But it is in the eyes of the law.
People need to stop having emotive responses to facts.
Sued for a bad Trustpilot review???
- Thread starter hyperseven
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But it is in the eyes of the law.
People need to stop having emotive responses to facts.
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All they had to do was refund him and ask him to remove the comment. Bad press for the law firm.
They were able to demonstrate in court that the review had cost them 25k in lost business. Why shouldn't he have to pay for some of the damage he's caused the business?
1. Buy goods and services
2. Leave libellous reviews and obtain refunds to remove same
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!
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Bad solicitor who sues their own customers without internal resolution. 100% they will lose more than 25K now.
Whilst I sound like I've been taking the client's side in my posts, I do absolutely agree with this. A very disproportionate response from both parties. If he'd gone down this route and still had no success/response from the solicitors, I think he would have been pretty justified in calling them scammers (and had evidence to prove he had a good reason to believe this in court).
Equally, the solicitors could have responded to the review in a reasonable manner and ask him to remove it (or I think they can respond to reviews, so just reply with the facts and leave other potential customers to make up their mind).
Stupidity on both sides
Client potentially ruined after being slapped with a ridiculous bill for damages.
Company potentially ruined, because if a single negative review costs them 30%+ of their business, then I can't see how they could possibly survive after this kind of negative PR.
Actually they weren't. They demonstrated in court that the review had cost them £12,600 in lost business (based on the fact they saw a 30%+ drop in enquiries [which I'm sceptical of, as that seems excessive for a single review]).
The £25k was awarded based on the judging looking at other "similar cases", such as a case of someone setting up multiple websites, youtube videos, twitter accounts, writing directly to potential customers etc. with the sole purpose of spreading fake information, or a case of a well known newspaper columnist with half a million followers posting libelious tweets.
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They can't win. If they are biased towards companies then there is no value for their actual customers which are users. You can't expect a company to launch an in depth inquiry into a single review when they are probably getting millions a day.
If you want to see what happens when companies have the power on these sort of sites, do a bit of research. I can't remember which one of them it was but basically the company paid to be part of the "gold members club" and any nasty reviews could be immediately removed without question. Then you have yelp which allows people to mark a business as "racist" because someone has decided that business is in some way racist. Considering what passes for racism these days thats absurd. They are also marking it so you can search for black owned businesses so you can descriminate, oh sorry, I mean support people who have the right colour skin which is obviously great. We don't want more integration of cultures and races, we want to be able to make sure we segregate over racial lines. I'm sure that will end well...
I certainly wouldn't use them after all this. Both sides have acted like ***** but I can forgive a single person for being a miserable sod and trying to get their own back on what they see as a large rich business. For a solicitors firm to do what they did shows a pretty sad level of vindictiveness. You can reply to reviews on these sites and plenty of companies do. The way they respond usually either makes the review much worse or much better depending on their tact.
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I believe that this is true of at least one other well known "review" website.
I know of a woman whose coffee shop was wiped out on the basis of fake reviews - she has a fair (unprovable) idea of who was behind the campaign - a disgruntled competitor.
It is perhaps significant that the expert law firm chose not to pursue TrustPilot as the publisher of the offending review and instead unwisely to pursue the unhappy, disappointed client
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On all of these review sites the business owner can always reply to any negative review. If this law firm was in any way competent and professional they would have replied to the negative review with some facts about how they dealt with the customer's case, any user would read it and would not be put off if the reply was sensible. Or obviously just rectify the issue with the customer in the first place..... but no, this was obviously a law firm who went down then route of 'we're lawyers, we can sue you, you'll pay for this yada yada yada'.
Zero sympathies for bullying companies that don't realise the consequence of such actions.
Zero sympathies for bullying companies that don't realise the consequence of such actions.
Which is exactly how they've responded to other negative reviews. Something about this one obviously got their back up.
Now they'll have to pay the price of realising that the public will support reviewers making unsubstantiated claims of illegal behaviour over the companies on the receiving end of such accusations.
It wasn't just a negative review, it was a libellous statement that the firm is dishonest and fraudulent.
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If I'd paid £200 to a law firm just for them to resend me my own work reworded and not added any value for that £200, I think most people would call that a scam.
I think that its the public supporting someones desire to have a grumble against what is from my albeit limited experience, a ******, money grabbing industry. I don't agree with what the guy did but I agree far less with suing him for £25k. There is no a popsicles chance in hell that a single ridiculous review could lose them £25k in business and I am astonished that they "proved" that loss.
Responding to a ****** review can be beneficial for a business because it shows they listen to their customers and it allows them to give their side of the story which is quite often far more credible than the disgruntled reviewer.
You also have to understand that this has made national newspapers and will have been seen by millions. The number of negative reviews they have had is actually tiny considering how badly this could have gone. I'm sure TP will take them all down at some point as well as they all clearly reference the court case and not actual business they have conducted with the solicitors.
Case 1 - Didnt realize a user (not customer as they never used us) had set up a TP for my company. I was never contacted or emailed. User left a bad review for a different company but on our newly created, not requested for profile. Contacted TP once it was noticed, wont remove because the user doesnt have to validate their review after a period of time.
Case 2 - User was illegally distributing our software. Leaves bad review calling us scammers when we revoke his software access to new versions. TP Allows review to stand.
Not my problem if they dont have the resources to investigate the reviews, they should just remove them if thats the case.
We don't know specifically what went on but proper legal advice could be taking what you've supplied and putting it into a usable format.
If the defendant honestly considered he'd been scammed he had the opportunity to put forward his case. Prior to the court case he could have engaged with the firm's complaint process and complained to the Solicitors Regulation Authority if he still wasn't satisfied. He did none of those things.
The defence of truth was dealt with in the court's decision; "The Claimant seeks summary judgement in relation to the defence of truth on the basis that, as noted, there is no credible basis for asserting the truth of the Defendant's belief and therefore no real prospect of making it out. Mr Bradshaw submits, on the basis of the witness statement of Ms Rhodes, there is evidence that it is a responsible firm of solicitors with no published SRA decisions against it and thus it is inconceivable the Claimant could be a scam firm or trading fraudulently and have such an unblemished record."
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They probably set out the facts of the case, which is what you'd expect them to do- "This happened, that happened, you said x, the outcome was y in line with z."
I do wonder if his expectations may have been unreasonable and he therefore didn't get what he hoped for.
That doesn't make it a scam.
So someone set up a profile for your company that you had no control over and left a bad review for another company... that seems very strange. Do you now have control over the profile?
I assume that you responded to the review and explained this.
So you think that review sites shouldn't be allowed to exist and that the only reviews we should be allowing are those that are moderated by the companies being reviewed?
There is no perfect system unless you think that every review should have to be verified and go through a thorough arbitration system. You cannot have a system that isn't unfair to consumers or companies.
People know that reviews are a mess. If your company has an average of 2/5 then chances are, you are a crap company. If your company has 5/5, chances are good that you are manipulating reviews. If your company has 4/5 and you respond to bad reviews that shows you are a good company.
Read some amazon reviews if you want to see a horror show.
"Great product but arrived 2 weeks late due to postal company issues: 1/5"
"Arrived broken and company sent out replacement immediately: 2/5"
Correct, we never wanted a TP, nor the admin involved in having to sort out reviews more often than not left for other companies on our profile.
The worst part is it goes like this.
Wrong review left
- Have to contact user, minimum 3 days the review is left online visible on our profile
- Wait for user to respond if at all, often they dont.
- Report review to TP.
- Review takes anywhere from 1 week to 3 weeks to be removed.
- If the Trustpilot idiot decides not to remove the review.... 1-3 more weeks to have it looked at again and hopefully get it removed.
Honestly may just start sending invoices to TP for the time I have to waste dealing with their site. We dont need a TP profile, we dont want one, but are forced into maintaining one.