News - Seller who threatened to sue customer is banned from Amazon

[HEXUS]

Mediabridge wanted to sue the Amazon shopper over a negative wireless router review.

Read more.

[raven1001]

Amazon always on the side of the consumer, simply the best CS out there.

[TooNice]

I'd like to know the full story, including the exact claims made in the original review, the letter and the presence/absence of any communication prior to the threat of legal actions. If the seller did decide to send the lawyers right off the bat, then I'd say that they are the one who blew it out of proportion in the initial stage and ended it up and got the predictable backslash.

[Agent]

I'd like to know the full story, including the exact claims made in the original review, the letter and the presence/absence of any communication prior to the threat of legal actions. If the seller did decide to send the lawyers right off the bat, then I'd say that they are the one who blew it out of proportion in the initial stage and ended it up with the backslash.

Absolutely.
The internet makes it all too easy for people to be a keyboard warrior and claim anything they feel like. Can't help but feel there is a bit more to this story than what the press are saying.

[Lanky123]

To be fair, it wouldn't be unheard of for an uncrupulous competitor to post fake negative reviews or hire someone to do so. Perhaps this company has suffered from a spate of these recently and is trying to combat them, or perhaps they just have a bunch of overactive lawyers keen to justify their keep.

Either way, trying to bypass Amazon's procedures and directly intimidate a customer is pretty stupid, especially given it's their only selling channel. Edit: Yes, as others have stated, depends on exactly how much they tried before legal action, it's possible they tried to go through Amazon who just wouldn't budge...

[bobharvey]

Problem with this sort of tale is we never really know.
I don't really trust any large company.

[Tpyo]

So.... more details from here:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...router-review/

It looks like the negative review itself wasn't the issue, but the review contained actively (and presumably provably) untrue statements that the company took issue with.

'Jacobs details a number of the claims that the company says are false and misleading, including that “Mediabridge has falsified (“faked”) reviews” on Amazon to boost sales and that the Medialink wireless router in question “is identical to another router and that Mediabridge/Medialink only rebranded that same router.” The letter continues, “Make no mistake, these libelous statements you made in a public forum are false and you cannot support them with any proof.'

Therefore, asking him to remove that part of the review (not all of it) would seem entirely justified, and threatening legal action would also seem perfectly normal if they refused to do so. However, it looks like (we only have each sides report on this so can't say for sure) they went in overly heavy-handed and hit the legal threat button way too early. If that is true, I join many others in welcoming them to all the joys of the Streisand effect.

[YazX]

they could have responded to the customer in comments section and apologized for the inconvenience even if its the customer stupidity and fault same as every respectable company would do, i have seen many negative and stupid reviews on awesome products for big companies like Asus, Gigabyte, Intel,.... and they simply handled it professionally. so even without knowing the other side of story, its unprofessional behavior from them and they deserved the the ban.

[moeburn]

I don't care if someone says that your product is made from murdered babies and puppy tears. That's the world of internet reviews - if you open your own online store, you can delete any review you want. You should have asked Amazon if they could delete the review. But when you threaten to sue, you make yourself look like an ass, and you deserve any blowback you get.

[Saracen]

I don't care if someone says that your product is made from murdered babies and puppy tears. That's the world of internet reviews - if you open your own online store, you can delete any review you want. You should have asked Amazon if they could delete the review. But when you threaten to sue, you make yourself look like an ass, and you deserve any blowback you get.

If, and I repeat IF the reviews are defamatory, then it's not only the poster that coukd be sued, but as the "publisher", Amazon too. And ultimately, only a court can decide if they are defamatory.

For all we know, the seller did ask Amazon to delete the review, or at least to delete the defamatory bits. And they are perfectly entitled to do that if they consider them defamatory.

Of course, if that's what happened, it puts Amazon in an 'interesting' position.

On the one hand, Amazon doesn't want to risk being sued over what some customer said. On the other hand, they don't want to tarnish the 'independence' of their review system by caving in to threats of legal action, either, or in undermines the whole review system, and they're likely to get a queue of comoanues threatening to sue at the first hint of a negative comment.

Therefore, I'm not surprised at Amazon dropping the seller like a hot potato. Whether the seller has justification to claim defamation or not, it's a game Amazon are likely to just not want to play. And, unless it's a HUGE account, like Canon, HP, Dell, etc, they're likely to regard it as just too much of a nuisance.

Remember, Demon Internet got sued some years back over comments someone made on Demon newsgroups, and Demon refused to "edit" the newsgroup. The stories at the time suggested that losing that court fight cost them something like £750,000 between their legal fees, the claimant's legal fees and compensation. Defamation can get to be a very expensive business, even for someone just caught in the middle, like Demon .... or Amazon.

And, dear reader of this post, if you post on a blog, a forum (including here) or indeed, a review site or system, you too could be sued if what you say is, or is felt to be, defamatory. So .... be a little careful what you say.

[crossy]

I don't care if someone says that your product is made from murdered babies and puppy tears. That's the world of internet reviews - if you open your own online store, you can delete any review you want. You should have asked Amazon if they could delete the review. But when you threaten to sue, you make yourself look like an ass, and you deserve any blowback you get.

I've seen a couple of (abridged) reports on this story and most seem to say that Mediabridge DID approach Amazon, only to be told that removing a customer's legit review broke the T&C's so Amazon would leave it be. Of course, if it had gone to court and Mediabridge won then Amazon would have removed it.

From what (little) I've seen the original customer just shot their mouth off and Mediabridge overreacted by going for the lawyers. Going to agree with YazX - Mediabridge customer services should have just politely replied to the comments and only escalated if the libel/slander continued. Most folks are pretty sensible, so if someone's behaving like a horse's backend then it's easy to gain sympathy/moral high ground.

Maybe Mediabridge should have asked Amazon to delete/suspend the customer's account pending review? It's the USA, so I've no idea what the available avenues were/are for Mediabridge if they did get slandered/libelled.

[valhar2000]

I'd like to know the full story, including the exact claims made in the original review, the letter and the presence/absence of any communication prior to the threat of legal actions. If the seller did decide to send the lawyers right off the bat, then I'd say that they are the one who blew it out of proportion in the initial stage and ended it up and got the predictable backslash.

I can't imagine what the reviewer could have said to warrant this kind of reaction. I've seen some very bad reviews on Amazon, and the sellers just took it in stride. The most I've ever seen a seller do is reply to a review by claiming that the buyer did not ask them for help, and that they would have helped if the customer had done so.

[brando49]

There's no doubt that the company overreacted with their response and fouled their own nest, or whichever metaphor works for you. Shooting themselves in their corporate foot - what other reaction could they have expected from Amazon?

[Defiant]

I think I will just stay clear of this company in future, the noise is far to loud over this.

[davesom555]

They really need to fire their PR person. They've made a real dog's dinner of this!

[Saracen]

I can't imagine what the reviewer could have said to warrant this kind of reaction. I've seen some very bad reviews on Amazon, and the sellers just took it in stride. The most I've ever seen a seller do is reply to a review by claiming that the buyer did not ask them for help, and that they would have helped if the customer had done so.

I can.

As a journalist that has been threatened with legal action by a company that didn't like a review, I can imagine what could have been said. In my case, a conversation followed between myself, the editor and the publisher's lawyers. I told them of my testing process, of the printouts, test results and screenshots I had, on which my comments were based, and the magazine invited the manufacturer to proceed to court if they so wish, where the publisher would justify the comments and conclusion published.

And that was the end of that.

That was, however, a magazine review of a product submitted for testing (well before it should have been), not a consumer review of something they'd bought.

I've also had the opposite reaction. I identified a number of issues with one product, but also it's strengths, and I loved the overall concept. A cover story resulted in being invited on a week long trip to California to discuss it with the software house. I had a great trip, and a informative experience, meeting with product designers, marketing people and most of the board.

But, some companies do feel the need to resort to legal threats, and sometimes action, if comments made are highly damaging to the product, and either inaccurate, or perhaps even plain malicious and vindictive.

Which was my main point earier. EVERYBODY posting on the internet, including posts on forums like this, is legally liable for what they say, and might end up having to justify it in a court.