Thursday, October 4, 2012

Shaming Bad Customers On Line?

We've all heard of consumer web sites like Yelp and Angie's List, that provide a forum on how good or bad a particular business is.

Now we have a site for business owners for reviewing bad customers.

You have to become a member of BadConsumers.com, to join the fun, and once you're in, you can tell everyone about a particular customer that won't pay you, or does something else egregious.

I dunno. Yelp and Angie's List can be helpful, but those sites can be abused, too.Some people post fake business reviews on sites like Yelp to either unfairly hurt or help a business.  I'd think BadConsumer members can just attack a member of the public they don't like.

What if a BadConsumers member just doesn't happen to like someone and calls him a deadbeat, when he's not?  How does the individual get back his or her reputation?

Information on BadConsumers.com assures potential members they can't get in trouble for saying something bad about somebody. But I would hope libel laws help.  You probably can't win a libel suit against someone if they genuine believe what they said about you is true. But as I understand it, you can win such a suit if somebody deliberately lies about you to hurt your reputatiuon.

I see these review Web sites become a great job creator for trial lawyers.

The bottom line is, I  the old rules apply: Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.  And not everybody is honest, so let's be careful out there, folks.

No comments:

Post a Comment