Medialink Threatens Customer With Lawsuit For Writing A Negative Amazon Review
from the how-not-to-win-fans dept
It's an age-old story. Guy buys a router. Router sucks. Guy writes negative 1-star review on Amazon. Company threatens to sue him for defamation. Because it's not like every other attempt to sue over negative reviews ends badly.It is true that Reddit user trevely's original review did make some strong claims, which clearly, the router maker, Medialink, objected to. Trevely has since edited his review to clarify which parts were opinion and which were clear facts. Medialink's main complaints were that the original review claimed that many of the positive reviews of their router were fake, and that the router was just a rebranded version of someone else's router. Still, the original review was no worse than many standard negative reviews, and given how many other reviews Medialink had, you'd think that Medialink would just let this go, rather than call in the lawyers -- and suddenly get so much more attention to the negative review. Oh, and more attention to the positive reviews... and their legitimacy.
Whether or not they are actually fake, some Reddit users have certainly spotted some fairly questionable 5-star reviews, like the one guy who seems to think that the router is actually a set of car headlight bulbs. And, others have long suspected fake reviews on the product, so it's not like trevely just made this up out of nowhere.
As for the rebranding claim, well, as the original review noted, that seems to be confirmed by a filing with the FCC, in which Medialink directly says that the equipment is "electrically identical" to the Tenda router that trevely was pointing to. Oops.
Meanwhile, Amazon's seller rules are pretty strict about not letting its merchants try to influence user reviews -- either pushing for positive reviews or threatening over negative ones. Given, as treverly noted in his own initial review, that Medialink seems to exist almost entirely based on Amazon, breaking Amazon's rules by threatening a negative review (with a questionable lawsuit, no less) may wipe out the channel the company relies on. Either way, what Amazon does might not matter, because now the Reddit crowd has jumped in, and Medialink/Mediabridge's name may be even more associated with bogus legal bullying than crappy routers -- though I can't see how either one helps the company very much.
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Filed Under: defamation, lawsuits, medialink, reviews, routers, threats
Companies: amazon, mediabridge
Reader Comments
The First Word
“But if a company threatens negative reviewers, then I don't care if the reviews are 99% positive. I'm not buying from a company that begrudges unhappy customers the right to vent.
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Amazon really can't afford to have companies like this damage the reputation of its review system. It will be interesting to see if they take any action on this particular situation.
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But if a company threatens negative reviewers, then I don't care if the reviews are 99% positive. I'm not buying from a company that begrudges unhappy customers the right to vent.
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Some percentage of any manufactured products is always going to break, or be defective. There are always going to be software bugs.
What matters to me is how a company responds to those perfectly ordinary things. If suing their customers is how they respond, I'm staying far, far away.
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The reasons I can see for a poor rating:
1. lousy product.
2. particular item defective.
3. product description confused the purchaser into believing it was suitable for a particular use when it was not.
4. somewhat analogous to 3, the product not a good fit to the purchaser's needs.
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In reading through the ratings he basically went on a tirade and forced people to change their ratings. In other words, his nearly 100% rating was false and was based entirely on his insanity.
Believe me, that was a much bigger turn off than a few bad ratings would have been. Nothing is perfect. I can accept that. But I won't willingly accept insanity.
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Congratulations Medialink you are now officially a bad product due solely to your legal department.
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If the negative reviews are questionable or bogus, I then consider the product features.
I was recently looking at waffle makers. Many of the positive reviews were "I like waffles" or "made a great gift". Perhaps those are useful if you are clueless about food or what makes a good gift (perfume == good gift, deodorant == bad gift). But really.. no, useless.
The negative reviews are the ones that point out the flaws. Getting one star for an opened package or bad shipping is easily distinguished from one star for a non-stick coating that flakes off starting with the first use. Things like "awkward to store" and "ugly" are even better, because I can decide if they are important to me.
When a company can suppress or promote reviews, I can't trust anything. They are likely trying to hide substantial flaws, and I can't tell if they succeeded.
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It's usually fairly easy to sniff out the BS negative reviews like "I stepped on my iPhone and it broke - 1 star" from the useful reviews.
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If I see a reoccurring complaint in every 1-2 star review I know what kind of issue I might be dealing with.
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There are also many positive (5 star) reviews based on "product got delivered promptly".
for some people "works as expected" is a 5 star feeling and for others it's a 3 star feeling, 5 stars being reserved for "exceeded expectations".
overall, people still need to take the time to look through what people are writing.
unless it's one of those "4,000 reviews" with a nice curve distribution. then you can pretty much trust the wave. but reading the negatives for recurring issues can still be insightful.
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Quite often though I come across items where the person said they didn't even buy it from Amazon, but they are reviewing it there anyway.
I came across a 1 star review for the AT&T Note 3, but the reviewer stated they got their device from Verizon. Their review was based on just simply not knowing the features of the device and when it was pointed out that they were reviewing the AT&T version they insisted the review was still valid because it was the same device. -_-
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They are owed amazing reviews even if what they make is crap.
A single review suddenly is going to cost them trillions, so they have to stomp them out.
(We only used to see this sort of entitlement from media cartels)
They have no understanding of the internet and how it works. They are owed good reviews and will purchase them rather than provide quality products & service to consumers. They either don't follow up on the reviews they have purchased, or are so far out of touch with reality that they think we can't spot them.
This also is what happens when we have to many lawyers with to much free time, inventing busy work that manages to hurt their clients more than any bad review might.
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I've even been offered (On Reddit, ironically) to write reviews for $100-$400 a pop on yelp, trip advisor and Google plus after posting in the jobs section for Denver.
For $400, I think most people could create some pretty convincing reviews.
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Assuming it was a reasonable experience, at least.
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thank you!
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I actually own a media link router
Company is stupid to call out a neg review when it's so overwhelmed by positives in the MediaLink case. But then if all the companies used their heads, they would all be driving gold plated benz's ... I swear the harbinger of the downfall of any civilization is the opening of the first law school!
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And that's what makes this move of theirs so incredibly stupid. Now, even if those positive review are honest, by going so absolutely ballistic over this one negative review, all those positive reviews are now going to be called into question.
Did they really enjoy the product, or are the reviews just useless ads disguised as reviews?
What's been left out of the reviews, that might have otherwise been noted, for fear, or in response to, a negative response from the company?
Basically, after acting like this over a negative review, all those positive reviews are now worthless.
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You have to read between the lines, but always, you can find paid review jobs
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(http://www.amazon.com/Medialink-Wireless-N-Broadband-Internal-Antennas/dp/B00A3YN0Z0/ref=cm_rdp_ product)
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10,466 of 10,507 people found the following review helpful
This company threatened me for my negative review
By TD on September 26, 2013
and a quote highlighted by Amazon at the top of the comments section:
"Company harrasses and threatens to sue people when they post a negative review of this product....do you really want to buy from someone like that?"
Well done, Medialink!
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Almost a parody of a demand letter
Too bad trevely blacked out the name of the lawyer and the law firm than sent the demand letter. The lawyer should face the Streisand effect too!
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Anyway, the important thing is, I meet a lot of people. And I meet a lot of people who tell me their job is social media marketing.
They get paid to go out and say good things about products. That is what commercials do, what is the problem?
I do not think many social media marketers disclose they are paid by product manufacturers. These are not affilliate marketers that we know are salesmen.
These people act like your neighbor.
For the internet savvy this is not a problem. What about those who do not know. The thing to remember is that if companies are paying for social media marketers, it is because what they do works. They take advantage of the naive. I think in stock trading they call this "pump and dump".
Stop by Fiverr or SEO Clerks anytime you need a product review. They can help.
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1. Unable to configure it from Slackware Linux.
2. No DHCP for the wireless.
3. It is not an effective paperweight or doorstop.
Walt R.
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If the product in question is the only product that s/he has reviewed, I immediately discount it. To me that smacks of either a competitor or a shill, respectively.
I also tend to discount "cheerleaders'" and "naysayers'" (consistently 5 or 1 stars, respectively, for all products reviewed) reviews.
What I do tend to pay more attention to is a review that is atypical for a particular reviewer (e.g., Usually positive or neutral for most products reviewed, but is reviewing this product more negatively). Also, highly detailed reviews earn more credibility from me than, "...the product was stupid" ones.
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yup
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One review, for one product, and their insane over-reaction in order to 'protect' their business gets them kicked off of Amazon entirely... yup, those threats of a lawsuit really paid off for them now didn't they? /s
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How to do reviews right
Personally, I think this is what Amazon needs to do in order to restore confidence in their review system. It should be pretty easy for them to figure out if the reviewer acttuualy bought and paid for the product through them.
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Reddit lawsuit
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