Man Getting Sued Over An Amazon Review

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Companies suing people for negative reviews is becoming a disturbing trend. The sad part is, while Amazon is protected from being sued, the person that wrote the review is not.

The next time you write an online review, be careful. You might get sued. That's what could happen to a Florida man who left a negative review about an Internet router he purchased. According to his Tuesday post on Reddit, where he's asking for legal advice, he received a letter from a law firm in Philadelphia threatening to sue him for an "illegal campaign to damage, discredit, defame, and libel" the company that makes the router.
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I am pretty certain it's not lieblous if it can be proven to be true... I doubt there's a claim here, but I'm not a lawyer.
 
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Half of the refund will go to return shipping, but hey, it's the principle of the thing.

I've been following this on Reddit. This happened Tuesday evening but the guy still claims not to have heard anything from Amazon.
 
You're placing the blame on the wrong company there hoss.
 
Ah, I missed the media-bridge thing on the amazon link... also, do something about your photo res... holy jeebus.
 
Medialink owns Mediabridge cables. Look on their website.

And kudos to you for doing this. I admit I'd be too lazy to do so, but I'm glad to see this going public. Hope more people do this and it gets them to sing a different tune or disappear from the US market.
 
Also feel that this Amazon comment thread should be shared. Potential customer warns other potential customers of potentially fishy goings-on, gets labelled an "obsessive nutjob" by MediaBridge. All the way back in 2011.
 
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You know who sues people for talking about their product? People that make a shitty product with no intent on fixing it.
I know who I won't be buying one from.
 
Crap, I just ordered one of their cables a couple days ago. Yeah, never again. Wow.
 
A lot of 1 star reviews now coming in for that router.

How about better customer service to address issues, rather than lawyering up?
 
I would suggest that if you are an Amazon customer, you might want to contact amazon and ask them to stop selling their product because you do not wish to be at constant peril of their lawyers, and this behavior should not be something Amazon helps, even if tacitly.
 
If he lists valid points on the review and the letter states he is accused of claimign that the 5 star reviews are fakes and he didn't say that at all.

I'm sure that if he has a lawyer and he calls Tenda for release specs on the product shipped by them to Medialink and their product and they are nearly the same that would also take the air out of that argument.

Sounds to me as Medialink is going to lose badly in court over this.
 
As much as I think they go overboard with the socialist bullcrap in Europe, the one thing I do think they did right is their consumer protection group.

It would investigate the case and if found to be abusing the law to intimidate negative reviews without reasonable cause, they could ban the import and sale of their products. Put an end to that REAL QUICK.
 
I bought a digital audio cable from that company (through Amazon) just a couple days ago. If I'd have known this, I would have gone with a different cable.
 
Reviews should be protected under free speech as they are all obviously opinion pieces.
 
I love watching things like this blow up on Reddit, then come over the next day to a place with journalistic integrity like [H] and see it's become "news"
 
tikiman2012 said:
Reviews should be protected under free speech as they are all obviously opinion pieces.
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And even if something is a flat out lie, that's not even good enough. You'd have to demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the person KNOWINGLY lied, and it wasn't a lie out of ignorance.

Like you say though, when it comes to simple review comments on a website from non-commercial users, there should just be blanket protection for anything you say to keep it simple.

The only time we should see someone getting sued is if for example a competing business is paying someone or employees to intentionally SPAM false reviews in order to eliminate competition and promote their own business. That's a whole other matter.
 
tikiman2012 said:
Reviews should be protected under free speech as they are all obviously opinion pieces.
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Agree, I thought part of writing a negative review is somewhat of a customer complaint that the product is not working as intended and the company should take this criticism and help the dude out with resolving his issue.....
 
Hey, I learned something new today: libel isn't protected speech, regardless of what Internet, esq thinks. /snark
 
In all fairness, he is posting incorrect information in the review. If you actually look at the Tenda router he claims is the same as this Mediabridge router, it can't be. While the look of the casing is similar, the Mediabridge router has the power input on the left of the network ports, while the Tenda has the ports on the right. In addition, the interface is entirely different, but you wouldn't know this if you hadn't owned both. (I, unfortunately, have, and neither are worth $15, in other words, crappy. I won't buy either company's products again.)

Also, one of the other suits they mention in the articles was clearly justifiable. If the lady that posted that review about the contractor thought that contractor had stolen her jewelry, she should have called the police and had him charged. Putting that in the review without charge or any proof was clearly defamatory, and opened her up to that justifiable lawsuit. The other two lawsuits mentioned do not give enough information to show whether or not they were justified, but I would think a judge would be able to determine that.

People need to be careful about what they post on the internet. Intentionally posting false negative information that is damaging to others just to damage them is wrong. It should be punished.

I know from experience. While mine wasn't on the internet, I have had a situation where someone did tell false negative information about me, and I lost a chance at job, and cannot apply at that particular employer, because of it. I applied for a job, and while confirming my status as being employed at a particular company, they called the front desk. The front desk person transferred them to my old department instead of to HR, which was the first mistake. The person that answered the phone at my old department happened to be the person that pushed me out of that job, backstabbing me until I quit. (She was a lazy, lying, backstabber, taking credit for my work and frequently blaming me for her inability to get things done, who also felt spurned because I never returned her romantic interest. I left the company when she was promoted based on her lies to a supervisory position.) She told that potential employer that I had been fired for suspicion of theft of laptops and parts. The potential employer called me immediately and turned me away. I asked why, and he would only tell me of this response if it was off the record. He stated very clearly that he would not "get in the middle of this, whether it was false or not" and then told me what she had told him. I told him that he should have called HR, but the damage was done. I could never sue her because he wasn't willing to testify and because he couldn't clearly identify who he had actually talked to. He only said that he talked to a woman, and there were two women in the department. I learned later that she had also spread around the office that I had left because I was sexist and/or racist and didn't want to work for a hispanic woman. Definitely a lie there, considering I had been working for a Filipino woman for the previous two years with no issues. (Also, after I left, her lies came back to bite her. It became obvious who had been doing much of the work in the department, and that she couldn't get things done. She was demoted and fired within a year after I left, and our manager was also demoted for promoting her. However, the damage was done, and I can never return to that company. I loved that job, and most of the people I worked with there.)

Such things are unfairly majorly damaging to the victims, and they deserve to be punished.
 
Wow, I was just about to buy some products from them. Cables, which I'm sure would be fine.

But not now...
 
dgingeri said:
In all fairness, he is posting incorrect information in the review...
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But it's a comment, on amazon... There's more misinformation in those reviews than you can shake a stick at. Suing the guy? Maybe it's their right, and maybe they are IN the right - but they are just asking for it.

How about posting a counter review refuting the incorrect information? Maybe Amazon has a policy against this - but for example, you see it all the time on Yelp. Professional courteous responses to jackholes. You don't sue the guy...
 
Used one of their wireless USB devices. Flaky as hell. Would just stop working and you would have to disconnect, reconnect, to get back online. Finally yanked the whole thing and ran a wire to the PC.
 
I wrote the evil company AND amazon because I have the time today expressing how sick and twisted this place is.

So instead of taking the free route and helping educate the customer and solving any of their problems, they hire a lawyer hundreds or thousands of dollars wasted.

I'd love to see them lose all their amazon business and really take a hurt on their bottom line.
 
I just read some of the reviews for the router and it if funny how a lot of the good reviewers either had no other review history or they reviewed 5-10 items on the same day they reviewed the router. I would say there is a very good chance a bunch of those reviews are false and I am glad I have never purchased one of their products.
 
Reviews should be protected under free speech as they are all obviously opinion pieces.
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No, I don't think so. That would actually be damned stupid. So many of you are jumping on the bandwagon claiming the company is wrong, but this dude went way beyond just reviewing the product he received. He attacked other reviews with nothing to substantiate his claims, he attacked the company's product based on some other dude's review of that product.

If he had limited his review to the product he purchased and his experience with it then he would have been fine. But he went all over the place and there is a reasonable chance that he will lose if Medialink's lawyers are at least competent.

Free Speech has never meant that you can say whatever you want without any recourse. Claiming that opinion is a shield that invokes free speech protections is also a mistake because it does not.
 
ButchCassidy said:
The company admitted to the rebanding in the responses.admitted in some of the
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Damn phone, posted before I can point to a source. If you look at post 8 it has a link with the manufacture responding and admitting to it. I see nothing wrong with it, I mean power supply companies do this all the time.
 
lcpiper said:
If he had limited his review to the product he purchased and his experience with it then he would have been fine.
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True, but there are other ways this could have been handled though, instead of lawyering up. That's the problem. Other companies have bad reviews posted, and they work with the person to solve the problem.

The underlying problem with the lawyer thing is that it makes people that have had genuine problems with a product scared to post a negative review. Who wants to risk being sued over an internet review? When people are scared to speak their minds then it removes feedback from the marketplace. That hurts the consumers who would use that information in purchasing decisions, but also hurts the companies as well. If people are having problems with a product, and a lot of the same problems are being posted about, it gives a company valuable insight into where to make improvements and correct a deficiency.

So the choice is this: Allow companies to sue people because of a few trolls and make everyone scared, or tolerate a few trolls and let the people speak their minds without fear. I would prefer the second option.
 
recklessfour said:
Agree, I thought part of writing a negative review is somewhat of a customer complaint that the product is not working as intended and the company should take this criticism and help the dude out with resolving his issue.....
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He did claim that the vendor was putting in fake reviews and that the product was just rebranded from another product.

Saying something negative about how a product works should be safe from harm. Making damaging claims about the vendor that can greatly affect sales of a product on the biggest marketplace in America is what got this person in trouble.

The vendor obviously screwed up as well. You don't just go into lawyer mode immediately. I would have replied to the comment first and make a case that the review is not true. Then I would communicate with the reviewer and try to straighten out the issue and see if the reviewer would delete any false info. Then if the reviewer refuses to cooperate, you can use the lawyers.

The vendor appears to be suffering a major PR disaster over this.
 
I bought 1 cable from Mediabridge and it didn't work (HDMI). Unfortunately that meant I had to go to Best Buy and bend over, since I was setting gear up for a family member while visiting.
 
True, but there are other ways this could have been handled though, instead of lawyering up. That's the problem. Other companies have bad reviews posted, and they work with the person to solve the problem.
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That's not a problem, that's a choice. It will play out good or bad for them or maybe it's have no real effect at all. But the company isn't wrong, they made a choice and it is justified. Whether it turns out to be a smart one or not remains to be seen.
 
tikiman2012 said:
Reviews should be protected under free speech as they are all obviously opinion pieces.
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Libel and slander are not never protected under free speech, regardless of the medium; nor should they be. The lawsuit alleges both of these.
 
The only thing that would switch my sympathy to the company is if the guy had countless posts.
 
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