Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review • Hacker News Board

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#11

Post by tokenadult » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 11:55 PM UTC

As the blog post kindly submitted here points out, the company's conduct appears to be fraudulent, and there isn't the tiniest chance that the woman who made a legitimate factual statement about the company in an online review will have to pay even one cent to the company. Good on Popehat and other sites for spreading the word about how scummy that company is. (By the way, the title of the submission here is misleading, and is not the original blog post title. Popehat's title is "New From KlearGear: Free Speech, Only $3,500 Plus Shipping And Handling," and that even fits the length limit imposed by Hacker News.)

You can find TechDirt's coverage, which prompted the blog post submitted here with additional legal analysis, at the TechDirt site.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131113/06112425228/online...

The TV news report that got this story rolling:

http://www.kutv.com/news/features/gephardt/stories/vid_474.s...

AFTER EDIT: To answer the question that has come up, which I think is adequately answered by the submitted blog post, companies can report consumers to credit bureaus for nonpayment, including nonpayment of civil judgments. But when those reports are fraudulent, as here, the consumer can also dispute the report, and the consumer should be able to come out with a clean credit record in the end. MANY years ago, my wife ordered a product by mail order, and we discovered the product was defective, and returned it. The company still wanted to bill us, and sent us a letter threatening to report us to a credit agency if we didn't pay. I simply wrote that the product was defective and that we had returned it and we disputed the company's point of view on the company's demand letter, and sent that back by return mail. That was the end of the matter, back in those days. We have a very clean credit history. I speak my mind whenever I think I have been ripped off.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#12

Post by peacemaker » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 11:57 PM UTC

seagreen wrote: post #6

guyht wrote: post #3

Reviews are a tough spot. On the one hand, reviews can be very damaging to businesses, so it is important that some measures are in place to ensure that the review is honest and genuine, and on the other hand its important that consumers can openly review a product/company without being scared of reprisals. Clearly, in this case, KlearGear are in the wrong, but I also think that there are cases where legitimate busin…

Review of reviewers is totally the way to go! It sounds like a "now you have two problems" situation, but it really isn't. Starting from the one reviewer of reviewers you know you can trust (yourself) you can build out to a network of trusted reviewers. If anyone's interested in working on open source solutions to this problem, feel free to email me. It's kind of my thing:)

Funny you mention this because a friend and I were sick of video game review sites leaving obviously paid for 10/10 reviews (here's looking at you, Eurogamer). So we put together plans to build a "review the reviewers" website where people could leave feedback on a particular reviewers integrity, honesty, trends and so on.

We never did finish it but I have lots of code, docs, ideas and research from that time and I'd be happy to help with your idea if you pursue it.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#13

Post by tlrobinson » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:10 AM UTC

guyht wrote: post #3

Reviews are a tough spot. On the one hand, reviews can be very damaging to businesses, so it is important that some measures are in place to ensure that the review is honest and genuine, and on the other hand its important that consumers can openly review a product/company without being scared of reprisals. Clearly, in this case, KlearGear are in the wrong, but I also think that there are cases where legitimate busin…

I don't think explicit "reviews of reviewers" is necessary, with enough data you can compute a trustworthiness score based on how their past reviews match up against other reviewers, or an Amazon style "Was this review helpful?" poll (which I suppose is a review of reviewers).

I assume this is how Yelp and others do it.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#14

Post by AnIrishDuck » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:12 AM UTC

Ugh... if a HN title ever needed a change (the current one is "Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review"), it's this one.

Jen Palmer is not facing a $3,500 fine any more than I'm "facing" the threat of being struck by a meteor on my birthday. She'll pay this horrible company a dime the day Eskimos need to worry about tigers, and I actually can think of a good analogy.

This title seems intended to gin up outrage where there should be none. To be sure, I'm outraged at this company's terrible ethics. But in this case our legal system actually works. News at nine.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#15

Post by castis » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:15 AM UTC

AnIrishDuck wrote: post #14

Ugh... if a HN title ever needed a change (the current one is "Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review"), it's this one. Jen Palmer is not facing a $3,500 fine any more than I'm "facing" the threat of being struck by a meteor on my birthday. She'll pay this horrible company a dime the day Eskimos need to worry about tigers, and I actually can think of a good analogy. This title seems intended to gin up out…

Knock on some wood pronto, lest you get struck by a meteor on your birthday :(

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#16

Post by freshhawk » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:20 AM UTC

"In an effort to ensure fair and honest public feedback ... this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts KlearGear.com"

That's some great doublespeak right there.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#17

Post by greenyoda » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:27 AM UTC

antonius wrote: post #2

As this picks up more media attention, the total number of customers that this will deter will greatly offset the $3,500 fine the company may end up receiving. Karma will prevail.

Also, having to hire a lawyer to defend themselves against criminal fraud charges will cost them a lot more than $3500.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#18

Post by 300bps » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:33 AM UTC

They reported her refusal to pay the $3,500 "fine" to the credit bureaus. A common way of dealing with such a thing is to file a small claims suit for the maximum amount in your jurisdiction for defamation. For example, in my jurisdiction the maximum is $8,000. The fact they are saying negative things about her is undisputed since it is in black and white on her credit report. So the next thing is for them to prove that the negative things they are saying are true. They won't be able to prove their one-sided contract that never offered consideration is valid. Then they'll move on to damages and she states in the article she was repeatedly denied credit and offered credit at less favorable terms.

This little stunt of theirs should cost them a lot of money.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#19

Post by Zigurd » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:36 AM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #13

guyht wrote: post #3

Reviews are a tough spot. On the one hand, reviews can be very damaging to businesses, so it is important that some measures are in place to ensure that the review is honest and genuine, and on the other hand its important that consumers can openly review a product/company without being scared of reprisals. Clearly, in this case, KlearGear are in the wrong, but I also think that there are cases where legitimate busin…

I don't think explicit "reviews of reviewers" is necessary, with enough data you can compute a trustworthiness score based on how their past reviews match up against other reviewers, or an Amazon style "Was this review helpful?" poll (which I suppose is a review of reviewers). I assume this is how Yelp and others do it.

I find Amazon works pretty well. When you have tens of thousands of customers of a product not everyone is going to grok, some are going to call you a poopy head.

If me and my co-authors cultivate a critical mass of reviewers, respond to the bad reviews that genuinely misunderstood something, and have enough traffic on the pages to generate enough "useful" scores on reviews, it all works out in the end.

Re: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

#20

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Nov 16, 2013, 12:39 AM UTC

> But a lawsuit isn't at the heart of KlearGear's despicable tactic. Ruining the credit of its critics is. ...If that fine is not paid, the delinquency will be reported to the nation's credit bureaus.

Question: what ability do most companies have to report something to credit bureaus? I mean, selling my stuff with just Stripe and a DBA, I certainly can't, as far as I know. Credit-card companies themselves certainly can, on the other hand.

Is there a way for "normal" small businesses to affect your credit score based on any kind of non-payment of bill? How do businesses "acquire" this ability? Can anybody just tell a credit score company, "X didn't pay me money, knock their score down"?

I'm just wondering if this is a bluff, which it probably is.

[Edit: Googling it a bit reveals that there are two methods. One is to hand the debt over to a collections agency -- you'll receive less of it, but they'll automatically report to a credit bureau if it's not paid. The other is to become a member of the three main credit organizations, but that involves membership fees etc., so presumably only makes sense if you deal with a lot of consumer billing already where this is a regular occurrence.]