Is it illegal to threaten a business with a bad review?

Originally Answered: Can a company threaten and sue you for a bad review on their product? Yes. Not any threats, but threats of a lawsuit, yes.

Can a company sue you for a bad review?

You can be sued. The company responded with demand letters to remove the poor reviews, then filed a defamation lawsuit worth $112,000 dollars claiming the bad reviews caused reputation damage.

Can you take legal action against a review?

A company may take legal action for a negative online review if the company can prove that the online review is defamatory and that the review is likely to cause the company serious financial harm. However, defamation is not the only course of action that a company can take for a bad review.

Is it legal to pay someone to remove a bad review?

Some companies had been using contract provisions – including their online terms and conditions – to threaten to sue consumers or penalize them financially for posting negative reviews or complaints. The new law makes that illegal.

Is it legal to pay someone to remove a review?

While it’s rare for a business to do this, it does occasionally happen. Yelp stands firmly against businesses pressuring customers or paying them to change or remove reviews. Even if the exchange is friendly in nature, consumers shouldn’t accept payment or a refund in exchange for removing or changing a review.

Can a bad review be considered defamation?

Bad Review. Defamation can be described as a false statement presented as a fact which ends up causing injury or damage to the reputation of a person, business, or entity. For instance, if a statement is false, and a business loses customers due to the false statement, it may be considered defamation.

Can you sue someone for false reviews?

For the most part, reviews are covered under the First Amendment, which protects free speech. If a customer posts a review that is factually inaccurate or contains accusations about your business that are untrue, you may have grounds to sue the online reviewer for defamation.

What can I do if someone threatens to sue my business?

Tell the customer to leave and explain that the police will be called if they do not leave. If a bogus lawsuit is filed, hire a lawyer as soon as you are actually served with the legal documents. The courts are used to dealing with frivolous lawsuits.

How do I respond to legal threats?

Add the sender’s letter or email to the CMLP Legal Threats Database. This is an important action because creating an entry in the Legal Threats Database will help others who receive similar letters know that they are not alone and assist them in weighing their options regarding how to respond.

Should you hire a lawyer to get a bad review removed?

The truth is, it takes a significant amount of time, money and energy to hire a lawyer and bring a suit to court in order to get a bad review removed from a review site. But, if the comment is extremely harmful to your business (and you can prove it to be false), it may be worth that time, money and energy.

Can you sue a review site for a bad review?

There are certain scenarios where you would be able to sue a reviewer over a bad review (namely if it contained factual inaccuracies that harmed your business). But what about the site where the review is hosted? Can you go above the customer and sue the review site directly? As it turns out, you can’t.

How do you respond to a bad review on Amazon?

Posting a thoughtful, gracious response. Address any issues brought up in the review, share how your company is working to ensure it doesn’t happen again and offer a solution to the customer. For example, if they had a negative customer service, you might apologize and offer them a discount code for a future purchase.