[HN Gopher] Man to pay PS25,000 ($34,000) damages over negative ...
___________________________________________________________________
Man to pay PS25,000 ($34,000) damages over negative TrustPilot
review
Author : pseudolus
Score : 264 points
Date : 2021-02-09 11:47 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| danpalmer wrote:
| Trustpilot is awful. They hold businesses hostage, and have
| clearly set up their fee structure as a pay-to-win format.
|
| That said, while I dislike Trustpilot, and while I think this
| case likely has merit, it sets some dangerous precedents with
| regards to the ability to complain in a public forum.
|
| The bit about lack of engagement with a complaints process is one
| that worries me, many companies have terrible complaints
| processes that are designed to respond only to particular types
| of complaint acceptable to them (often ones they can claim are an
| issue with other companies), and they become a black hole if your
| complaint doesn't fit the right format. Trustpilot's lack of
| structure here is an advantage and a way to hold businesses to
| some account.
| celticninja wrote:
| I expect if he had engaged with the complaints process, and as
| a solicitor they would have an independent body (law society)
| who the complaint could be escalated to if necessary. Either of
| these would be more likely to achieve resolution than a
| trustpilot review would.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Why is trustpilot awful? Which businesses have been held
| hostage? How is their fee structure pay to win?
|
| I did notice "invite an unlimited number of customers to write
| verified reviews" though.
| https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/plans
| boyband6666 wrote:
| Companies that pay can flag negative reviews, when they get
| taken down, and to get it back up you have to provide all
| sorts of proof of your custom, and complaint. Companies can
| also then reply without you getting to add.
|
| Much like amazon reviews they absolutely cannot be trusted to
| be a representation of the truth
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Oh my word. It looks like they've also removed some
| negative reviews I posted about a company in the past...
|
| This is a suitable problem to be solved by decentralised
| system.
| [deleted]
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > This is a suitable problem to be solved by
| decentralised system.
|
| That would also be open to abuse. It's difficult to stop
| dishonest PR firms (or anyone else) from flooding
| positive or negative comments.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| I didn't think of that. That's true, a decentralised
| system would make reviews immutable (negative, or
| positive, fake or real reviews would still persist).
|
| Does anyone have any ideas how to solve this?
| braveyellowtoad wrote:
| That depends, is there a requirement for the solution to
| be free?
|
| If you are happy to pay for this, then there are a
| variety of options with a sliding
| cost/usefulness/accuracy scale.
|
| If you are looking for reliable, accurate, balanced
| reviews conducted by anonymous ethical independent
| agents, and you don't think consumers of that information
| should pay for it, then I believe the answer is there is
| no perfect solution that satisfies all those constraints
| simultaneously.
| boyband6666 wrote:
| I can't say I'm surprised. The incentives are for them to
| provide a mostly trustworthy service, and certainly one
| that looks like it, but to monetise it there are
| compromises. Nothing overtly bad, but certainly...
| selective. I mean companies could also flag positive
| reviews they feel are fake, right? But it just so happens
| that they will likely flag negative ones - that isn't
| Trustpilot's fault, right? Ultimately it means that any
| score is biased upwards.
|
| Depressingly is also means the most shady companies that
| will abuse systems like this, will also seem to have a
| sparkling reputation - actually harming customers if they
| rely on these sites.
| dmurray wrote:
| The case doesn't set precedent. It was a default judgment.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Can't upvote you again, but this is great to know. Thanks
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It does not need to set precedent because it was a very
| standard, and rather simple case that fit with existing
| precedents.
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| Giving it a skim it seems the ruling is primarily saying that
| if you're going to leave a negative review, you need to
| substantiate why.
|
| In this case he called them a scam solicitor but never
| explained why, which he did in trial "I paid upfront for a
| legal assessment of my case. But what I got was just the
| information I sent them, reworded and sent back to me."
|
| From the sounds of it, if he mentioned that in the review he
| would be in the clear.
| henryaj wrote:
| He _did_ explain it in his review:
| https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cf8eb11b055990650f42368
| jboog wrote:
| So he committed libel twice to accuse the law firm of fraud
| it never committed?
|
| Not the brightest bulb this guy.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Yeah, I hope that it's specifically the "scam" bit, accusing
| them of fraud and breaking the law, that is the crucial bit.
|
| That said, I hope that "scam" is common enough vernacular
| that any actual defence would have managed to convince them
| that it's a customer airing a grievance and not actually
| accusing them of a crime.
| valuearb wrote:
| He didn't explain in trial, he never showed up.
| londons_explore wrote:
| While he didn't attend in person, I think he did submit a
| written defence. Presumably he thought there was no need to
| show up or hire a lawyer because the case was a clear win
| for him.
| valuearb wrote:
| The article is extremely unclear. It can clearly read the
| way you thought it did, or it can be read as a default
| judgement vs. a defendant who didn't respond at all.
|
| I think the key point, and one in your favor, is the
| judges comments. Why would he even elaborate on the
| reason for his ruling if it's a default judgment?
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| One is certain after this the Summerfield Browne can close down
| their business. What are they going to do next? Sue BBC for
| reporting this story?!
| Paul_S wrote:
| Which is what they're likely to do, after which they will open
| a new one 5 minutes later. At least it'll cost them time and
| money to do that, although probably not 25K.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Good point, people actually rating fictional name not a
| people who actually work there.
| do-not-sue-me wrote:
| The judge claims:
|
| > Mr Waymouth had "never fully articulated" why he was unhappy
| with Summerfield Browne's work.
|
| But that's clearly not true:
|
| > Mr Waymouth alleged: "I paid upfront for a legal assessment of
| my case. [...] But what I got was just the information I sent
| them, reworded and sent back to me."
|
| In any case, libel laws are absolutely ridiculous and are
| fundamentally incompatible with a free and functional market
| economy as they make it unsafe for customers to share their
| experiences and criticisms.
|
| I have committed to never voluntarily do business with companies
| that take legal action in response to criticism, whether I
| believe it to be true or not. If you have sued someone for libel
| and I can choose a competitor who has not, I will choose that
| competitor even if their product or service is inferior.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It may be worth pointing out, for the sake of context, that the
| UK has a fairly expansive definition of libel. In the US, for
| example, you often have to prove that the defendant either knew
| that their accusations were false, or was acting with a reckless
| disregard for the truth. In English law, by contrast, you more-
| or-less just have to prove that the statement was injurious and
| untrue, regardless of the defendant's belief or intent.
| anon98356 wrote:
| I believe opinion is a defence against libel even in the UK.
| Accusing them of being a scam strays close to being a claim
| that requires proof. But I wouldn't have thought it would be
| that hard to lodge a defence that it was an honest opinion and
| the wording in question is used in the context of common
| language/slang where scam can also be considered to mean not
| worth the money.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The judgment[0] addresses this point directly:
|
| >First, the defence of honest opinion. The Claimant submits
| that the defence of honest opinion cannot succeed in
| circumstances were the words used convey an allegation of
| fraud. Mr Bradshaw referred me to the case of Wasserman v
| Freilich [2016] EWHC 312 (QB), an unreported decision of Sir
| David Eady sitting as a High Court judge. At paragraph 16 of
| his judgment Sir David said:
|
| > > "The common sting in the various natural and ordinary
| meanings, pleaded in paragraph 27 of the particulars of
| claim, is that the Claimant was dishonest. That has generally
| been regarded as a factual allegation. It has long been
| recognised that "the state of a man's mind is as much a fact
| as the state of his digestion": Edgington v Fitzmaurice
| (1885) 29 Ch D 459. Juries are deciding on every day of the
| week, as a matter of fact, whether a particular Defendant
| was, or was not, dishonest. Accordingly, it is an allegation
| which in the context of libel is readily understood as being
| susceptible to a plea of truth under s.2 of the 2013 Act (as
| was the case with justification). It is not thought to be a
| matter of opinion: nor can one convert an allegation of
| dishonesty (or, for that matter, of murder or rape) into a
| matter of opinion by merely inserting in front of it a
| formula such as "I believe ..." or "she thinks ...": see e.g.
| Hamilton v Clifford [2004] EWHC 1542"
|
| >And at paragraph 22 of his judgment he said:
|
| > > "An allegation of dishonesty, fraud or attempted fraud
| will usually fall fairly and squarely on the side of fact
| rather than opinion. The same is true also, as I have already
| mentioned, where the allegation is of "reasonable grounds to
| suspect". Accordingly, I cannot allow a pleading to go
| forward in the form of paragraph 19A. It must be struck out."
|
| >Here Mr Bradshaw submits that the allegation of dishonesty
| made that the Defendant is that it is "a scam solicitor", has
| the plain meaning that the Claimant is dishonest and
| fraudulent. The Defendant seeks to present this as an
| opinion. Mr Bradshaw argues this is impermissible, the
| Defendant is putting forward the Claimant's dishonesty as a
| matter of fact and cannot simply say by way of defence "this
| is my opinion". In the circumstances I accept the law is as
| stated in Wasserman v Freilich and am satisfied Mr Bradshaw's
| submission is correct, with the result the defence of honest
| opinion should be struck out.
|
| [0] https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/85.html at
| paragraphs 15 and 16
| londons_explore wrote:
| You don't even have to prove the statement was untrue. The
| defence has the burden of proving the statement was true if
| they want to be found not guilty.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Where is the line between opinion and defamation in such a case?
| If I write a review saying "I was not satisfied" is, in my
| opinion, just an opinion, I don't have to provide many details
| unless there is some terms and conditions with the site to
| provide it. At the same time, when you have a business listed on
| a review site you have to accept the risk that even bad-intended
| people can bomb your rating, it's just part of doing business and
| you cannot expect to sue them all if you don't agree with the
| reviews, especially if some can be overseas where your friendly
| judge has no jurisdiction.
|
| I think they just poured gasoline over a fire.
| londons_explore wrote:
| In the UK, truth is a defence to libel. That means if you can
| prove that your opinion is as you wrote it was, then you win
| the case. Simply restating the same opinion in court would
| likely be sufficient.
|
| Obviously you have to have written "In my opinion, X is a
| scam". If you missed off the first 3 words, you are gonna lose.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You should be very careful here. Accusing a highly regulated
| professional of running a scam is a very serious accusation,
| and the defence based on expressing an opinion does not
| really allow you to add "in my opinion" then say anything you
| want. It should be an 'honest opinion' that " _an honest
| person could have held ... based on any fact which existed at
| the time the statement was made_ " [1], and in any case you
| probably don't want to test this in court...
|
| [1] https://www.carter-ruck.com/media-law-defamation-libel-
| and-p...
| llampx wrote:
| How about, "I felt that... X was a scam."
| seeingfurther wrote:
| The problem is that you can't remove your business from the
| platform. There should be an opt out for businesses that do not
| want to be listed.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This case was rather clear-cut, at least under UK law. As per
| the article the reviewer wrote that the firm was " _another
| scam solicitor_ ". That's not an opinion on the service
| received, that's a very serious accusation, not least bearing
| in mind that solicitors are highly regulated, including
| (obviously) in terms of ethics and honesty.
| iamben wrote:
| Having been on both sides of the coin, I think consumer review
| sites (like trustpilot) are an incredibly difficult thing to get
| right.
|
| On one side as a consumer it's incredibly frustrating when you
| feel "wronged" - and whilst it's meant to be a 'review' it seems
| it's mostly used to get attention to fix a problem. So people use
| it as way to blackmail/last resort the business into sorting
| something. Which is kind of understandable, but too often the TP
| review goes up after 24 hours (or even before contacting
| anyone/actually trying to resolve a problem), even though the CS
| team doesn't work weekends, or repeatedly messaging on
| socials/emails keeps dropping the ticket to the back of the queue
| (and NO ONE EVER explains that to the customer) - so they feel
| the complaint isn't being seen (which it isn't).
|
| For all you hope people will understand some negatives are
| inevitable - it genuinely affects sales (in both directions, if
| you get it right). And as others have pointed out - good luck if
| you get on the wrong side, because it's very costly and painful
| to clean it up.
|
| Really, really, really great CS probably helps.
| fmajid wrote:
| Welcome to the Streisand Effect.
|
| That said, UK libel laws are unconscionably stacked against the
| defendant. There is much to be said for the US' written
| constitution and bill of rights.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >That said, UK libel laws are unconscionably stacked against
| the defendant.
|
| This defendant didn't even appear in court!
|
| He sent this by email:
|
| "I have already made it perfectly clear that this case should
| never be heard in court and I will not be giving it any
| credence or legitimacy by attending."
|
| So, while UK libel law may be harsh (although less so than it
| _used_ to be), it 's hardly at fault in _this_ case.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| There a multiple problems here: 1) Trustpilot as a platform that
| is borderline racketeering. 2) Lack of regulation when it comes
| to posting/reviewing/ approving public reviews 3) Default support
| of the customer/client vs business.
|
| I had to deal with a fair share of negative Trustpilot reviews.
| Some people are very good at expressing their dissatisfaction
| with the service. They explain why, what,and when it gone wrong.
| Those,even if it's 1 star review,are delight to read and act
| upon,as they often give a very different perspective compared of
| those inside the business. This is about 10% customers. Majority
| express dissatisfaction in a rushed manner with lack of facts and
| often unrealistic expectations. The rest 10-10% are are simply in
| a coocoo land and can often be described as those who go to
| McDonald's with the expectations of 3 star Michelin restaurant.
| Having said that, Google reviews is even worse for the business
| with almost no control over what and who post the reviews.
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| Your point 2 takes care of itself without needing regulation,
| for exactly the reason you describe: normal people who read
| reviews ignore the ones about e.g. the bad wine selection at
| chain restaurants, use the average of the unexplained reviews
| as a guide, and may see if the issues in the detailed reviews
| pertain to then. It doesnt need regulation, it just needs minor
| critical thinking to decide if reviews on a particular site are
| useful or not.
|
| Also (and I realize this is tangential to your post), the idea
| of having to explain why you are unhappy is ridiculous in my
| view. This is a common device I see, asking people to explain
| themselves until they have reduced the problem to little things
| that dont seem to important, then pretending there isn't really
| a problem. I am far more interested in overall net sentiment
| towards a place than in the specific, and almost always
| probably minor, reasons people were unhappy. A dirty look or
| cold entree here and there don't really matter, but a pattern
| of many being dissatisfied enough to give a negative rating
| does.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| >Your point 2 takes care of itself without needing
| regulation, for exactly the reason you describe: normal
| people who read reviews ignore the ones about e.g. the bad
| wine selection.
|
| I would probably agree if it was just that. Nowadays review
| sites are like a massive neon sign hanging above your shop
| saying '2 star review!!!'. That's often all people see before
| even having a chance to interact with the business. Reviews
| also get aggregated, so for instance on Just Eat, if I give 5
| stars for delivery and 2 for food quality, the overall score
| would still be OK( which,in this case, makes it easier for
| the business but less informative for the customer). Also
| (and I realize this is tangential to your post), the idea of
| having to explain why you are unhappy is ridiculous in my
| view.
|
| >Also (and I realize this is tangential to your post), the
| idea of having to explain why you are unhappy is ridiculous
| in my view.
|
| Whenever I visit a pub or restaurant,I pay attention to the
| state of the toilets because it's often a good sign how
| serious they take the whole thing. I've been to places where
| the food is amazing but the place itself is filthy. So I can
| go and leave a review saying the place is shit.. The owner of
| the place would have no idea how to improve/change/fix. Now
| if I go and say the food is good but they need to clean the
| place, that's something the business can work with,should
| they decide to, and refusal to improve a known issue,as you
| said, would result in more people complaining about the same.
| epanchin wrote:
| I'd love to see reviews weighted by a reviewers average rating.
| Ballas wrote:
| Predictably, people have flooded trustpilot with negative reviews
| after this article was published. I guess they weren't expecting
| this to make the news.
| Quanttek wrote:
| > _[The defendant] did not attend the online hearing or send a
| legal representative_
|
| That might be one of the main reasons why the case was decided in
| favor of the law firm. Otherwise, he could have defended himself
| against the libel charge (one possible defense is the truth)
| jC6fhrfHRLM9b3 wrote:
| Time to rebrand.
| vasco wrote:
| I'll pitch in $100 if he edits the review to say:
|
| EDIT: I had to pay an additional $34,000 in damages for this
| review.
| dafoex wrote:
| In what appears to be contrast with a lot of people here, I
| actually support fighting against libelous and untrue claims. The
| law firm here is entirely in the right to not want to be called
| scam solicitors when they are not scam solicitors.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| So the takeaway is: if you want to leave a negative review, you
| need to do so anonymously as otherwise you may be brought to
| court.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| It looks like the "community" has taken this into its own hands,
| see https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.summerfieldbrowne.com
|
| Trustpilot: "this profile has been temporarily closed for new
| reviews."
| tyingq wrote:
| Seems they didn't predict the Streisand effect when they
| decided to use the big hammer.
| K0nserv wrote:
| Their TrustPilot reviews[0] are a fun read now. This feels like
| an excellent example of the Streisand Effect[1]. I guess we'll
| see how suffers more, the man or the firm.
|
| 0: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.summerfieldbrowne.com
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
| lenkite wrote:
| Apparently from original reviewer:
|
| I didn't lie in my review of Sommerfield Browne and them suing
| their own client for gain shows everyone what they are. Their
| friends and family will back them up, as will the other
| lawyers. I submitted my case based on written law and the judge
| said it did not apply to me and ordered me to omit the law from
| my submission, before the trial hearing. The fact is the judge
| put PS6,000 costs on me before the case was even heard - I was
| literally priced out of justice. I could not attend or I would
| be accepting these costs. I cannot fight a rich solicitor in
| front of a biased judge. Seeing there was no justice here I
| decided not to give the court legitimacy by attending.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| And now he's on the hook for a shitload of money...
|
| _Cunning plan, that._
| timthorn wrote:
| Not to mention a potential charge of contempt of court.
| pacamara619 wrote:
| > Alert >This profile has seen a significant increase in
| reviews. >Although we understand you want to voice your opinion
| about things in the news and issues trending on social media,
| Trustpilot is a place for feedback based on genuine buying and
| service experiences. >Due to this, this profile has been
| temporarily closed for new reviews.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > oh no, no, no, we're not locking this page for censorship
| and manipulation reasons! We're locking this page for
| "integrity".
|
| Thing is, in this case the can be doing exactly the right and
| wrong thing for the same reasons. There doesn't seem to be a
| win here except to not be a publisher of reviews that will
| (intentionally) upset unpaying and please your paying
| customers.
|
| I liked the old internet.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| > I liked the old internet.
|
| Where people would generally conduct themselves in a
| cordial manner. We would not engage in doxxing, brigading,
| posting negative reviews of goods or services we have not
| used, impotently try to manipulate search engines and we
| would not incite others to do so.
| passivate wrote:
| What was so good about the old internet that we don't have
| anymore? I'm curious, as I've been online since 1994/1995.
| I can't imagine going back to it.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Everyone (#) talks about regulation becoming an important part of
| the tech field in the coming decade. And that global regulation
| will become more "harmonised" as people of nations that are the
| same on twitter or facebook ask why they cannot do the "sensible"
| thing they see online.
|
| This is where the rubber hits the road. Britains Libel laws have
| for long been a shopping ground for international aggrieved. Do
| we keep our newspaper friendly libel laws? Do we become more like
| US or Germany?
|
| Software eats the world really means 'You must make explicit the
| trade offs and choices that were once nicely implicit'
|
| Its not just trolley problems.
|
| (#) ok not everyone.
| oauea wrote:
| So it's London law firm Summerfield Browne
| (https://www.summerfieldbrowne.com/) who attacked someone leaving
| a review about their business.
|
| If you're searching for reviews about London law firm Summerfield
| Browne on Google and are lucky enough to find this post, consider
| if you want to work with a business that will attack people
| posting reviews about them. Can you really trust the reviews you
| might already have read, or are they just suppressing all the
| negativity?
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| It depends. If 40 people leave a business negative reviews,
| then you should probably look for another one to work with. If
| a single person leaves 40 reviews for the same business under
| different accounts, then that is a different story.
| fouc wrote:
| Talk about winning the battle but losing the war.
| jboog wrote:
| Seems perfectly reasonable to go after someone for libel for
| literally committing libel.
|
| The guy shamelessly lied and called the law firm a "scam".
| CydeWeys wrote:
| There is some nuance there though as that could be mere
| hyperbole/figure of speech, rather than a specific allegation
| of unethical business practices. What hurt him more is that
| he didn't show up to defend himself.
|
| Musk successfully used the hyperbole defense against the much
| more serious potential libel "pedo", though admittedly that
| was in US court.
| henryaj wrote:
| What lies did he tell?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| > He then left a review accusing the firm of being "another
| scam solicitor", according to court documents.
|
| > The firm took legal action, stating that this was untrue
| and defamatory.
|
| Seeing as he pulled the old "give me back my money and I'll
| delete that" it sure sounds like the typical leave a bad
| review for leverage strategy, his mistake was straight up
| lying.
|
| -
|
| I got in a dispute with an apartment management over my
| deposit and left a review with dozens upon dozens of well
| documented missteps they had taken during my tenancy
| complete with pictures. I didn't lie and I didn't
| embellish...
|
| 20 minutes later I got a call that my deposit was being
| refunded in full and asking if I could kindly take down my
| review.
|
| I hadn't lied in it so I never took it down, but I did
| condense it, removed the pictures and mentioned they had
| returned my deposit finally.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| If I read correctly, he also didn't pitch up at court to
| defend his position, so the judgement went to the law
| firm.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That is considered a lie in the UK? In the US that would
| be considered an obvious equivalent of "shitty and only
| out for themselves". Everyone already knows lawyers are
| master of screwing you over with contracts legally.
| isoskeles wrote:
| I get annoyed when I read people claim a business is a
| "scam" when their real problem is something clearer like
| the products are too expensive. Can we reserve the word
| "scam" for actual scams, or am I really expected to
| divine the true meaning of these troglodytes' reviews? I
| just ignore them.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Scam is the go to word to try falsely throw a company
| under the bus without needing to go into specifics, I
| also ignore those reviews.
|
| If a business really wrongs someone, people tend to be
| willing to go into detail about how they were wronged.
| Especially since it sucks and if you're willing to write
| a review, you're probably also willing to make it one
| that informs others specifically what went wrong so they
| can avoid it.
| jboog wrote:
| That's because it is usually perfectly legal to lie about
| someone in the US and just call it "hyperbole" or
| something. Our libel laws are incredibly permissive in
| the US.
|
| See Elon Musk calling a guy a "pedo" repeatedly with zero
| evidence, because he pissed him off online. Although
| there were other issues in that case.
|
| The UK has way more strict libel laws than the US. If you
| lie about someone it's a LOT easier to get a civil
| judgment against you. Hency why a ton of
| magazines/newspapers have been successfully sued over
| libel whereas in the US this almost never happens.
| leephillips wrote:
| No, it would not. A "scam" is a scheme to defraud, it's
| an allegation of illegality.
| dhosek wrote:
| It's also worth noting that UK libel laws are considerably
| more liberal than the US libel laws. A statement that would
| be fine in the US could result in a life-shattering judgment
| in the UK.
| buro9 wrote:
| UK laws changed a while ago, and now you have to prove
| damages. I find it hard to believe that the damages proven
| could be attributed back to TrustPilot as I just don't
| believe that a significant % of people are checking
| TrustPilot before hiring a lawyer.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Here's what the judgment has to say about damages:
|
| "Mr Bradshaw submitted that the gravity of the
| Defendant's libel is at least as serious as that in
| Monroe, and is comparable with that in Doyle.
| Accordingly, general damages award of PS24,000 to
| PS30,000 would be appropriate, subject to his concession
| that the claim was limited to PS25,000.
|
| In respect of special damages which were claimed at PS300
| per day, Mr Bradshaw submitted that on the basis of Ms
| Rhode's evidence there had been a significant reduction
| in enquires for a period of at least 6 weeks which would
| equate at PS300 per day to a sum of PS12,600.
|
| In my judgment the claim for special damages is not made
| out. Ms Rhodes evidence is simply not directed to this
| point and no detailed financial or accounting evidence
| has been provided. Whilst I accept the Defendant has
| chosen not to appear and contest the figure the burden
| remains on the Claimant to prove its loss. I am however
| satisfied that reduction in the number of instructions
| was caused by the defamatory review and has caused the
| Claimant some financial loss. As Mr Justice Warby said in
| the case of Brett Wilson LLP v Persons unknown,
| responsible for the Operation and Publication of the
| website www.solicitorsfromhelluk.com [2015] EWHC 2628
| [29] the loss of a single instruction can cost a firm
| tens of thousands of pounds (and in some instances more).
| In the circumstances I am satisfied that an award of
| general damages in the sum of PS25,000 would adequately
| reflect the seriousness of the defamation, the financial
| loss which has occurred and the purpose of vindication."
| pacaro wrote:
| The defendant wasn't present, so the plaintiff's
| assertions about damages will presumably have been taken
| at face value. IANAL
| evgen wrote:
| If you read the actual case it turns out that the judge
| did not allow one of the two damages claims, so it was
| not just a case of whatever the plaintiff wanted they
| received.
| willyt wrote:
| But on the other hand we dont have punitive damages in
| civil law for anything. Generally, you can't be sued for a
| randomly large amount of money like you can in the US. It
| has to be provable and direct costs of, in this case, lost
| business. This is probably why the judgement was for quite
| a small amount of money, considering how much a law firm
| turns over in a year. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer or your
| lawyer so there may be edge cases that I don't know about.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Do you mean more conservative?
| wayneftw wrote:
| Conservative would be less use of law and government,
| liberal would be more.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > liberal would be more [use of law and government]
|
| That is not what liberal means. In fact the confusing
| setence in your previous comment has basically the
| opposite meaning than you meant: more liberal libel laws
| would be less strict.
| wayneftw wrote:
| It wasn't my comment, but there is more than one meaning
| for the word liberal. [0] I was going with _adjective 2.
| relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy
| that promotes individual rights, civil liberties,
| democracy, and free enterprise._
|
| I took "more liberal" to mean "more left" as in the
| political spectrum of Left vs Right, Liberal vs
| Conservative because that's the only definition that
| really fits the context of the sentence...
|
| Despite the fact that Liberalism has much more to do with
| Liberty than liberal use of government, Liberals today
| certainly want to use the government liberally to make
| new laws for solving any small discomfort.
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=define+liberal
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Maybe there's partly a cultural difference. Here in the
| UK, "liberal" mean would still greater freedom of speech
| even if you meant "liberal" in the political sense.
| Ironically that's probably one of the core tenants of
| political liberalism! By the way, the most liberal party
| here is in the centre politically, so it's very clear
| here that liberalness is not determined at all by left-
| rightness.
|
| I don't claim to know as much about the difference
| between Republicans and Democrats as Americans
| themselves, but I find it very surprising to think that
| Democrats would oppose freedom of speech particularly
| more strongly - I'd actually presume it to be the other
| way round (maybe based on my own conflation of "liberal"
| in the US sense and in the original political sense).
|
| With all that said, the way the original commenter
| referred to liberal as simply meaning "more ... use of
| law" is pretty hard for me to take seriously. Is
| apartheid more liberal than racial equality because it
| requires more laws? Come on. It comes off as an attempt
| to slander (ironically!) liberalism by claiming any bad
| law is liberal because liberalism uses laws.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| While that's true (and I agree with your definition in
| the context, which is not political), the root of the
| misunderstanding is modern liberalism stealing the word
| from what is now known as classical liberalism
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Even if I interpret it in a polical way, I would still
| take "more liberal" to mean "supports greater freedom of
| speech"; that's consistent with what you call classical
| liberalism. I hadn't heard of this "modern liberalism"
| until now, which seems to be an American term. But
| looking at the Wikipedia article [1] it doesn't seem to
| involve much discussion either way about freedom of
| speech, except to do with donations by corporations (it
| seems a stretch to connect that with willingness to
| legislate about libel). If anything, the other parts of
| that article still have a strong enough similarity to
| classical liberal principles that I would expect an
| American "modern" liberal to still be in favour of free
| speech.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_th
| e_Unite...
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Ah you mean liberal as in amount, not liberal as in more
| permissive. That was confusing, cheers.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Sure if it isn't a scam. But the article also said:
|
| > In the review, Mr Waymouth alleged: "I paid upfront for a
| legal assessment of my case.
|
| > "But what I got was just the information I sent them,
| reworded and sent back to me."
|
| Which sounds pretty scammy to me.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| First of all, the judgement was because the guy never showed
| up for court. He might have won if he did.
|
| More importantly, he called it a scam, and it isn't clear
| that that is a lie. He alleges that he paid for work, but
| they just rephrased the documents he gave them. Why wouldn't
| that be a scam?
| Hamuko wrote:
| 2.1 stars out of 5 on TrustPilot? Would not choose to do my
| business with them!
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Interestingly, they load Google Analytics with no cookie
| warning which seems a violation of GDPR.
| tzs wrote:
| > Can you really trust the reviews you might already have read,
| or are they just suppressing all the negativity?
|
| If you look at the reviews from before this story broke, you
| would see that the answer is no, they are not suppressing all
| the negativity. They mostly had positive reviews, but there
| were a few that were quite negative.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I really don't like their responses to the negative reviews.
| They are very fact-driven (which may be a positive in a law
| firm) but they lack a lot of tact and empathy. It sounds like
| a robot wrote them based on the internal case notes.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| Are you trying to game SEO here?
| forgetfulness wrote:
| It seems like it, to raise awareness of Summerfield Browne
| attorneys' dealings.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I was looking for a lawyer or Corporate, Litigation,
| Patent, Business, Contracts, Employment, Intellectual
| Property, Technology, Software, Banking, Finance, Internet,
| Website, or Sports Law Solicitors Services, in London,
| Birmingham, Cambridge, Oxford, Market Harborough,
| Leicester, England or Wales, I would definitely look into
| Summerfield Browne ( https://www.summerfieldbrowne.com/ )
| and consider their overall reputation and history of
| dealings before making my selection of attorney, lawyer, or
| solictor.
| lostlogin wrote:
| You left out 'Japanese Knotweed Solicitors', an area in
| which they claim to specialise.
|
| Cavity wall and subsidence solicitors are rather less
| interesting.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Game, or use it exactly like it's supposed to work?
| tartoran wrote:
| Yeah, I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole after this
| litigation came to surface and reading a bad review wouldn't
| have the same effects. It's the Streisand's effect and also the
| shuddering idea of taking legal actions against your customers.
| Who'd want to use a service which could ruin them financially?
| And as far as bad reviews nearly everything on the internet has
| some bad reviews, no exceptions. A lot of times it's to do with
| the reviewers themselves being unhappy no matter what.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Thank you, I was looking for a London law firm. Will avoid them
| like the plague.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Summerfield Browne law firm? Thank you.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Just to be clear, that's Summerfield Browne law firm right?
| ;)
|
| This appears to be their website:
| https://www.summerfieldbrowne.com/
|
| Looks like they might've done better to spend the effort
| making a website that looks like it was made in the last
| decade before attacking people for negative online reviews.
| imdsm wrote:
| Summerfield Browne? The law firm?
| https://www.summerfieldbrowne.com/?
|
| I hear they may take you to court if you post a bad review.
|
| Proceed with caution!
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They're going for the Lings Cars aesthetic of dated web
| design.
| TeeWEE wrote:
| If you want you can leave a review here:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Summerfield+Browne+Solicit...
| passivate wrote:
| There are several obviously fake/over the top reviews now. I
| hope people didn't leave them after reading your comment.
| TLightful wrote:
| Wow ... what a mess ... I guess they'll need to disband and
| reform under a different name. They're over.
| jolmg wrote:
| With respect to the Google reviews, maybe not?
|
| > Reviews are automatically processed to detect
| inappropriate content like fake reviews and spam. We may
| take down reviews that are flagged in order to comply with
| Google policies or legal obligations.
|
| Once this dies down, those reviews could get deleted.
| imdsm wrote:
| That tends to happen, they're removed, and then after
| review, they're reinstated.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| well not surprising that leaving such review to a law firm would
| have resulted in defamatory charges, ironic
| epanchin wrote:
| Its a shame he hasn't published his PS200 question and their
| response.
| cedricgle wrote:
| I am curious but if a business can sue and win for a "legitimate"
| bad review, can a customer sue a business for a
| "fake"/"promotional" good review ?. Or are business first class
| citizen and consumers always at the bottom ?
| passivate wrote:
| Normally, a lawsuit is brought upon by the injured party to
| seek redress. I guess if you can produce an argument of how you
| were wronged, it might work?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Perhaps if you can show that you decided to use vendor X
| because of fake review Y, and the service you were provided
| with fell short of what was alleged in fake review Y?
| ROARosen wrote:
| >The number of business enquiries it received had dropped since
| the publication of the review
|
| Not that I'm taking a side, but on a practical note I'm sure
| after suing their former client the number of "business
| enquiries" will skyrocket.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| If they can prove they lost business because of his untrue review
| they should have a case and should rightfully sue for damages for
| calling their business "scam".
|
| His defense should also prove that it is in fact a scam business
| otherwise it's not an opinion - this can be defamatory.
|
| Anyway it's only a civil case, no precedent so far.
| theginger wrote:
| The review is still online[1] And the defendant has even
| responded in a new review[2] The ruling orders trust pilot to
| remove the review, so I wonder if they are fighting it or just
| acting slowly.
|
| [1]https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cf8eb11b055990650f42368
|
| [2]https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/6022794e679d9708b4d03f7e
| spuz wrote:
| There's a lot of interesting detail in the judgement that isn't
| covered in the article. I highly recommend reading through it
| (it's quite short):
|
| https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/85.html
|
| If I had to summarise, I would say that this is a case of a
| consumer doing the most emotionally satisfying thing in response
| to receiving a poor service, rather than what is legally allowed.
| As the judgement says, the defendant never attempted to complain
| or ask for a remedy from the solicitors themselves as he is
| legally entitled to.
|
| > "Also it was apparent that the Defendant made no attempt to
| engage in the Claimant's dispute resolution process. A complaint
| should always be the first stage in resolving any issues of
| customer satisfaction."
|
| The judgement also explains that in order for the defence of
| "speaking the truth" to succeed, he would need to submit evidence
| that others had been scammed by the same company - apparently the
| evidence of just a single datapoint is not enough:
|
| > "I recognise that in the context of an application for summary
| judgment I must not conduct a mini-trial but it seems to me the
| Defendant's allegations are so bold that in the complete absence
| of any credible material to support them I can conclude there is
| no real prospect of them succeeding at trial. I also take into
| account that the highpoint of the material submitted by Defendant
| is that he is unhappy with the service provided by Claimant."
|
| So while it seems that in certain cases, the correct response to
| receiving a poor service would be to leave a negative review, it
| seems the law does not agree.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > "Also it was apparent that the Defendant made no attempt to
| engage in the Claimant's dispute resolution process. A
| complaint should always be the first stage in resolving any
| issues of customer satisfaction."
|
| What bullshit legal reasoning. If you don't wait on hold on
| some company's help line for them to probably tell you to pound
| sand, that can be used against you in court?
| mikro2nd wrote:
| In fairness, yes, you _DO_ have to give the company a chance
| to address your complaint first.
| Panoramix wrote:
| If a doctor would amputate my arm by mistake I would leave
| them a bad review no matter the apologies or compensation I
| get from them.
|
| Over the top example but I think it drives the point.
| People don't want to experience bad service.
| zaarn wrote:
| In most cases, going through some companies dispute process
| will work 99.99% of the time. That is my experience buying
| from a lot of online shops (directly and via ebay) that they
| will in a grand majority of cases respond reasonably quickly
| and refund you or swap the item. That isn't true for every
| transaction and for every shop.
|
| But most of the time a bad interaction can be resolved via
| the help line or a dispute process.
|
| But even if that fails doesn't make the shop a scam. It makes
| them a bad shop. You can say so in your review since "bad
| shop" is a subjective opinion and not a statement of fact.
| "scam" is not only an objective fact but also something
| illegal so it's going to require some evidence to back that
| up.
|
| And yes, that can be used against you in court. If the
| defendant had gone through the dispute process, it is more
| likely the court would have atleast partially sided with
| them, if they showed up in court (which they also didn't) and
| claimed to have been emotionally distraught or similar when
| writing that review over the cost or process of whatever
| happened.
|
| This is the difference between freedom of speech as it is in
| the US and freedom of opinion more commonly deployed in
| Europe. Statements of fact require you to have some kind of
| proof. The level of proof will differ depending on what it's
| about, but insinuating that someone is a scammer will require
| you to show that to be fact.
| chki wrote:
| It can be used against you in Court if you were to make a
| statement that the company is a "scam solicitor".
|
| Maybe an analogy to sales would make this more
| understandable: If I was selling computers and the laptop I
| sold you had some serious issues, you cannot immediately turn
| around and call me a scammer. Because it might not be true,
| actually there is a more likely explanation that I didn't
| know about the issues with the laptop.
|
| Now if you would talk to me instead and I would insist that
| there couldn't possibly be an issue with the laptop and
| charge you for the faulty product, you _might_ call me a
| scammer. (Maybe one single instance of this wouldn't even be
| enough. Maybe you would even need to prove that I did in fact
| know about the problem with the laptop)
|
| On the other hand you can definitely leave a review saying
| that you received a bad product. You would not be required to
| talk to the company to be able to do that.
|
| Edit: To further elaborate a bit because I think people in
| this thread are having some weird reactions to this ruling:
| It's pretty normal that you cannot go around and tell lies
| that hurt somebody's business. If you think about it this is
| very normal. I cannot stand in front of a bakery with a sign
| that says "The bread in this bakery contains dangerous
| amounts of lead" if that is not in fact true. And if nobody
| buys bread anymore because of my sign, I will be liable for
| the damages incurred.
|
| This is less clear if my sign says: "In my opinion the bread
| in this bakery tastes funny." Because this is an opinion
| rather than a fact.
|
| But in the case at hand we are talking about somebody calling
| a company a "scam solicitor". That's mostly a factual
| statement, you could prove that the company is either doing
| regular business or that they are scamming people. If the
| defendant is not able to prove that they are in fact a scam
| business, it's very reasonable to assume that he is liable.
| The concrete damages incurred are however debatable in my
| opinion.
| biot wrote:
| Yeah, I also don't understand some of the responses here.
| An analogy would be that someone has a problem with some
| software they are using, so they do a bit of research and
| find a possible answer on Stack Overflow, and they hire a
| software developer to help them implement a fix. The
| software developer bills them PS200 and provides detailed
| instructions on fixing it.
|
| The individual leaves a review for the software developer
| saying _"I paid upfront for help with my software. But what
| I got was just the Stack Overflow information I sent them,
| reworded and sent back to me. Another scam developer."_
|
| If the developer uses the site the review was left on to
| obtain business and they can demonstrate a specific
| monetary loss after the review was posted, they have claims
| for damages. A non-trivial portion of a software
| developer's job is looking stuff up on Stack Overflow, so
| applying that knowledge using their experience isn't scammy
| at all.
|
| Details of the legal advice provided are missing, but the
| same could be true. Client sends contract and seeks advice
| on what their obligations are upon contract termination,
| and the law firm responds by rewording the portion of the
| contract which spells out their obligations. If they find
| the obligations to be obvious, then maybe they didn't need
| legal advice in the first place. If they don't understand
| the quoted obligations, they should follow up asking for
| clarification. But saying "another scam solicitor" is
| libelous.
|
| And isn't his offer to remove the review in exchange for a
| refund considered extortion?
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I don't think that laptop analogy works. If someone
| (re)sells a faulty laptop then they may indeed not realise
| that laptop has a problem - you could argue they should
| have tested it better, but at worst they've been negligent.
| But the product in this case was a document written _by the
| lawyers_ ; they can't claim they didn't know what was in
| it, because they wrote it! If it really did just contain
| the background notes supplied by the buyer, without any
| extra research or substantive legal opinion, then it sounds
| to me that it really did con him out of that money.
| [deleted]
| jgeada wrote:
| Fundamentally, this is just the legal system defending its own
| reputation by using its monopoly on law.
|
| Basically corruption.
| edenhyacinth wrote:
| The judgment alleges that indicating that you believe a company
| to be a scam - insofar as providing an unsatisfactory service
| for payment could be considered a scam - is on par with
| accusing someone of urinating on war memorials.
|
| It even says that couching the statement in an opinion "To me
| it was a scam" wouldn't be sufficient to avoid this. Would it
| all have been saved if he'd said "It was _like_ a scam "?
|
| It also says that the claimaint's belief that "after a single
| review went up, we saw a drop in inquiries" (para) is
| sufficient for PS25,000 of damages! That has to be considered
| outrageous, surely?
| duxup wrote:
| If there's no evidence to support their claims / the claims are
| false... I get that.
|
| >Defendant made no attempt to engage in the Claimant's dispute
| resolution process.
|
| That worries me. I have to contact the organization and jump
| through their hoops before I leave a poor review?
|
| Hopefully that's not the only standard here and just some
| additional information added to the rest.
| anbende wrote:
| Not before you leave a poor review but before you accuse them
| of being a scammer. They didn't sue for the poor review, they
| sued for defamation. There's an important difference there.
| closetohome wrote:
| I feel like that's a critical detail that's missing from
| the headline. He didn't just say "these guys are a bunch of
| jerkbags and you shouldn't do business with them" he said
| "this company is operating a scam." That's not an opinion,
| it's a specific accusation like saying "I went in and they
| beat me with a pipe."
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Would it be a scam if you paid for work X, but were given
| work Y which should cost much less than work X and is
| useless to you?
|
| If I paid a mechanic to put on new tires, but he just
| rotated my tires instead and said that he had fulfilled
| his side of the deal - is that not a scam?
| spuz wrote:
| I think this an interesting collision between common use
| of language and legal use of language. I think it's
| reasonable for the solicitors here to say that they were
| accused of running an illegal fraudulent operation
| affecting multiple people. I also think it's reasonable
| for the defendant to say that he was personally scammed.
| If you read the judgement it appears the law sides with
| the first interpretation so if you're going to accuse a
| business of running a scam, you better first make sure
| there are other victims besides yourself.
|
| This is kind of a surprise to me and why I thought it was
| worth bringing up. Wouldn't it be nice if this issue was
| clarified in the BBC article perhaps with some helpful
| advice about how to deal with poor service or indeed
| genuine scammers while avoiding being accused of libel.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I've read the BBC article this morning and went to Trustpilot:
| You could see the negative reiview pouring in in real time, and
| the irony was that most people were there because the BBC article
| had mentioned that people were leaving negative reviews on
| Trustpilot.
|
| It took Trustpilot some time to suspend reviews.
| dmitrybrant wrote:
| Perhaps a bit off-topic, but TrustPilot is a form of near-perfect
| evil. If someone leaves a negative review of your business on
| TrustPilot, you can have it taken down... for a measly $400 per
| month. If you refuse to purchase their premium package, they can
| _prioritize_ the negative review to be shown above the positive
| ones until you do. If your competitor hires a review-bombing
| spammer to add negative reviews en masse, well, you 'll just have
| to upgrade to the next-tier plan.
|
| It's a shocking lack of integrity, but not surprising, given the
| business model. Anyway, it's disappointing that TrustPilot gets
| any publicity for being anything credible.
|
| Edit: A nice little touch is at the bottom of their website that
| says "See what our customers are saying about TrustPilot", with a
| hand-picked selection of reviews... from TrustPilot! About
| TrustPilot! Chef's kiss.
|
| Edit 2: This is not to say that Trustpilot's _intentions_ aren 't
| necessarily good, and they may even be striving to provide
| neutrality. But the problem is that their business model is, by
| its very nature, antithetical to neutrality. And of course
| Trustpilot is not the only review site that has this issue, but
| it's definitely a site where this issue is glaringly apparent.
| agilob wrote:
| >you can have it taken down... for a measly $400 per month
|
| Might be wrong, but glassdoor does it too
| perfectstorm wrote:
| not that I don't believe you but is there any proof to back
| your claim?
| oxfordmale wrote:
| Glassdoor allows to flag reviews that break their T&Cs,
| including sharing of company confidential information. Even
| disclosing that your CTO left, could be considered
| breaching confidential information. Many negative reviews
| are removed this way.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Yes. Here is an example of the evil after I posted a negative
| review:
|
| > Thanks for your review on Trustpilot. > >Based on your
| review, Curve would like a little more information about your
| experience. This will help them write a more useful >reply to
| you. It'll also help them verify that you've had a genuine
| experience with their business.
|
| >Of course, it's totally up to you what you share.
|
| "verify" vs. "totally up to me" are different things.
| vizzah wrote:
| This is important to validate the review was left by a
| genuine customer. You can indeed share as much (or as little)
| information as you want, but they'll have to decided on the
| balance of probabilities if you had a real interaction with
| the company you're reviewing. We receive many reviews and
| often fake negative reviews, so this helps to provide at
| least a level of protection against such attacks.
| epanchin wrote:
| Do they verify fake positive reviews, or just the fake
| negatives?
| xnx wrote:
| Important to remember some of the other players like TrustPilot
| when considering the posts about Google's moderation of
| Robinhood reviews. Moderation is hard, every actor (reviewer,
| reviewee, and review service) can be malicious.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Is there any information on this?
|
| I just had a look at their pricing page and it doesn't seem to
| say anything about this.
|
| Maybe a screen shot would do if it's something you only see
| when you have the plan?
| dmitrybrant wrote:
| Well of course they wouldn't _advertise_ these sorts of
| practices in their pricing plans. But you can get certain
| hints from some of the verbiage. For example, they talk about
| "review invitations" -- this is code for review gating, which
| is the practice of _selectively_ inviting users who are more
| likely to leave positive reviews.
|
| They also say "Curate your Trustpilot Company Profile Page
| through ... adding authentic content". The term "authentic
| content" is code for "positive reviews", because you'll be
| able to flag any negative reviews as inauthentic.
|
| And of course you can also look at reviews of Trustpilot
| itself from third parties, i.e. websites where Trustpilot
| doesn't have a paid/boosted account, for instance:
| https://www.reviews.io/company-reviews/store/trustpilot
| vizzah wrote:
| Review invitations can be sent on basic plan. Only 100,
| though, but you can choose internally which customers to
| invite. I don't see that as a problem, because people do
| need to be reminded (or asked) to write positive reviews,
| because when everything is working as customers expect,
| many won't be bothered to venture onto review sites to
| write about that. So they must be asked while hot. And it's
| much better than offer any incentives to reviews - many
| companies aren't shy to do exactly that, but that's where
| the line gets crossed..
| bjarneh wrote:
| > Perhaps a bit off-topic, but TrustPilot is a form of near-
| perfect evil.
|
| That is certainly not off-topic in this context. The horrid
| behavior (or business model) of TrustPilot is relevant (and
| immoral), and should be known.
|
| Every time I see one of those "4.2 / 5 stars on TrustPilot"
| banners, I'll start thinking about the extortion money to keep
| hiding those negative reviews; what a scam..
| jakub_g wrote:
| Apart from the business model: No one ever takes time to
| write positive reviews of big businesses on third-party sites
| out of good heart. By default only people who have something
| to complain about go there. (I know this first-hand based on
| PlayStore/AppStore ratings of the app I worked on in the
| past).
|
| The diff between 1.8 and 4.2 business is that the latter
| sends mass emails to the customers saying "write us a nice
| review on TrustPilot, and maybe you'll win a $50 gift card".
| (Although, in case of the app, we just asked nicely, and many
| people clicked the banner and went on to give 4* or 5*
| ratings in the store, for free).
|
| Having said that, if company doesn't care about 1.8 rating
| and has no actions to change, it's probably a bad sign...
| a_f wrote:
| >No one ever takes time to write positive reviews of big
| businesses on third-party sites out of good heart
|
| Maybe I am missing the context of big businesses, but I
| will often write a good review of a company (say on
| trustpilot) I have used, with no reward to myself. Even
| well known ones. The most recent example being Scan the
| hardware retailer in the UK. I have though also done it for
| reward too, so I am not completely altruistic!
| rlpb wrote:
| Something I try to do, if I want to write an unfavourable
| review, is write a few positive reviews for other companies
| I've had recent positive experiences with first.
|
| I figure that this gives my negative review some
| credibility, and it also helps the good businesses.
|
| I wonder if actually enforcing this might help things. If
| someone can't find anything positive to say about five
| other companies, I don't think I'm interested in their
| negative review.
| vizzah wrote:
| We receive many positive reviews after asking customers
| with the default Trustpilot template to rate us ("how many
| stars you give us?"), catching them at the point of likely
| being most happy. Mostly these reviews are brief with just
| a few words, but many of our customers do not mind spending
| a minute to give high marks. Some of those reviews even
| look like we paid for them or hired a bot :) but we can
| easily trace them to their real accounts.
| bjarneh wrote:
| That's probably true; people are most likely to give
| feedback if it's negative; making the TrustPilot way of
| earning money even worse, as it mostly attracts negative
| reviews. Then companies with those negative reviews have to
| "buy them invisible" on TrustPilot.
|
| I wish I could give TrustPilot a 1 star review right now
| :-)
| polote wrote:
| It is the same thing as any other companies in the reviews
| business. The same can be said of Glassdoor or Yelp for
| example. As long as a review as an impact on the finance of a
| company. You can be sure the reviews provider will give ways to
| remove those reviews.
| duxup wrote:
| Better Business Bureau too. It's been documented a number of
| times that when a non member joins suddenly poor ratings will
| rise / complaints vanish.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The BBB perfected this model long before the internet was
| around. I worked at a computer repair shop way-back-when
| and the owner called the BBB an extortion racket.
| wsinks wrote:
| Interesting thing to note about the BBB is that it is a
| federation of independent businesses with loose national
| control. I understand that to the consumer they look the
| same, but this argument is a bit disingenuous to compare
| the BBB, a non-profit weak national entity, with these
| globally internet focused ratings businesses. Each BBB
| region has control over only their region.^1
|
| The BBB you might be referencing about is the BBB of LA,
| which no longer exists and this 2015 article mentions:
| https://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/news/better-business-
| bureau...
|
| That BBB was then merged into the Silicon Valley BBB, a
| totally different set of people and operations.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau
| vinay_ys wrote:
| This is as good an use-case for a decentralized blockchain as
| any.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Agreed - it's a bad use-case for a decentralized block
| chain, like all of the other uses brought up so far.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| How would that fix the problem of spammy reviews?
| newsclues wrote:
| Reputation extortion business model
| dylan604 wrote:
| Reputation extortion as a service. I get the mental image
| that this is how the mob has evolved. No longer are knuckle
| dragging guidos with crooked noses walking door to door in
| the neighborhoods offering protection services. "It'd be a
| shame if something were to happen..." but online.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not sure what's happening on Amazon, but I've
| noticed that most of my bad reviews never get published or
| disappear.
| specialist wrote:
| About 1/3rd of my bad reviews are now flagged "sensitive"
| (belatedly), so no longer normally visible.
| frongpik wrote:
| The answer is to give a 5 star review, the first
| paragraph with usual blah blah, the next paragraph with
| the actual feedback. Even better if you use the coded
| ways to provide negative feedback. The goal is to make it
| expensive to distinguish true good reviews from fake good
| reviews.
| briffle wrote:
| at a previous company, HR (or a PR firm they hired) would
| stuff the ratings with tons of super positive reviews for the
| company.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _at a previous company, HR (or a PR firm they hired) would
| stuff the ratings with tons of super positive reviews for
| the company._
|
| A company I once worked for _required_ employees to post
| positive reviews of its app, as a condition of employment.
|
| This started shortly after I left, so I'm grateful I never
| had to deal with that.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The small company my friend worked for just made all their
| employees put in a review. While the owners watched.
|
| They were pretty terrible people. Always talking about how
| they were going to "get rich and leave all of you behind".
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Wow, that is some next level douchebaggery. That would
| probably trigger my creative justice instinct.
| istjohn wrote:
| Actually, Yelp doesn't remove legitimate reviews.
|
| Edit: I speak from personal experience as a small business
| owner, described in more detail below.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It's bizarre that the one person with actual experience in
| this thread is being downvoted...
|
| But I second this. Yelp won't remove legitimate reviews,
| even for paying businesses. You can pay for priority in
| search listings and to show up in the Similar and Nearby
| sections, but that won't help you get negative reviews
| removed.
|
| As I speak, there are 2.5 star restaurants being promoted
| in every search I do for nearby restaurants. If Yelp
| removed the negative reviews as people claimed, they
| wouldn't be at 2.5 stars right now.
|
| (It's true that some individual sales reps claim Yelp will
| do this if you pay them, but those are individual sales
| reps trying to hit a sales or bonus goal.)
| mancerayder wrote:
| .. and people are saying that Glassdoor reviews can
| easily be taken down, without evidence.
|
| It might be true, but a claim that undermines the entire
| business.. warrants at least a link or an anecdote.
| mywittyname wrote:
| >Yelp won't remove legitimate reviews,
|
| I've had my legitimate Yelp reviews shadow-removed (I
| could see the review on the computer it was made on, but
| not others). So they absolutely did at one point
| remove/hide reviews.
|
| -person with actual experience
| aSockPuppeteer wrote:
| Yelp removes any post legitimate or not if you have zero
| "friends" on Yelp and if you have no profile picture
| iirc.
|
| On the business side all I've heard from Yelp Business
| was that they will let more bad reviews slide thus
| lowering your rating if you do not pay for their
| protection racket. Also, paying them gives good reviews
| that would otherwise be rejected now allowed as
| acceptable.
|
| Maybe those businesses were not paying for the "premium"
| service tier that includes Yelp sending a photographer to
| your business to then create a video for you with an
| annual plan.
|
| I have managed restaurants and talked to several Yelp
| reps. It's difficult to trust online reviews.
| polote wrote:
| In theory the same can be said of glassdoor. In reality it
| is different
| istjohn wrote:
| In reality, Yelp doesn't play games with reviews. I
| became the top-rated business in my city for my niche
| while turning down their sales people over and over. I
| successfully got one review removed in that time because
| it was clearly a spam account based on their review
| history. I have several legitimate 5-star reviews from
| actual happy customers on my business profile that "are
| not currently recommended" due to Yelp's aggressive anti-
| cheat software. There are plenty of unhappy business
| owners who would have people believe their poor Yelp
| ratings are because the game is rigged, and I'm sure Yelp
| makes plenty of mistakes, but it is not pay-to-win.
| Retric wrote:
| That's not a counter argument. I was once the top rated
| player on a pay to win game server without having paid
| anything. The issue with pay to win in games and online
| reviews is the distortion not the impossibility of
| success.
|
| Yelp etc _needs_ the average review to be somewhat useful
| so people actually trusts the Star ratings. However, they
| can still accomplish that while distorting a significant
| number of reviews.
| istjohn wrote:
| This thread is full of people with no first-hand
| experience repeating rumors and suspicions. No, I cannot
| prove a negative, but I don't think speculation is
| compelling evidence either.
| Retric wrote:
| Yelp has successfully defended it's self from several
| such lawsuits, on the other hand it's also been sued
| several times over this. So, it's a little past just
| internet rumors.
|
| The simple fact Yelp lets companies pay to highlight a
| favorable review is IMO enough to destroy their
| credibility. Worse they directed customers through
| GrubHub for an unearned commission which is as far as I
| can tell simple fraud. But, that's not what people are
| alleging here.
| [deleted]
| nix0n wrote:
| > Actually, Yelp doesn't remove legitimate reviews.
|
| They say that, but they decide which reviews are
| legitimate, and they're more likely to decide that positive
| reviews are legitimate, if a business is paying them.
|
| On the other hand, my experience pre-pandemic was that Yelp
| had the only reliable database of local USA businesses'
| hours of operation (there is probably now no way to know
| other than phone calls).
| totalZero wrote:
| This has been discussed previously on HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149078
|
| Not sure if the policies have changed since then, but I
| am inclined to believe him.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Just bc this one person didn't see it doesn't mean it
| didn't happen. They've definitely taken my negative
| reviews down or made them invisible so I stopped using
| them
| totalZero wrote:
| Just because they took your reviews down doesn't mean
| they did so corruptly rather than according to
| algorithm/policy.
| istjohn wrote:
| > They say that, but they decide which reviews are
| legitimate, and they're more likely to decide that
| positive reviews are legitimate, if a business is paying
| them.
|
| Do you have any evidence of that?
|
| I have several unsolicited 5-star reviews for my business
| that have been flagged as "not currently recommended."
| Yet despite fighting off their sales reps for years my
| business is the best rated business in my city in my
| category.
|
| Based on my experience, the Yelp hate is just sour grapes
| from businesses that are reluctant to bend over backwards
| to make every customer happy.
| dexterdog wrote:
| > sour grapes from businesses that are reluctant to bend
| over backwards to make every customer happy.
|
| Not too many business that do that stay in business for
| long. "The customer is always right" if not taken with
| many grains of salt will bury you when you get just the
| right customer (who will directly reference the mantra).
| istjohn wrote:
| It's certainly a challenging way to run a business. I
| don't recommend anyone blindly pursue that strategy.
|
| One key to making it work is to invest in long term
| relationships with your clients. A transaction with a
| client you have an established relationship with is much
| less risky than a transaction with a stranger.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Google rings small businesses up every week asking what
| their hours of operation are...
|
| In fact, I know a business who complained he got more
| calls from Google trying to update their maps database
| than he got from real customers!
| ficklepickle wrote:
| That's nice they call. I'm aware of a variety of business
| listings they helpfully automatically update to be wrong.
| The only way to know is to check back often.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Google emails that - they don't call.
| oli-g wrote:
| > Google rings small businesses up every week asking what
| their hours of operation are...
|
| So THAT'S what all the humans at Google are up to, while
| their bots are busy locking legitimate user and developer
| accounts!
| tveita wrote:
| Sounds like exactly what they trained Duplex for, so I
| doubt that would be a human calling.
|
| https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-
| natur...
| softawre wrote:
| Wow that is incredible.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>So THAT'S what all the humans at Google are up to
|
| How cute. You think that these are humans calling from
| google. No biological human has represented google by
| phone since the 90s. It is all androids and chatbots.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Definitely not the same as Yelp.
|
| On Yelp you can buy placement in search results (or on other
| restaurants' listings in the "Nearby" or "Similar" sections)
| but they won't remove negative listings for pay. It's
| certainly possible that individual sales reps will _offer_
| that service if they are desperate to hit sales or bonus
| goals, but Yelp won 't actually do it, since the review
| review team is separate from the sales team.
|
| Source: Personally interviewed nearly a hundred local
| businesses on behalf of the local Chamber of Commerce.
| [deleted]
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| I have first-hand experience getting negative Yelp reviews
| removed.
|
| Nearly impossible if you're a non-paying business on Yelp.
| jader201 wrote:
| Isn't this the exact same thing Yelp has been reported of
| doing?
|
| Seems like any form of reviews -- Amazon, Yelp, TrustPilot --
| or even independent reviews (that are often given a product in
| exchange for "their honest review", can't be trusted anymore.
|
| Someone will find a way to game the system.
|
| We've gone from being ignorant, to being informed, back to
| being ignorant again -- or worse, ignorantly mislead.
| totalZero wrote:
| Amazon reviews could potentially be salvageable. The way I
| see it, their problem is that items sell more when they have
| a plurality of reviews, so there's a disincentive for the
| platform to take down positive reviews (because they drive
| revenue). But Amazon is a platform that depends on repeat
| business (hence the existence of Prime) so it also has an
| incentive to ensure that the totality of a product's reviews
| give a useful idea of the product's pros and cons.
|
| On the other hand, sites that let you remove bad reviews or
| showcase good ones are running a 21st-century protection
| racket.
| blackearl wrote:
| It's mafia tactics in a modern world.
|
| Nice business you got here, would be a shame if someone said
| something bad about it online. You know we can make that go
| away...for a price.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Protection money indeed.
| Nerwesta wrote:
| I mean, there is a redflag to me when the name of your company
| is literally starting with Trust.
| udestoworkthere wrote:
| as someone that used to work there i can say this info is
| false.
|
| >If someone leaves a negative review of your business on
| TrustPilot, you can have it taken down
|
| no, they can flag it but neither that nor the money they pay as
| subscription has any direct effect on the review being taken
| down, this solely lies on the discretion of moderators
| according to the terms of usage.
|
| >they can prioritize the negative review to be shown above the
| positive ones
|
| no, like hackernews trustpilot has a a scoring mechanism that
| is quite easily explained and also reflects on what is being
| shown, look here: https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/201748946-T...
|
| >It's a shocking lack of integrity
|
| trustpilot has the most open and transparent platform for
| reviews, bad actors get marked publicly no matter if they are
| companies(free or paying) or reviewers.
| ratherbefuddled wrote:
| A few years back I left a negative review for one retailer of
| oak furniture on TrustPilot. It was deleted for profanity
| within 60 seconds. There was no profanity in it. I repeated
| this four or five times before eventually it stuck. I noticed
| it was quickly buried by the deluge of five star reviews. Then
| I noticed they claimed to have over 100,000 Trustpilot reviews.
| The numbers were impossible. It's heavily astro turfed and it
| would surprise me little to see that there's a significant
| review score downside to not paying them for a subscription.
| For me, TrustPilot has the reverse effect - if your business
| uses it I trust you less.
| programmernews3 wrote:
| Trustpilot are a scam operation themselves and I agree that
| they are near-perfect evil.
|
| They shake down companies involved with them and give add very
| little of value. If anything, they are harmful to ecommerce as
| it makes people more skeptical of reviews
| [deleted]
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _If you refuse to purchase their premium package, they can
| prioritize the negative review to be shown above the positive
| ones until you do._
|
| That's not my experience. Here in the UK at least they display
| reviews in chronological order, newest first including for
| "unclaimed" businesses".
| cletus wrote:
| Otherwise known as the Yelp business model.
| dkural wrote:
| Can you purchase a subscription from Yelp to remove all
| negative reviews?
| julianlam wrote:
| As a business owner? Yes, you can use Yelp and pay them for
| removing/burying negative reviews.
| npteljes wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted, there were serious
| allegations saying exactly this
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-
| bullying-bu...
|
| https://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-
| yelp-20130420...
|
| https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/yelp-blames-greedy-
| law...
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/09/02
| /11...
|
| You can allege anything. Whether the allegations are true
| is another question. You only have to read the various
| lawsuits that have passed on this issue to see how flimsy
| these business owners' cases are.
|
| It would be so easy to demonstrate that you could pay
| Yelp to remove reviews, if the capability exists. Someone
| would have done so by now.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Pay-to-win does not have to be black-and-white; nor
| should one expect it to be if it could be used against
| them in a court.
|
| All of the following can be true:
|
| -Yelp removes obviously false reviews.
|
| -Yelp does not remove obviously true reviews.
|
| -It is better for your business' rating to pay Yelp.
|
| Yelp is the arbiter of what constitutes 'false'. It
| stretches credulity to believe that Yelp taking payment
| from a business has no influence on this determination.
| Even sending paying and non-paying requests down
| different pipelines could result in more negative false
| reviews being removed for paying businesses. For
| instance, spending more time considering whether a review
| is false might lend itself to ultimately removing more
| reviews. This needn't be intentional.
|
| So, the question in my mind is whether Yelp deserves the
| reputation; rather than whether any specific allegation
| is true in _exactly_ the way it is alleged. If the
| allegations about their salespersons ' claims are true
| the answer must be that they not only deserve the
| reputation, but that they built it themselves.
|
| (As a Yelp _user_ , I already consider them too shady to
| use. Maybe they've changed, but their deceitful links
| that pushed me to open their app were so frustrating and
| off-putting I've quit them entirely.)
| istjohn wrote:
| Serious, unsubstantiated allegations. If I could pay Yelp
| to remove reviews, believe me, I would. It would be far
| easier than the alternative: bending over backwards to
| make every customer happy.
|
| Yelp's sales people can be aggressive, and it wouldn't
| surprise me if a rogue employee deceived a prospect to
| close a sale, but there is no way to pay to win. Yelp
| also does flag legitimate positive reviews sometimes, but
| the alternative is to be like Amazon where half the
| reviews are fake.
| npteljes wrote:
| I believe that the middle ground is true: there's no
| official way for "pay to win", neither is the corruption
| so rampant that everyone has access to it, but there
| still is some.
| varvar wrote:
| So basically.. nothing out of the norm.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I have never seen any credible evidence for this
| accusation. I don't dispute that some unscrupulous Yelp
| sales rep or another has represented this to be the case
| to some business owner who then posted about the
| interaction online. I do dispute whether Yelp actually
| does remove reviews for paying businesses.
| istjohn wrote:
| This is simply not true. I am speaking as a small
| business owner on Yelp.
| Mc_Big_G wrote:
| Yet again proving anyone can be rich if they don't have to
| worry about pesky morals.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Years back I signed my ecom business up for ResellerRatings'
| similar service for like $20 or $50 / month. Eventually they
| determined we should be paying a few hundred per month based on
| their impression of our traffic and upped the price, notifying
| us at the bottom of a very, very tall newsletter email. It was
| like a year before we noticed, they quickly refunded us 6
| months when we told them we were charging it back (presumably
| that's how far back we could charge back without fighting
| harder).
| poundofshrimp wrote:
| > If someone leaves a negative review of your business on
| TrustPilot, you can have it taken down
|
| I don't think this is true. If this was true, then any sane
| business would pay the $400 and have a decent record on TP.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Except not everyone wants to play the game.
|
| The BBB pioneered this business model. Yelp perfected it.
| This is just another flavor for another market.
|
| There 100% needs to be regulation around any kind of review
| site. If you can pay and change how the reviews look it is
| 100% corrupt and shouldn't be allowed.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Also if you can leave a review for something that you have
| not consumed it is 100% corrupt and shouldn't be allowed.
| The fraudulent usage goes both ways and in the end the
| sites are only for the ignorant.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| $400/month is not a trivial sum of money for a mom-and-pop
| shop. Plus if this becomes the norm, there will be other
| predatory sites jumping at the bite.
| dazc wrote:
| They don't exactly say 'you can have it taken down' though.
| And, believe it or not, some businesses take the view that
| they will not be held hostage in this way.
|
| There are several big brand retailers in the UK who don't pay
| Trustpilot; you can tell by how many negative reviews they
| have manged to amass.
|
| Another 'benefit ' of paying Trustpilot is that you can have
| gold stars underneath your search and ads listings. Google
| seem happy to to be part of the scam too.
| dmitrybrant wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. A sane business would not give in to
| bullying tactics. Most small business owners I know have
| probably never heard of Trustpilot, and if they did, would
| probably consider any kind of fee for maintaining a decent
| record to be an obvious scam.
| CapriciousCptl wrote:
| Since BBC didn't post it, here's the full decision.
| https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/85.html.
|
| Below, I pasted the review, followed by a bit from the judge.
| Written word has to meet a number of criteria to be libelous, but
| the core of the decision, I think, was that calling something a
| "scam" is a statement of fact and not opinion.
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/26/section/3/enact...
|
| """"*A total waste of money another scam solicitor* [Person X]
| left the company half way through my assessment and the
| replacement was useless. I paid upfront for a legal assessment of
| my case, but what I got was just the information I sent them,
| reworded and sent back to me. No new information or how to
| proceed or what the law says or indeed the implications of what
| was done. I Just got their false assumptions, full of errors
| showing a lack of understanding for the situation and the law.
| Once they have your money they are totally apathetic towards you.
| You will learn more from forums, you tube and the Citizens advice
| website about your case, for free"""
|
| And a small bit from the judge's decision-- """"An allegation of
| dishonesty, fraud or attempted fraud will usually fall fairly and
| squarely on the side of fact rather than opinion. The same is
| true also, as I have already mentioned, where the allegation is
| of "reasonable grounds to suspect". Accordingly, I cannot allow a
| pleading to go forward in the form of paragraph 19A. It must be
| struck out.""""
| henryaj wrote:
| One of the Trustpilot reviews deliciously points out that the
| solicitors' site [https://www.summerfieldbrowne.com/] sets
| cookies without displaying a cookie warning. Perhaps best to
| report them for violating GDPR.
| asymptotically3 wrote:
| Just reported them via ico.org.uk - probably best not to flood
| them with complaints though, I'm sure they have enough to deal
| with already.
| boyband6666 wrote:
| Outside of the case, it looks like a nice business to be in! p7
| shows gross profit increasing from PS450k (2018) to PS550k (2019)
|
| See Sept 2019 full accounts: https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/c...
| jariel wrote:
| So "Summerfield Browne is a scammy law firm that sues little
| people for their life's savings for a mere negative comment".
|
| Is the 'legal' comment we can leave now.
| mchusma wrote:
| I feel like I'm theory there is some place for "confirmed
| reviews", since both the positive reviews and negative reviews
| can be gamed.
|
| But confirmed needs to be something more deeply investigated to
| ensure the transaction was legitimate and the complaint or
| positive review was valid.
|
| Don't know how to do it, but reviews are very much a problem and
| don't have a solution.
|
| Genuinely good businesses get hit with lots of bad reviews in
| certain industries. Genuinely bad businesses get lots of good
| reviews if they are willing to play certain games.
| evgen wrote:
| tl;dr is man posts review that is quite possibly defamatory about
| a law firm, firm sues, man opts for self-representation and does
| not show up, man faces default judgement.
| henryaj wrote:
| The review seems pretty reasonable, apart from the use of the
| word 'scam' which the firm objected to -
| https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cf8eb11b055990650f42368
|
| Hard to see how it's libel if it's an accurate reporting of his
| experience with the firm
| eecks wrote:
| is scam a protected word or something? "a scam is about
| tricking you into parting with your money"
|
| If I _feel_ like I have been scammed surely I can say so?
| koboll wrote:
| >In the review, Mr Waymouth alleged: "I paid upfront for a
| legal assessment of my case. "But what I got was just the
| information I sent them, reworded and sent back to me."
|
| That does kind of sound like a scam to me.
| fmajid wrote:
| Yes, but UK judges are always prompt to shield members of
| their own profession, or rich criminals like Trafigura:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/oct/20/trafigura-
| anat...
| henryaj wrote:
| Defendant claims he didn't attend because he couldn't afford
| the costs -
| https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/6022794e679d9708b4d03f7e
| londons_explore wrote:
| In a civil case like this, I don't think there is any form of
| legal aid. If you don't have the money to pay upfront, you
| lose. That's the way the law works.
|
| If it happens to you, just file for bankruptcy and get it
| sorted rapidly. You need a few hundred pounds for bankruptcy
| proceedings, so don't spend them on lawyers!
| csunbird wrote:
| > If it happens to you, just file for bankruptcy and get it
| sorted rapidly. You need a few hundred pounds for
| bankruptcy proceedings, so don't spend them on lawyers!
|
| This makes it almost impossible for you to get a
| credit/lease a house/work with the banks in the future.
|
| Do I feel like he over-stepped by openly calling the
| business scammers? Yes.
|
| Do I feel like the firm/judge was stupid to ask 6000 pounds
| upfront, because someone just sued you and make a ruling
| for 25000 afterwards? Totally.
|
| Nobody should be asked to pay that much amount before
| showing up to the court, just to be able to excersize their
| legal rights and to be able to presented , I feel like the
| judge made a huge mistake as well.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| That's not _what he told the court_ :
|
| "I have already made it perfectly clear that this case should
| never be heard in court and I will not be giving it any
| credence or legitimacy by attending."
| notahacker wrote:
| Defendant also told the court "I have already made it
| perfectly clear that this case should never be heard in court
| and I will not be giving it any credence or legitimacy by
| attending."
|
| I'd argue _angry man gives legal process he doesn 't
| understand the proverbial middle finger_ is a more plausible
| explanation for why it ended up as a summary judgement than
| _judge invents novel way to reduce his case backlog by
| demanding upfront fees for the defendant to attend_.
| bserge wrote:
| Individual going head on against the system. A tale as old
| as time.
|
| I've been thinking a lot about how unforgiving human
| systems are. We're all governed by them, and yet the people
| who put them in place are long retired or dead and it takes
| an insane amount of work to make even the slightest of
| changes.
|
| As long as there's no critical mass of unsatisfied people,
| it keeps chugging along. Some are caught in the cogs of the
| machine, maimed and killed, but society doesn't care as
| long as the majority is fine.
|
| If/when that critical mass is reached, the system is either
| forcefully changed, often drastically, or crashes
| completely and a new one is built.
|
| Rather fascinating.
| [deleted]
| p2detar wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "I paid upfront for a legal assessment of my case. But what I got
| was just the information I sent them, reworded and sent back to
| me."
|
| Is this a common practice? I recently reached out to an online
| attorney service (part of my insurance) about a minor issue and I
| got basically the same type of response.
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