Company That Threatened to Sue Negative Reviewer Just Lost Its Amazon Account
Company That Threatened to Sue Negative Reviewer Just
Lost Its Amazon Account
While the reviewer took down his Amazon and Reddit posts,
Mediabridge might have lost its livelihood.
By Matt Vasilogambros May 9, 2014
The consequences of one negative Amazon review might have
just cost a company its business.
Earlier this week, a man took to Reddit asking for legal
advice, saying a law firm was threatening to sue him for writing a negative
review about an Internet router.
The company that sold that router, New Jersey-based
Mediabridge, through the law firm, claimed that the review contained several
assertions that were "false, defamatory, libelous, and slanderous."
The reviewer claimed the company faked positive reviews and stole the design of
their product from another company.
Companies have been able to successfully sue over false
online reviews in the past.
In the days after the law firm made its threat, the man
who wrote the Amazon review has taken down his original review and his post on
Reddit. But that's not the end of this for the company.
Leaders at Mediabridge now say that Amazon has revoked
the company's seller account, preventing the sale of Mediabridge products on
Amazon.com—the only site through which it currently sells its products. That
might mean the loss of jobs for many of the company's employees, the company
claims.
"All of this is due to misinformation which was
blown out of proportion by individuals on a social media site who acted first,
before questioning whether the information they had was accurate or not,"
representatives of the company said in a statement. "This is the reality
of this situation. Remember that there is a human aspect to this story."
Mediabridge still defends the actions it took against the
Amazon user, who had originally claimed the company was bullying him and
threatening to sue for a simple negative review.
The Amazon user has not actually been sued. Not yet, at
least. He has been warned and asked to correct what Mediabridge and its lawyers
called "untrue and damaging statements." And the company is not
threatening to sue just over a negative review, representatives say. Companies
receive many negative reviews for their products, and to sue over them would be
"silly," Mediabridge admits. The company just took issue with
perceived falsehoods in the review itself.
"This was done in the most public forum, and in the
very spot where our products are displayed," the company continued in a
statement. "It would be like seeing a sign at a Ford dealership, right
next to a Mustang that says, 'This car was made with child labor.' "
Apparently, Mediabridge has had to deal with these sort
of statements in the past, the company says, and spent two years defending
previous allegations in separate reviews. For Mediabridge, it is "within
our rights to take steps to protect our reputation" when "an army
attacks us on the Internet."
But that "army" might have just cost
Mediabridge its future.
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