Making email content public

Soldato
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Quick question GD, as Google isn't helping.

I made polite enquiries with a company I bought from, asking for help with one of their products. I was polite, concise and praising of them. Over the course of a number of emails I was told I seemed to have 'a tone', and that over subsequent replies my questions and statements were variously 'rude', 'offensive' and so on. I'd only asked a question! It seems the lady was having a bad day, or didn't like being questioned. Who knows?

Throughout the entire exchange (9 emails) I had done nothing but praise their product, company ethos and customer service - and ended up apologising two or three separate times in effort to reinforce my good intentions and smooth any perceived slight. No effect.

Her husband, the other company owner, has since emailed me to say he's not happy I made public my dissatisfaction. He says I didn't have "consent" to make public a quote from one of their emails, and that I was misrepresentative.

Now I don't feel I was at all. I simply posted in an industry-relevant forum to say how shocked I was to be spoken to like that by a company I pay money to. I had also offered to make available the entire unabridged exchange to anyone who felt I might have been biased in my OP's presentation. No trade secrets spilled, no harm done except to voice my dissatisfaction of the way I was spoken to when making simple enquiries of a company I already purchase goods from.

Amusingly, the final email telling me they weren't happy had one of those proforma 'confidentiality' footers attached. Now since I'm a private individual (i.e. not business to business) I'm pretty confident I have a right to expression/free press/review/complain and that by pasting a couple of paragraphs from their reply (which in no way violated IP, or anything they might legitimately want to moan about) I have done nothing wrong.

Google-fu suggests that 'confidentiality/intended recipient only' footers are legally pretty worthless anyway, as you have to read the email before you find out their 'terms'. As an aside, their emails don't comply with Companies Act requirements either (display of company registration details, head office address etc) so I can only 'assume' the emails were sent as personal - not business - correspondence anyway. ;)

I replied to the chap and told him I have every right to share my own correspondence, and that in the case of his wife offence can only ever be taken, not given. I had been nothing but polite in asking for their help and the moment his wife said I had 'a tone' I went to extended lengths to ensure she knew I had only good intentions and wanted some help with their product. I asked if, in the interests of fairness, he'd prefer me to amend my post on said forum to include his dissatisfaction and the full PDF of the entire unabridged exchange for the public to make up their own minds if I was misrepresentative, biased or whatever else. I also pointed out they had every right to join and reply if they wished. He didn't send any further email(!).

What say you, fellow forumites?
 
Tell them that unless they sort their act out, you'll post screenshots of their emails online and there's not a beanbag they can do about it.

If they don't sort their act out, follow through and do it.

Screw companies like that, give them a chance and if they still refuse, then it's time to rain down the pain.


In Dutch there is an expression which goes "wie niet luisteren wil, moet voelen" which translates to "who doesn't listen, must feel" but it doesn't translate very well.
 
Why would you apologise two or three times if you weren't rude etc etc?

Because I'm not an ass. The first email indicating they had a problem was that they understood I had a 'frustrated tone' in my response to their reply (which hadn't answered my question despite being very long). I replied to say I'm sorry if it read that way as I'm not frustrated, I'm just very busy at present. I repeated my praise for their service, thanked them for their patience as perhaps I hadn't phrased my question appropriately, and said as I have a relevant degree I was hoping for an answer along the lines of a formula or workings rather than the 'We work hard to ensure our product is good and we understand how it works'.

I said I understand that most customers might not be wanting that level of reply, and it's understandable not to bombard a random person with maths for asking a simple question. I said I was glad they had such human centred customer service, as other companies tend to just send out a 50 year old PDF of an indecipherable study, but in this case I would definitely appreciate an academic type response to my query if possible.

I got a reply back saying I had 'tarred their customers with the unintelligent brush and she has a degree thank you very much'. Ironic given her appalling grammar and whole paragraphs consisting of one sentence and many commas. :p

Sensing I couldn't win I replied to say I'm sorry if that's how she's taken things but I was only asking for help with their product and I'm sorry if she's misconstrued me. After all, I said, the written word can be a notoriously difficult medium in which to convey tone and intention. Sorry again... So I got a reply saying I was now being offensive, and that was that.

Weird isn't in it. :o
 
Depending on your relationship with this company, I'd say you're too nice.

If this was your first dealing, you could've just told them to do one and you'll find a company which is willing to accept your custom.

This is not the case if you have loads of dealings with them though.
 
Depending on your relationship with this company, I'd say you're too nice.

If this was your first dealing, you could've just told them to do one and you'll find a company which is willing to accept your custom.

This is not the case if you have loads of dealings with them though.

Nope, first dealing. I was being nice for the sake of being nice. I did point out to the husband in my reply to his email that most customers wouldn't have even bothered responding to him. I have made clear my business is going elsewhere no matter how decent the product. There are plenty of others of similar quality on the market.
 
Then my point stands. I'm not really in the position to preach because most of the crap I deal with comes from being too polite but businesses like this need to learn a lesson. Keep the emails private but make sure that they are very aware that you could do some serious damage to their reputation with a few clicks, maybe that'll wake them up a bit.

And never use them again.
 
I think the law on this is still a little ill defined, certainly when it comes to email footers and privacy statements. Be interested to know the legal position too, out of interest. I have been at the end of a FOI request when I was a Director of a company from an individual. The person was concerned emails had been undermining him (they hadn't) and they put in an FOI request to access all information held by us on them. The reality is we had to disclose very little, after legal guidance and certainly not the content of emails. However I suspect in the situation the OP outlines he is free to do as he pleases with these emails and if the company feels he is slandering them, which any court will throw out if it is a pure presentation of the facts for debate, then I suspect it is not problem.
 
AFAIK there is no restriction on you making an email public, unless perhaps there is some contract you have/it's in their T&C's, for example reviewers and NDAs. That doesn't stop them pursuing you for libel, not that they'd get anywhere since you're just releasing evidence of what they said.
 
Unless there is anything company confidential (patents, special terms etc) then I can't see any possibility of them having anything to come back at you on.
 
I think the law on this is still a little ill defined, certainly when it comes to email footers and privacy statements. Be interested to know the legal position too, out of interest. I have been at the end of a FOI request when I was a Director of a company from an individual. The person was concerned emails had been undermining him (they hadn't) and they put in an FOI request to access all information held by us on them. The reality is we had to disclose very little, after legal guidance and certainly not the content of emails. However I suspect in the situation the OP outlines he is free to do as he pleases with these emails and if the company feels he is slandering them, which any court will throw out if it is a pure presentation of the facts for debate, then I suspect it is not problem.

AFAIK there is no restriction on you making an email public, unless perhaps there is some contract you have/it's in their T&C's, for example reviewers and NDAs. That doesn't stop them pursuing you for libel, not that they'd get anywhere since you're just releasing evidence of what they said.

No terms imposed and no secretive/IP information released. My post on the forum in question was very much in the vein of 'rather jarring encounter with XYZ customer service, find this most unbecoming and won't be using them again'.
 
Breach of confidence is something which comes to mind, but I've never studied it/don't really know anything about it.

Not applicable according to several sources. No confidential information (IP, trade secrets, medical information, etc) was disclosed. Just actual wording of a generic reply and my own dissatisfaction.

Breach of confidence in English law is an equitable doctrine which allows a person to claim a remedy where their confidence has been breached. A duty of confidence arises when confidential information comes to the knowledge of a person in circumstances where it would be unfair if it were disclosed to others. Breach of confidence gives rise to a civil claim. The Human Rights Act has developed the law on breach of confidence so that it now applies to private bodies as well as public ones.

English courts will recognise a breach of confidence if the following three things are present:

The information has “the necessary degree of confidence about it”
The information was provided in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence
There was an unauthorised use or disclosure of that information and, at least, the risk of damage
 
Do it. Do it naow!

I'm sorely tempted. I'm not the sort to go shooting off and kicking up a stink, hence the layer of anonymity in this thread. However with the way they have acted I'm becoming more and more annoyed the more I think about it lol.

I actually emailed similar queries to two other companies making the same product. The whole reason for the enquiry was because of varying specs between the three companies for the same thing, which made me worried following one or the other might be detrimental. I was emailing to ask for reasoning behind their recommendations as they varied by as much as double between each other and I didn't want anything going wrong.

Company A replied in a very friendly and civil tone, answered me appropriately and thanked me for my interest. Company B replied directly on my later thread and went to great pains to explain thoroughly their spec, how they had come to their workings etc. They also thanked me for my own workings/question as they will be using them to tweak their recommendations in future. The last company C were the ones who went all PMS on me. If two other companies took the exact same copy-paste email in the spirit it was intended, it does rather reinforce the idea company C were unreasonable.
 
I'd certainly say so from that. I also think that naming and shaming should be done as a duty to your fellow forumites (I think I just made that word up, do you like it?).
 
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