Threat of legal action against me over Trustpilot review :(

Undervalued

Jenni_D said:

Bear in mind that any court action for defamation would NOT be in the small claims track (unless things have changed recently). Hence the losing side could be liable for all the winning side's costs. Therefore it may be wise to seek proper legal advice IF he does follow through with the threat.

Yes, although costs are awarded according to various formulas. It is not just a simple as having to pay the other side's bill regardless of what it is.

The point I was making in my earlier post was that should the OP be sued but they successfully defend the claim, they are unlikely to get all of their costs back, let alone any compensation for the time and stress involved.

Undervalued

Thrugelmir said:

user1977 said:

BunnyBurrow said:

But surely consumers should be able to leave honest reviews of companies without this kind of threat?

There's no rule prohibiting people from throwing around fanciful claims of suing each other. I wouldn't worry about it.

MSE rapidly remove posts if they are approached and the posters are censured. 

Indeed. However that is because, like a lot of forums, they take a very cautious approach. Yes, at times it can be frustrating but they cannot possibly investigate the rights and wrong of every post. Despite that they could under some circumstances be liable as the publisher.

user1977

Undervalued said:

Thrugelmir said:

user1977 said:

BunnyBurrow said:

But surely consumers should be able to leave honest reviews of companies without this kind of threat?

There's no rule prohibiting people from throwing around fanciful claims of suing each other. I wouldn't worry about it.

MSE rapidly remove posts if they are approached and the posters are censured. 

Indeed. However that is because, like a lot of forums, they take a very cautious approach. Yes, at times it can be frustrating but they cannot possibly investigate the rights and wrong of every post. Despite that they could under some circumstances be liable as the publisher.

It's simply not worth their time to enter into discussions about it or figure out any liability. From what I've heard, Trustpilot take a fairly similar approach (which makes you wonder how reliable a resource it actually is, if there's a high likelihood of negative reviews being removed).

user1977

Ectophile said:

user1977 said:

BunnyBurrow said:

But surely consumers should be able to leave honest reviews of companies without this kind of threat?

There's no rule prohibiting people from throwing around fanciful claims of suing each other. I wouldn't worry about it.

Apart from anything else, if they've got any sense they'll be aware of the Streisand effect (and become well-known not only for their dubious business practices, but for being litigious about anybody daring to criticise them).

People have been successfully sued after leaving bad reviews on the internet.

I think you can count the cases on the fingers of one hand though, as against the millions of online reviews made every year. I doubt one review on Trustpilot, no matter how negative, is really going to have much impact on any supplier.

Pollycat

Undervalued said:

Thrugelmir said:

user1977 said:

BunnyBurrow said:

But surely consumers should be able to leave honest reviews of companies without this kind of threat?

There's no rule prohibiting people from throwing around fanciful claims of suing each other. I wouldn't worry about it.

MSE rapidly remove posts if they are approached and the posters are censured. 

Indeed. However that is because, like a lot of forums, they take a very cautious approach. Yes, at times it can be frustrating but they cannot possibly investigate the rights and wrong of every post. Despite that they could under some circumstances be liable as the publisher.

There some very interesting information regarding "Legal considerations" in MSE rules.

It talks about Section 5 process in which they (MSE) state:

You will need to be able to stand by anything you post on the Forum as being truthful or based on your honest opinion, or else you could be liable. While we host the MSE Forum, if we’re contacted by persons complaining that your post is defamatory, we’ll follow a legal process set out in Section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013. This offers us a defence against what you have written and means that you, and not us, could be subject to defamation action because of what you’ve written

CKhalvashi

Thrugelmir said:

user1977 said:

BunnyBurrow said:

But surely consumers should be able to leave honest reviews of companies without this kind of threat?

There's no rule prohibiting people from throwing around fanciful claims of suing each other. I wouldn't worry about it.

MSE rapidly remove posts if they are approached and the posters are censured. 

I'm not sure this is the right way to do things though (for the business, MSE are free to run their business as they please), especially if there's evidence to back a claim up.

Anyone is welcome to criticise my business practices if they have a genuine concern and it's kept factual. It helps us to improve. We deal with thousands of consumers/transactions annually and understandably a very limited number of those do have issues, which I'd hope most businesses realise.

Manxman_in_exile

I suspect it's unlikely that the OP would end up getting sued for libel, not least because it's likely to cost any claimant up to about £10k to even get it to the High Court in the first place.

However, having said that, what struck me about the OP's position was what @Ergates highlighted:

Ergates said:

BunnyBurrow said:

I have not said anything that isn't true in the review.

The company in question, an estate agent, who in my view, use dishonest means to trap property buyers into handing over thousands of pounds as a "fee",

Do you not, perhaps, see what the issue might be here?   When accusing a company (or person) of using dishonest means to extract money from people, you might need to back it up with something a bit stronger than "in my view".

An *opinion* can be backed up by "in my view" - "I didn't like they way they did this", "They didn't explain this bit well enough", "Their logo sucks" etc.   Those are subjective statements, so you view is enough.

"They acted dishonestly" is a statement of fact, not opinion.  They either did act dishonestly, or they didn't - your opinion on the matter is irrelevant.  So, if you're going to make that kind of claim then you should be able to back it up with more than just your opinion, otherwise you could be sued for libel.


If you wanted to warn others of what you believe (but can't prove) is dishonesty, then describe the exact sequence of events that lead you to believe this and let the readers come to their own conclusions.

I too was concerned by the Op's statement that the company was using "dishonest means  to trap property buyers into handing over thousands of pounds as a "fee".

I know the OP has attempted to qualify it by saying "in my view", but if he's stated on the website that they are acting "dishonestly" when it might simply be the case that they have done something "mistakenly", then he might find himself on difficult ground.

When posting on this and other forums I take a lot of care* to make sure that what I say is accurate and can be justified if challenged.  I would be very reluctant to use words like "dishonesty" and "fraud" etc unless I was 100% sure I could back them up - and even then I wouldn't use them.  I'd probably words like "wrong", "insincere", "disingenuous", unfair etc.

I think it depends very much on what the OP said and the precise words and terms used...

* And even then I've been temporarily banned before for "not being nice" to posters!

Olinda99

Send them an apology; edit the review to state the facts only.

You are in the wrong here.

Ath_Wat

They didn't dishonestly trap you into anything though, did they?  They said you'd have to pay a fee if you wanted to offer to purchase the house.  You didn't want to, so you didn't.

You've lost nothing here except maybe a bit of time.  As I tried to explain in your other thread, it's not you that has a problem with this company, it's the seller. These fees are designed to discourage buyers, which is what happened.

outtatune

Don't estate agents have an obligation to pass on all offers? If an agent demanded a fee from me as a buyer for any reason and at any point in the process I'd tell them to foxtrot oscar and expect it to make no difference whatsoever.