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.
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.
I rarely go on aggregate review scores, but instead on the worst reviews.
I read the text of these reviews. Sometimes the reviewer had unrealistic demands. If this worst case is acceptable, I proceed. If it is a choice between competitors, it often comes to the least bad option.
If there are no reviews under 5 stars, I'm suspicious. If a company replies to reviews, I mentally flag it as doing reputation management - not something you tend to need do when providing a service your customers love.
It is amazing how many nightmare companies have 4-5 star trustpilot reviews.
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.
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.
I didn't say that Yelp didn't remove negative reviews; I said they don't do it in exchange for pay as implied, and comments from actual business owners on this thread, and my first-person experience interviewing almost a hundred businesses as part of an investigation for the local Chamber of Commerce confirm that.
I am a business owner and I’ve had reviews taken down solely because I was a paying Yelp customer. I’ve had other accounts that were non-paying that couldn’t get fraudulent reviews removed at all.
Yelp is a scam, but you pay the piper because their local SEO is too good.
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 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.
This. 100%. If you don’t pay the BBB their extortion fee they will tell anyone who asks that “you are not a member in good standing” which is technically true since you are not a member. Because you didn’t pay the fee. Legalized extortion.
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.
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.
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).
>>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.
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.
> 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.
> 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).
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.
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
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.)
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.
Yelp removes any post legitimate or not if you have zero “friends” on Yelp and if you have no profile picture iirc.
That's definitely wrong, as my Yelp profile has zero friends and no profile picture, and all of my reviews are still up, when viewing the businesses logged out, across multiple devices using different IP addresses.
I have managed restaurants and talked to several Yelp reps.
I have spoken to restaurants on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce investigating this issue, and found no evidence that these claims are true.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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..
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...
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.
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.
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 :-)
>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!
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.
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.
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).
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
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
$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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
"Applied for a Java role, but had JavaScript questions. Tried to explain to interviewer there are unrelated things, was asked to come back when I learn more about Java. One star."
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
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 £24,000 to £30,000 would be appropriate, subject to his concession that the claim was limited to £25,000.
In respect of special damages which were claimed at £300 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 £300 per day to a sum of £12,600.
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 £25,000 would adequately reflect the seriousness of the defamation, the financial loss which has occurred and the purpose of vindication."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
In the US, Democrats/left/liberals are well known for trying to control speech. [0] [1] [2] They are the party of greater government and using law more liberally to control more aspects of society.
Republicans/right/conservatives are the party of small government - hence the word conservative describing them. They favor free markets, which is to say: Don't make too many laws getting in the way of business!
The very meaning of the word Conservatism is "commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation." [3] Less change = less laws. The conservative right weren't the ones behind the Civil Rights movement in the US - that was the liberal left, creating more laws controlling things like school segregation and so forth.
So, I think you can see that "more (vs less) use of law" is absolutely one of the overarching themes at play in our political scene. Even as a complete layman who actively avoids politics I wasn't able to avoid this knowledge. I think you can confirm it with a few quick searches to get a feel for what kinds of things people have said about either party [4] [5] [6].
Those first two sources are obviously biased to an almost comical degree. They're very much of the "those horrible Democrats want to take your freedom of speech" bent. Your third link has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Yes, conservatives favour smaller government and fewer laws - actually that term means exactly that here in British politics too. But that doesn't mean any extra laws are necessarily liberal. Go back to my example of legislated racism to see that, which is clearly not liberal (in every sense of the word) despite requiring more laws and bigger government. Like the original comment I replied to, your comment and those sources come across a shallow attempt to insult Democrats by saying "look, this bad thing would require a law, and Democrats love laws, therefore they must want this bad thing!".
Maybe in this case my distance, as an outside observer, is actually helpful. I can see pretty clearly that Democrats wanting to limit freedom of speech is a rumour that doesn't reflect what Democrats actually want.
The first 2 links cited incontrovertible evidence, I don't see much comedy in that. The third link shows a law that controls speech, which is exactly how I labeled it in my first sentence.
You're arguing with me because I made a comment that stemmed from my own perception of politics. Now that I've clearly explained the reasoning for my comment, you're contorting yourself to prove that my perception is wrong. In the face of empirical evidence you've given nothing more than your opinion.
> I can see pretty clearly that Democrats wanting to limit freedom of speech is a rumour that doesn't reflect what Democrats actually want.
They want to control speech. I've shown a law, one among many that they've enacted, which proved my point. In response to that you applied some strawman argument about it not being "freedom of speech" when nobody ever said that.
I don't think you're arguing in good faith, so I'm going to end this here.
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
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> "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?
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.
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.
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 £200 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?
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
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 £25,000 of damages! That has to be considered outrageous, surely?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.""""
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.
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 £6,000 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.
> Seeing there was no justice here I decided not to give the court legitimacy by attending.
In most jurisdictions there is a higher court you can appeal to if you don't get the result you wanted at the trial court. Denying the trial court's legitimacy and refusing to participate in the judicial process will not help that appeal.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I have used Internet since 1989. Of course not at home, because that didn't exist.
In the early days every Internet user was implicitly trust-worthy. They all worked at universities or the like and meeting a scammer was highly unlikely, basically unheard of. I have visited several of them on another continent, just introduced by email. We helped each other buying goods that you could not buy in your country of residence before Amazon existed. We exchanged collectibles like paper money. It just worked, the check was in the mail a week or 2 later.
The first thing we had to learn is that aol.com addresses could not be trusted. That was still kind of easy, but since then it's only been downhill.
Well I was on BBSes before that, and I've hung out with random people IRL via message boards who turned out to be very nice. But - I've also seen some of that, more recently on discord, and on IRC a few years back. I think that that aspect (trust) is an emergent phenomenon from interacting with a smaller group.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
>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.
IANAL but the judgement seems to saying, you can't just use prepned an actualy allegation of fraud with "It is my opinion" to claim it is opinion.
My argument isn't that, it's to challenge the idea that calling something a scam can ONLY mean I'm accusing them of fraud.
>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.
The foundation of this argument is to challenge the assumption the words actually convey an allegation of Fraud.
It would get pretty deep into the evolution of language/multiple meanings and slang and probably isn't worth fighting, but I still think it's a valid (or at least interesting) defense.
In US law this idea is called defamation per se. [0] If a statement is defamation per se, then the court can skip analysis of whether the statement is defamatory. Defamation per se statements are divided among several categories, one of which is stating that the plaintiff is unfit to practice his or her profession. Accusing an attorney of being "a scam solicitor" falls into that category.
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.
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.
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 ?
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?
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?
But who will you bring the lawsuit against? Reviewer/Review service/website host/Vendor X/etc. IANAL, but I don't think you can sue the review service or the website host because of section 230.
> 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.
Predictably, people have flooded trustpilot with negative reviews after this article was published. I guess they weren't expecting this to make the news.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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'
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.
> _[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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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!
> 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.
> 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.
In the UK when you lose a lawsuit you are required to pay the other party's legal costs. It appears that the defendant had previously lost on some portion of the case. Here is the paragraph of the decision relating to that:
> The Defendant was ordered to pay the Claimant's costs up to and including the hearing of 6th July 2020 on the indemnity basis. This costs order has not been complied with. The Claimant seeks its costs of the disposal hearing. The schedule of costs for summary assessment seeks a further sum of £3,450. This sum is both reasonable and proportionate and I will make a costs order in the sum requested.
>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."
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.