum user found the newspaper clips, which made me fear the worse
The owner then came on and said I was ruining his rep!!!
UUUMMMMM nope he did that ALL by himself.

All I'm saying is MSE deleted the thread without checking facts first.
Yes they hold that right but it would've been nice for them to have checked. Rather than just take the con mans word? TBH I don't think they even read the thread before the hit delete!!

In fact I may have posted on consumer forum as I was asking for advice on how to get refund/goods rather than on praise/vent.

lionelator

The question is, if you dont want to open up the can of worms that is allowing people to post experiences and reviews on your site, why invite people to do that in the first place?
Its ridiculous to say oh well they cant take the risk on allowing reviews that may be wrong when they are actually asking for customer opinions and praise and vents, and some company owners or directors have been absolutely appalling in their conduct.
If you are going to solicit opinions and claim to offer unbiased customer opinions, its pretty lame to take them down when the company owner complains.

Bottom line is, the people with the better legal teams or who are more aggressive or intimidating will have negative opinions taken down, and the small places with not so great legal teams or a one off negative experience will be slated on this site which reaches so so many people.
It actually bothers me I have even directed people to this site when its clearly far from neutral and fair in this regard.
The best thing to do would be to close down the entire section, or allow all posts to stand.
Lounging in between is just a cop out, and actually more negative than positive.
Very very disappointing.