Threatened with legal action after posting online review

Zcs

Dear money savers,

I recently experienced a less than satisfactory service from an online company. I posted an honest review about this on a review website.

The very next day I received an email with an attachment of their legal action.

1. I am shocked that the review website passed on my details to this company

2. My review is deleted from the website and I was told to not post anymore bad reviews, otherwise legal action will be taken.

Just for your information, before posting the review, I have contacted their customer service expressing my dissatisfaction, but did not receive any reply whatsoever.

This is definitely a lesson learnt for me. Us consumers can no longer express our dissatisfaction and warn others. What rights as consumers do we have in this situation? What can we do to protect ourselves but at the same time having a freedom of speech in expressing dissatisfaction ? Thank you.

traceya89

name and shame the company please. if its your honest review then it should have stayed online.

vaio

you have the right to post anything that is legal, equally any web site has the right to remove your posts if it wants to.

You can repeat your story in other places and, if you mention the firm name then google will pick it up if anyone searches the company name

Valli

Zcs wrote: »

1. I am shocked that the review website passed on my details to this company

You give no details about the review website. Refer back to the T&Cs of the review website (which you read, carefully, prior to posting the review I hope) and see what was said about your details.

Either they said your details could be passed on to interested parties (and by posting your review you agreed to this, explicitly or implicitly)

OR

they guaranteed confidentiality.

If it was the latter you need to complain to the Data Protection Commisioner (I might have that wrong - jelly brain) but google data Protection.

dalesrider

I would imagine that retailers either monitor these sites or will be contacted when a review is posted.
While you may think your post was fair, without seeing it. It is had to comment.
Perhaps the company thought it was not.
Far better for review sites to leave these posts and let the retailer respond. Although it is hard for a retailer to tell the truth.

Some people simply won't let you do your job and help them... Then kick off when you start telling the truth..
Just because it is not what they want to hear...
See that plenty of times here, where people post the same thing a couple of times as they did not get the answer they want the 1st time.

arcon5

In 99/100 cases these are merely scare tactics to stop you tarnishing their reputation on other websites.... usually because Google picks up reviews very quickly. For example, if you post your complaint on the Praise, Vent & Warnings board it's likely (so long as the company name is in the title) to be on #1 for a period of time.

Bring a case for libel is not an easy affair - it's very very costly and hard to quantity a monetary claim. Especially if your review is based on facts and you can prove this (which I suspect you can as online transactions often have a digital timeline of events e.g. emails).

I'd respond along the lines of:

"
Thank you for your recent email.

I reject your claims and reserve my right to freedom of expression.

It would be my suggestion that you use these reviews to improve the level of service you offer in the future to prevent further unhappy customers.

Any legal action will be frivolously defended and I will continue to offer my reviews in the public domain at my peril.

Regards
"

I'd then leave a review on another website to spite them

robatwork

You got your frivolously wrong. Did you mean "Any legal action would be considered frivolous and will be vigorously defended....." ?

arcon5 wrote: »

I'd respond along the lines of:

"
Thank you for your recent email.

I reject your claims and reserve my right to freedom of expression.

It would be my suggestion that you use these reviews to improve the level of service you offer in the future to prevent further unhappy customers.

Any legal action will be frivolously defended and I will continue to offer my reviews in the public domain at my peril.

Regards
"

I'd then leave a review on another website to spite them

DevCoder

Im not too sure I'd frivolously defend it

C_Mababejive

Can we read the review? Is it still available?

martinthebandit

Yet another company who appears not to have heard of the 'Streisand' effect.

If your review was an honest one then you need to name and shame.

Valli

Zcs wrote: »

2. My review is deleted from the website and I was told to not post anymore bad reviews, otherwise legal action will be taken.

.

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