It's a shame the OP doesn't ship to the US. Hacker News US people would probably buy a lot of tea and this is good exposure.
My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
31–40 of 83 posts
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#32Thanks for the warning. To be fair, even big "companies" like yelp.com have been running extortion rackets for years and are still the darlings of the technical press.
"Darlings of the technical press?" Can you show some examples, please? The ones I've seen have been skeptical, or reported on alleged extortion, such as:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/yelp-sued-for-alleg...
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#33I wouldn't even worry about a subjective review like "this tea tastes like shit". Even if it's the finest quality tea in the world, someone is going to think it tastes like shit. I would worry about reviews like, "ordered, never received product, called owner and he told me to 'fuck myself with a pointy stick'". That is significantly more damning, since it reads like an account of a factual event, rather than an unin…
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Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#34I wouldn't even worry about a subjective review like "this tea tastes like shit". Even if it's the finest quality tea in the world, someone is going to think it tastes like shit. I would worry about reviews like, "ordered, never received product, called owner and he told me to 'fuck myself with a pointy stick'". That is significantly more damning, since it reads like an account of a factual event, rather than an unin…
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...That's a terrible analogy.
A house getting robbed isn't 'small stuff', and is in no way comparable to getting a bad customer review.
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#35This concerns me because I can see it reaching an even bigger scale across all markets, especially in light of these new "reputation monitor" rackets where companies try to improve small b/m reputation online in places like Yelp & Urban Spoon.
Right now, there isn't any easy way to defend against it.
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#36Did you watch their tea review videos? OMG my 8 yr old could articulate a better description - like watching dumb and dumber. Maybe this was a case of professional jealousy. See what I mean here... http://healthyprofessionals.teatra.de/2011/07/26/the-tea-sho...
Wow, I really assumed you were exagerating but you were actually pretty accurate, they clearly know absolutely nothing about tea, or how to even have a semi-interesting conversation.
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#37Kudos to the author. His research/due-diligence in tracking this guy illuminates to the community his nefariousness. If everyone took this type of a pro-active defense in injustice, the frequency would be much reduced.
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the link glimcat - I'm going to see how it pans out after a few days. Tweets fade fast, and if this scammer doesn't continue posting negative reviews, then I'm happy with that.
This is sometimes the best way. If you get them blocked from Twitter they may take that as meaning "the fight is on" and register many fake accounts to continue posting the reviews from.
Not doing the right thing for fear of retribution? Staying quiet essentially allows them to do the same to others.
Fear should never dictate the decision process. They need to be reported.
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#39"406
Following
350
Followers"
is not exactly a position of great influence.
Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.
#40Chinese Tea from the Min River Tea farm tastes like shit. Yeah I said it.