Trustpilot A/S (Denmark) - censorship?

GraceCourt

It's somewhat ironic that there doesn't seem to be a way to review companies that publish reviews, but given that there has been a lot of discussion on this forum about the quality of reviews, it might be useful to publish here my experiences of trying unsuccessfully to post one.

For reasons that aren't relevant to this thread, I recently obtained a County Court judgement against a UK-based energy company (not one of the "big" ones) for civil damages after it exported my personal data to the USA and a company there used it to e-mail me.  Worse, the UK company against whom I obtained judgement failed to pay up, and I applied for a Warrant of Control to enforce the judgement debt, which was issued and sent to the County Court in which the debtor's registered office is located for collection of the debt.  At this point, I published a review on Trustpilot, which was nothing more than an objective summary of the facts. 

Although it was published, a short while later (on 25 May) I received a message from Trustpilot's compliance team, informing me that the energy company "... has reported your review as being defamatory, so it’s been temporarily moved offline. Trustpilot is a platform that sits between consumers and businesses, so we have to balance competing responsibilities: We want to let everyone tell their story (good or bad), but we're also required to take down words and statements that may unjustly cause significant damage to reputations, whether that be a person or a company. We hope you understand our position, and that we really want to get your review back online as soon as possible."  That's all very reasonable - except for the energy company's claim - so by return I sent copies of the energy company's terms and conditions, in which customers are (probably unknowingly) agreeing that the company can export their personal data to the USA for the purpose of administration of their energy account, as well as full details of the County Court judgement and of the Warrant of Control, including the case and warrant reference numbers. 

Surprisingly, the review is still hidden, and today I got another message from the compliance team, advising that the review will not be published until I have "... removed the highlighted phrases above".  Although no phrases were highlighted, it would appear that this refers to the two issues that I wanted to draw to the attention of potential customers, i.e. that the company hasn't made payment of a judgement County Court Order made at the end of April and that the "small print" of their consumer contract fails to draw attention to the fact that the company exports customers' personal data outside the European Economic Area, which is something of which I only became aware when I got e-mail from a company based in the US, where state data protection law is either non-existent or, in the view of the European Court of First Instance, is inadequate to protect the personal data of EU citizens!

I've written back, pointing out that I have provided full details, and did ask them to let me know if they needed anything else: I also pointed out that their apparent reluctance to publish factual information that is of genuine public interest to potential customers of the energy company could be viewed by some as censorship.

If my view is wrong, and information such as I tried to list should indeed not be allowed to appear in an objective review on a review site, I'm sure that other forum users will post replies here saying so.

However, as the judgement was over one month ago and - to my knowledge - remains unpaid, anyone can obtain details about the debt from the public Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines for England & Wales on payment of the fee.

JJ_Egan

So what is your Consumer Rights question .

GraceCourt

JJ_Egan said:

So what is your Consumer Rights question .

Well, if the implied question in the penultimate paragraph doesn't count, perhaps you'd kindly point out where on this forum ("forum" - a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged) the requirement for posing a question is documented?

DoaM

Praise, Vent & Warnings seems a better place for this.

davidmcn

It's probably more for the Praise, Vent & Warnings board. Nothing really to do with rights or obligations here, they can choose what they want to publish on their website.

JJ_Egan

GraceCourt said:

JJ_Egan said:

So what is your Consumer Rights question .

Well, if the implied question in the penultimate paragraph doesn't count, perhaps you'd kindly point out where on this forum ("forum" - a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged) the requirement for posing a question is documented?

Forum has relevant sections  .

This one is for Consumer Rights questions as per heading .

Thats why i asked what the question was  .

GraceCourt

davidmcn said:

It's probably more for the Praise, Vent & Warnings board. Nothing really to do with rights or obligations here, they can choose what they want to publish on their website.

Thanks for that... my rationale for posting here was really to highlight the issue of the rights of EU citizens (and UK citizens as well, now that the UK has left) in relation to their personal data (not) being exported outside the EEA, and their statutory right to civil damages if that occurs without their informed consent, but "Praise, Vents & Warnings" would be a valid alternative.  Trustpilot can indeed choose what they want to publish, but if they are actively censoring objective facts for the benefit of the companies reviewed, then that makes Trustpilot reviews worthless and consumers have a right to be aware of that, although I'm genuinely interested in any contrary opinion from other MSE members.

I thought hard about naming the energy company, but reasoned that if I did so, MSE would quite rightly want to see the evidence, so not naming it in this post was easier.  However, I'm happy to PM the name to anyone who requests it as I've nothing to hide, and in all three legal jurisdictions in the UK it's not defamatory to state true facts.

powerful_Rogue

Trustpilot is a private site. They can censor what they wish. They charge £££ for comapnies to sign up to different packages, so of course the will censor comments.

A search on the interent shows you can buy TrustPilot ratings.

photome

trustpilot reviews are worthless. It will always side with the retailer/ company  and remove bad reviews so no point even looking on there

TripleH

Where any review site gets paid by companies to sign up to it, there is going to be censorship. Smart companies will allow negative reviews but limited to language they prefer or where they can 'show reviewer is loopy'.
I don't imagine any company will allow any review which includes how they lost a court case.
You can provide all the proof you have but Trustpilot will not allow your review as it will cost them money.

hollydays

I wonder if where you've come unstuck is by claiming the company's small print" fails to draw attention to it". Try taking that out. I do know some of the danish laws , and penalties on privacy are somewhat more stringent than ours