Concrete Company Sues Woman For Posting Negative Review On Angie's List
from the well,-now-we-know-who-to-avoid dept
You really would think, at this point, that any lawyer worth his or her hourly rate would strongly recommend to clients that they don't go ballistic in filing lawsuits any time someone says something bad about you. Hell, there have been multiple stories recently about just how badly a similar lawsuit from a towing company has backfired on the company. But, yet again, we have a story of a business suing over a negative review. This time, it's a woman in Chicago who wrote a negative review of a local cement company on the site Angie's List because it refused to even give her an estimate, saying it didn't work in her area. She was upset because the company was only based 5 miles away, and on Angie's List, said it did work where she lived. So she wrote about her experience and rated the company an "F." In response, the company, All Fields of Concrete Construction, sued her, claiming she "willingly and maliciously tried and succeeded in damaging my company's reputation." Once again, it makes you wonder: which is more damaging to your reputation? Getting a bad rating online, or suing the person who gave you that rating? It's difficult to see how the concrete company has much of a case. The "F" rating is clearly an opinion, not a statement of fact. And it's hard to show that the woman was "malicious" in her rating. She gave her opinion. But, now, thanks to the lawsuit, a lot more people know her opinion of All Fields of Concrete Construction.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: concrete, defamation, opinion, reviews
Companies: all fields of concrete construction, angie's list
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The fact that he's willing to sue somebody for publishing a negative opinion? lukemv's got it right. If the pakhtash is that litigious, I wouldn't even call him for an estimate. He might stub his toe while he's on my property.
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But I'm not being a jerk. I'm making a joke via a hip cultural reference. Hence the link. Which I'm assuming you didn't click. If you did, you're completely clueless. And I'm still not being a jerk, merely honest.
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suing is a pretty big jump, and fairly negative (look at what ima fish did with it) but at the same time, if it is the first thing that comes up in google, perhaps they have reason.
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Incidentally, I know these guys a little bit. At one point in my life, when I apparently wished to live on the South Side amongst ignorant White Sox fans and the dregs of Chicago, I was living about four blocks away from them. A shame, since they're in such close proximity to one of the best businesses in chicago, Bobak's Sausage company....
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The company probably had more than enough work to do, and didn't need her business. Either that, or she was a terrible person on the phone to deal with. Either way, one F rating out by it's lonesome self shouldn't be enough to disuade anyone from anything.
And if it did, well, I wouldn't want that type of customer anyways.
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But they failed at providing her any service. They promised free estimates in their ad, but failed/refused to give her one. Failing to do what you promise in your ads warrants an F.
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ee trollings says: it's a typical friday on techdirt and mike is once again misleading his brain dead followers into thinking water is wet. water is not wet unless we have a government monopoly that insures that all water stays wet.
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ee trollings says: it's a typical friday on techdirt and mike is once again misleading his brain dead followers into thinking water is wet. water may not be wet. consult a lawyer to find out if water is, in fact, wet. all mike and his ilk want to do is drink water, wet or not.
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"Fitzgerald, talking with CBS 2 by phone, countered: "I'm not trying to be a jerk. It's just hard to have somebody slander you." "
Oh, but you do it so well. Without even trying... :-p
I have to agree with lukeMV. I wouldn't want to hire any company that is that litigious. It just isn't worth the risk. If anything, the lawsuit just provides what seems like confirmation of the woman's low rating.
Perhaps somebody should send the man a photo of Babara Streisand's house?
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Re: I have to agree with lukeMV. I wouldn't want to hire any company that is that litigious. It just isn't worth the risk. If anything, the lawsuit just provides what seems like confirmation of the woman's low rating.
The fact that you won't hire him because you think they mite sue you, and the fact that you won't hire him because he's willing to stand up for himself, only points out one flaw, and that is that you are cowards.
Angie’s list really should not be permitted to post negative remarks about contractors unless they, as the BBB does, have brought the claims to the contractor’s attention, allowed that contractor to respond; afterwich, investigate the claim, and if substantiated; Post it.
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That depends on the type of review, product or company/service.
It is totally inappropriate for people to give 1 star reviews to books on Amazon over delivery problems from Amazon because those reviews are for the **books**, not the service. But a negative review for a company's service or lack thereof may be entirely appropriate for business reviews if the company claims to offer service in an area but refuses to do so when called. In such circumstances they are providing bad customer service. Would you, for instance, say that somebody shouldn't give a restaurant a bad review if, for no reason, you are refused a table? I'd say that would be a legitimate beef.
BTW, Angie's list gives the reviewed company a right of reply "Companies and providers respond to reports, so you get the whole story. " Which means that All Fields of Concrete Construction presumably got to tell their side of the story right next to Helen Maslona's negative review, so the lawsuit is even more unjustified than it would seem just from the Techdirt article.
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A Well Known Problem...
Angie's list needs to fix this problem by:
A) Providing ample contractor rebuttal space.
B) Dropping/Banning contractors that sue reviewers for libel/slander.
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Re: A Well Known Problem...
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Defamatory, false **and** a claim of fact.
A rating is clearly an opinion, making this lawsuit frivolous on its face, IMO.
AFIK, the concrete company hasn't disputed her account, just gotten mad about it and sued. Can't say for sure, though, since the suit hasn't been posted here. However, this techdirt post now makes the front page in the Google search for "All Fields of Concrete" :-)
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This concrete company needs to stop being so hard headed.
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Negative Reviews
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Those are product reviews, in which case noting that the QA is sufficiently poor that the manufacturer is shipping DOA units is a legitimate consumer complaint about the product. That Newegg quickly ships replacements is a sign of good service on Newegg's part, not an indicator that the quality of the product is good.
In any case, reviews on Angie's List are not product reviews, they are company/service reviews. The company is alleged to have offered free estimates in a service area and subsequently refused to live up to their advertised offer. If that is so then there is a legitimate basis to give the company a poor review for their service--especially since the review is said to note the exact reasons woman's low ratings of the company.
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Only when one hasn't got the first clue how electronics work. Getting a DOA unit doesn't say anything about a companies QA. Electronics can be burnt out far too easily, anyone who understands that knows that it is expected to have a certain percentage of units go dead in transit for all sorts of reasons, hence why complaining about getting one that did go bad just because you were the unlucky one is just stupid.
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I'd say I have a pour opinion of them, and their excuses and graveling have no truck with me.
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I've got four friends in Chicago; I'm forwarding this article
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Call Michael Fitzgerald
773 - 735 - 1794
Call Michael Fitzgerald and tell him what you think.
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Lawsuit Was Dismissed but Legal Fees were not Awarded
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A few days later I saw an Angie's list report posted by her giving me an "F" commenting "I don't think that the location of a job should determine whether or not you at least go to look at the project and give a price". I was totally dismayed. Currently (due to our being the top rated company in the area) we have more calls that we can even handle for our work. We just HAVE to turn a lot of people down. Some might ask "why don't you just hire more people". The reason is that hiring more people changes the dynamics of a small business and I want to focus on less number of projects with higher quality and service. Just a choice I made. However - the fact is - any one of the people we have to tell that we are too busy have the ability to get on Angie's list and in a public forum berate us because they are unhappy people.
I would not go to ever suing someone over a bad report. I think that really is a bad PR move to say the least. But - I know of several high quality companies in town - who do the very best work in town in their field - and they have received numerous types of these reports where there really wasn't much interaction between them and the client such as-- they were too busy and could not get to the person, they went to look at a job and it was too small for them (it has to fit in the business model of a company to be profitable or else it will be a dis-service to the both parties), etc.
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angies list
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