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Online Reviews and Libel

Submitted by jkarennj on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 9:54am

Hey everyone.  For those of you interested in the online review phenomenon, I thought you might be interested in an interview I conducted yesterday with an attorney who is well-versed in cyberlaw and libel.  I often get the question, "Why don't we all go after TripAdvisor for allowing these defaming, false reviews about B&Bs?"  My new attorney friend sheds some light on the situation.

Go to http://www.innkeepingblog.com and scroll down on the right side to see the embedded audio player.  Just click the play button to listen to the interview.

Hope everyone  has a wonderful Valentine's Day weekend. 

 

Jay

This article was written and submitted by:

Charlie Kennedy's bio:  http://www.mofo.com/attorneys/4405/summary.html

 

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This comment (28233) was in reply to the Original Topic on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 10:47am
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seashanty
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very interesting interview. and well worth a listen.

thank you for posting this.

 i think that pandora's box has been opened. in a nutshell:  as i understand it ... you have the right to bring a defamation suit against the anonymous poster and you have the right to try to find out who the anonymous poster is, it is extremely expensive and might still be thrown out because it is still hard to prove defamation ... what will it accomplish, will you get bad fallout for suing a customer, and if it is said to be opinion, then it stands.

but i was amazed at the interviewee's mention of ebay reviews and that sellers cannot post negative reviews about buyers? i will have to look into that. my son sells on ebay *he is a serious 'power seller' and is 'bullied' by customers who threaten bad feedback.  i have no answer.

 

This comment (28253) was in reply to comment 28233 on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 1:08pm
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GeorgiaGirl
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seashanty wrote:

but i was amazed at the interviewee's mention of ebay reviews and that sellers cannot post negative reviews about buyers? i will have to look into that. my son sells on ebay *he is a serious 'power seller' and is 'bullied' by customers who threaten bad feedback.  i have no answer.

 

Nope, on Ebay a seller cannot leave anything but positive feedback for a buyer....no matter what the circumstance is!   Ebay expects the seller to bend over and take whatever the buyer is dishing out

This comment (28256) was in reply to comment 28233 on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 2:34pm
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cherry64
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I believe if a seller wants to leave negative feedback they have to file an offical complaint.

Also feedback blackmailing is a reason for ebay to cancel peoples accounts. If your being blackmailed, you need to report it immediatly and get it resolved with ebay. It feels like to many people were taking advatage of the system, so they made some changes.

This comment (28323) was in reply to comment 28256 on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 9:54pm
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swilson
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 02/13/2009

the reason ebay quit letting sellers give neg feedback is because they would blackmail you into giving pos feedback.now they have to earn it and bend over backwards just like we innkeepers do! Otherwise, as in the past, all ebay sellers had 100% pos feedback, as everyone was afraid of the retalitory neg feedback on the rare incident of a bad seller and giving him neg feedback.

tripadvisor can be a pain, but, If you service your people right the neggies will just look like the idiots they are amoung the many many oh so happy customers

This comment (28337) was in reply to comment 28323 on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 10:43pm
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seashanty
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i totally disagree with you about ebay. and i don't want to hijack this thread to ebay territory. that was not my intention.  but my son is a great seller and literally goes all out for his customers. HE is the one with a reputation at stake, not the buyers.  i have found some buyers to be completely unreasonable and demanding.  i helped him out just after christmas while he was in the hospital and was astounded by customer reactions to my trying to be helpful.  i myself was an ebay seller for awhile and understand the feedback thing .. i was the one who would get demands from buyers threatening to post negative feedback. i took the system for what it was. at least i could post a negative on a buyer for never paying .... which i occasionally had to, and the result was retaliatory negative feedback.  totally unreasonable and no recourse.  now you are saying no negatives can be posted against buyers like that? how can that be fair?

as for tripadvisor - if someone posts something nice and sweet, great.  but if someone posts something about your inn that is negative and, worse, that you feel is completely false, what can you do? yes, you can post a response, but that anonymous negative impacts your standing and the perception of potential guests. 

 

This comment (28334) was in reply to the Original Topic on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 10:37pm
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copperhead
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While listening to this I was reminded of an innkeeper I know in another state.  They were positive that one of their local competitors was posting faudulent negative posts on tripadvisor.  They were even sure which competitor it was. Tripadvisor provided no assistance at that time.  This was prior to them filtering out 'old' anonymous posts.  It seems to me that just knowing this law could help innkeepers deal with this type of situation where the competition hits under the belt - so to speak.

This comment (28344) was in reply to comment 28334 on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 11:31pm
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swilson
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Well, you are both correct. There are a lot of jerks in the world that will screw you over no matter what you do. We get them at ebay, at the inn, and everywhere you go. But there is an old saying...what goes around comes around...and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It works most of the time...but not all of it...so we all get some pain at times. 

I had a neighbors who is an attorney calling the county, the health dept, biulding and safety, planning etc for 9 years, while lying to my face saying it was not him. An extrteme and unimaginable lot of pain from one guy. But I still believe if you go all out for your customers and generally in life helping others that you will win out.

This comment (28347) was in reply to comment 28334 on Sat, 02/14/2009 - 12:14am
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seashanty
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copperhead, that is just awful.

This comment (29203) was in reply to comment 28347 on Tue, 02/24/2009 - 10:57am
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ginocat
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My advise is to quit worrying so much about trip advisor. Don't go there, don't promote it to your guests. It's not worth the time and effort so many seem to spend worrying about it. People can and will write what they want.

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