can i sue for slander of my business??

ilovethecomps

If you can't get her to remove the review/or if you can't 'report' it etc, consider populating the site with legitimate good reviews.

What site is it? If it's something like FreeIndex, I know you can encourage people to review you by placing a widget on your website etc. If you can get enough positive reviews from genuinely happy customers then this should 'push down' the bad review.

If possible, definitely respond to it as a poster has stated above. State facts in your response and don't express any emotion etc.

Good luck sorting it

wantsajob

ilovethecomps wrote: »

consider populating the site with legitimate good reviews.

Seriously bad idea. One thing I look out for when researching companies is obviously faked reviews. Far better to ask customers if they liked your service to please post a review on.... so all reviews are genuine and clearly not from the same person.

GothicStirling

Dear God. If a business went suing every time a poor review appears on TripAdvisor etc, the business would quickly go out of business.

You can't please everyone. There was obviously a breakdown in communication, and you need to use this as a lesson to make sure it doesn't happen again. Go chasing this customer and you'll come off as the vindictive one. You have no choice but to suck it up.

Premier_2

GothicStirling wrote: »

Dear God. If a business went suing every time a poor review appears on TripAdvisor etc, the business would quickly go out of business.

You can't please everyone. There was obviously a breakdown in communication, and you need to use this as a lesson to make sure it doesn't happen again. Go chasing this customer and you'll come off as the vindictive one. You have no choice but to suck it up.

I do feel there may be more to this matter than has been divulged so far.

If I ordered a cake and I wasn't happy with it, I don't know why I would have refused an R&R that was offered (It kept a load of Tesco customers quiet whilst they offered this for mis-pricing)
Even if I didn't want a replacement, I would have taken a refund (and perhaps just asked for the replacement to have the pleasure of throwing that in the bin too :cool:)

At worst I may have given a review/feedback on the site I bought the product through, but wouldn't have trawled the internet posting on every site I could find that the retailer happened to be using.

Does anyone else think that the actions of this customer appear to be not consistent with the issue as described? Would anyone else spend so much time moaning & complaining if, e.g. they ordered a chocolate sponge cake but received a plain sponge cake by mistake???

PasturesNew

Start your own PR campaign, get the local press involved. "When is blue ... not blue". And have pictures of you/blue cake sent out with press releases. Look perplexed and confused while gazing at a blue iced cake just like the one she had. Give your interview and turn this into some free publicity.

withabix

Write to the websites in question asking them to take the reviews down.

Martin gets requests like this regularly, hence there are certain companies which cannot be discussed, for example.

Mischa8

I feel there may be more to this story too and as is often the case when running a small cottage industry business one can be too naive when dealing with the GBP (great British public).

There was a breakdown in communication, the customer complained and is either very vindictive or rightly annoyed. 'Customer is always right phrase' springs to mind but this can be sometimes hard to swallow. sorry couldn't resist that pun.

This won't be first complaint/bad review your business suffers and equally so I am sure your business has had more than complimentary feedback too. Do you ask those people to feedback anywhere? Is this a chance for you to maybe put up a site or review site where people can leave feedback? So, you could counter-attack with positive comments.

Libel/slander - well yes, this could be correct but costly to bring this action and hard to prove. Customer entered into a contract with you - breakdown in communications and she wasn't happy. Think if the shoe were on the other foot, would you be happy?

Finally, as others have said, what more could you do to ensure this doesn't happen again. I think an order form is a good idea. I can't remember if you offered a refund or not, if so then this can go some way (yes I know you are out of pocket if you do this) to placate an annoyed customer.

Also - look at some of the sites where she has left bad feedback and try to see if you can either a) respond to that feedback or b) complain to the website if it is unfair/rude comments.

A while ago I reviewed a local beauty salon where I had had appalling customer service, there were other bad reviews so I didn't feel I was being nasty. Unbeknownst to me, the owner of the salon was 'reviewing herself' and posing as a client (you could tell from her user name etc) and she retaliated with either gushing comments to the few favourable reviews or vitriol towards the unfavourable reviewers, e.g. me. As this is a well known beauty website I complained when she was rude and got an apology from the owners/hosters of the website and the rude/nasty comments and the 'poser's reviews' were taken down. A good review website will try to sort things out from both sides.

Good luck with your business in the future by the way.

Mischa8

withabix wrote: »

Write to the websites in question asking them to take the reviews down.

Martin gets requests like this regularly, hence there are certain companies which cannot be discussed, for example.

What I said.

This is the best option in this case I feel.

GothicStirling

PasturesNew wrote: »

Start your own PR campaign, get the local press involved. "When is blue ... not blue". And have pictures of you/blue cake sent out with press releases. Look perplexed and confused while gazing at a blue iced cake just like the one she had. Give your interview and turn this into some free publicity.

No, just no. As a catering manager, the last thing I would want to do is advertise a customer complaint. It could also backfire with the customer accusing the OP of defamation.

dmg24

withabix wrote: »

Write to the websites in question asking them to take the reviews down.

Martin gets requests like this regularly, hence there are certain companies which cannot be discussed, for example.

Even if the website did remove the reviews, there would be nothing to stop them posting a comment along the lines of 'The retailer has requested that we remove negative comments about them', which is entirely factual. That would put me off using them more than a single negative review.