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My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

westiseast.co.uk

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Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#71

Post by coldarchon »

I give you a hint. His domain is German, but he is in the USA. To be able to do so, he needs an Admin in Germany responsible to receive any complaints and legal actions. http://denic.de/domainbedingungen.html Read §3. Don't have the time to translate, I used google: "If the domain holder is not domiciled in Germany, he appoints a Germany-based administrative contact shall also be the person authorized by § 184 of the Zivilpro-zessordnung, § 132 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, § 56, paragraph 3 of the Administrative Procedure Code and § 15 of the administrative procedure Act and the relevant provisions of the Administrative procedure law of the countries."

I doubt he has one, and our laws are very strict about scamming. The keyword here is "Abmahung", which can become very expensive ..

Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#72

Post by westiseast »

coldarchon wrote: post #71

I give you a hint. His domain is German, but he is in the USA. To be able to do so, he needs an Admin in Germany responsible to receive any complaints and legal actions. http://denic.de/domainbedingungen.html Read §3. Don't have the time to translate, I used google: "If the domain holder is not domiciled in Germany, he appoints a Germany-based administrative contact shall also be the person authorized by § 184 of the…

It's a shared community site, with hosted blogs. The maintainers of that site and other bloggers all seem fine, and I think there's possibly some connection with Germany, hence the hosting. I contacted the owners, so they should be aware of what one of their bloggers is doing. It's up to them if they take further action.

Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#73

Post by rickdale »

westiseast wrote: post #49
rickdale wrote: post #40

Chinese Tea from the Min River Tea farm tastes like shit. Yeah I said it.

crap....I lost enough sleep last night over this :)

glad you have a sense of humor about all this. sounds like your tea business is ultimately coming along. What business doesn't start with customers that are friends of friends...

Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#74

Post by coldarchon »

westiseast wrote: post #72
coldarchon wrote: post #71

I give you a hint. His domain is German, but he is in the USA. To be able to do so, he needs an Admin in Germany responsible to receive any complaints and legal actions. http://denic.de/domainbedingungen.html Read §3. Don't have the time to translate, I used google: "If the domain holder is not domiciled in Germany, he appoints a Germany-based administrative contact shall also be the person authorized by § 184 of the…

It's a shared community site, with hosted blogs. The maintainers of that site and other bloggers all seem fine, and I think there's possibly some connection with Germany, hence the hosting. I contacted the owners, so they should be aware of what one of their bloggers is doing. It's up to them if they take further action.

There is no connection to Germany. http://www.whois.net/whois/teatra.de "www.teatra.de (69.175.69.250) located in United States" http://teatra.de/about/

And in fact they violate the German law about telemedia. http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tmg/__5.html Just an email adress and no phone number, no registrar of companies or entry in the commercial register in Germany and I'm very sure the admin won't be able to reply in German.

This means they will have to pay for the Abmahnung/warning from a lawyer between 800 and 1.000 € or if they don't provide the information within a given time a fee of 50.000 € for violating § 16 Abs. 2 Nr. 1 TMG (TMG = telemedia law).

The German law doesn't tolerate "unavailable" internet commerce.

Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#75

Post by andyking »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #61
garron wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good point there, it is impossible to define what is good and what not in flavors. It is like asking what is the best dog bread? And yes, the review about service is more important. This guy (Brian) at the end admitted that he did what he did just because he was unfollowed in twitter. What a guy!

I'm not sure why some people react in that way when they are unfollowed. But why were they being followed in the first place? I know some companies like to follow every single person they can with the expectation they get followed back and then boost their subscriber numbers, and I think it's a silly game to play.

I once got followed by a new local radio station that was launching in my area (I work in radio and they seemed to be following every radio person in the region). I thought, fair enough, and followed them back.

A few weeks later, after they'd started up and the dust had settled, I had a look at their Twitter page. "Following: 0." The cheeky gits had followed everyone, got a bunch of followers in return, and then deleted us all! That was enough to lose them a significant amount of goodwill from me and I promptly unfollowed them.

Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#76

Post by glimcat »

dspillett wrote: post #27
westiseast wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

Of all parties involved, Twitter is best-equipped to try and detect that behavior.

Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#78

Post by tsotha »

madiator wrote: post #65

This scammer has a scary bplan. I mean what would you do if the scammer sets up a bunch of twitter accounts and posting negative reviews and then demands money?

But if he becomes more than a very minor irritation he'll get sued or even arrested. I can't imagine what he's doing is legal, and his emails are evidence. Extortion in the flesh works a lot better because you can threaten someone and lie about it later. This guy is banking on the fact that it's just not worth the money and time to squash him like a bug.

Re: My experience with a 'negative review' scammer.

#80

Post by marcelfahle »

Interesting story. Well, this Brian guy is an idiot ("You unfollowed me. I insulted your tea. Now go away!"). Really?? But what I like most is the last comment on teatra: "Reviewers who judge about a tea quality from the point of someones followunfollow in twitter is… well such people earn 5bucks a week. Period." Nuff said :)

By the way, I need to try that stuff. Cheers from Hong Kong.

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