Mac Repair Company iGeniuses Sends Legal Threats To Unhappy Customers, Demanding $2500 Per Negative Review
from the iMorons dept
Paul Alan Levy is once again reporting on stupid legal threats made by a stupid company with a stupid non-disparagement clause hidden deep in its clickwrap. In addition, there's an apparently stupid lawyer involved.
I do not use the word "stupid" lightly.
First off, any company that thinks it's a good idea to hide a non-disparagement clause in its contractual agreements deserves to be called "stupid." There's no better way to set your reputation on fire than to demand that customers never criticize you, no matter how terrible your goods or services are. Well, there is one "better" way: enforcing it.
That's what iGeniuses, an Apple device repair company, did.
iGeniuses is a Houston company that repairs Apple products; it especially touts its ability to repair computers suffering from liquid damage on a fast turnaround schedule. A number of former customers have expressed concerns about the success of the repairs, about longer-than-advertised repair times, and especially about their believe that the company is very slow to respond to questions from customers concerned about not getting their computers back in the expected time.
Geniuses, they are not. Here's the wording from its "Customer Satisfaction Policy," which also doubles as the "Terms and Conditions" you must agree to before sending iGeniuses your Mac for repair. (emphasis added)
Customers agree not to attack/criticize/disparage/defame i-Geniuses.com or any of its employees, associates or partners publicly (on public forums, blogs, social networks etc)... Similarly you agree not to seek any SEO advice on SEO forums, blogs, community groups or any social media in a way which brings bad name to i-Geniuses.com or any of its employees, associates or partners. In case of breach of this clause, you agree to pay a flat fee of $2500.00 per instance to cover the cost associated with the restoration of i-Geniuses.com’s reputation and any and all business losses as directly related to your actions or actions of those directly or indirectly influenced by your prohibited action.
As Levy points out, this has been added to a new page on the iGeniuses website, most likely in reaction to him questioning whether or not customers were even aware of the non-disparagement clause. Previously, customers only saw it if they chose to read the "Terms and Conditions" they had to agree to before iGeniuses would accept their money.
Customers have been invoiced for $2500, with some receiving additional billing ($250), supposedly to cover the cost of having a lawyer write up (badly) legal threats on its behalf.
Chris Cammack, the lawyer behind the letters, has also issued followups containing threats of litigation over breach of contract. Levy spoke to Cammack, but was only able to gather more information confirming the dubious legality of the clause and its corresponding legal threats.
I reached out to both the company and the lawyer to ask questions about these claims. iGeniuses never responded, but Cammack called me back and we had a thoroughly civil conversation, even if what he had to say was largely uninformative. I wanted to know, for example, which specific facts in each of the reviews iGeniuses claimed to be false. Generally speaking when lawyers send demand letters that throw around the word “false” but give no examples, that tends to suggest that they have no sound claims of falsity. And besides, having been in touch with three recipients of the letters, and having looked at some of the consumers’ documentation, it appeared to me that there is some justification for a complaint common to many of the Yelp reviews, that the company does not respond promptly to inquiries from customers. Cammack told me that he “d[id] not choose to tell [me]” what specific statements were claimed to be false. I could not help wondering whether he had any specifics in mind.
Multiple forms of stupidity present themselves. First, the legal threats are vague and attack reviews that are protected statements of opinion. The more egregious stupidity is that iGeniuses waited until after the passage of a federal law forbidding non-disparagement clauses to start enforcing its clause. Add to that the fact that one threatening letter targets a 2013 review, which would put it well past the expiration date of Texas's statute of limitations.
The letters state the company has "proof" the dissatisfied customers agreed to the non-disparagement clause, but in the 2013 case, that's almost impossible to believe. Unless the company did business under another name at another URL, the i-geniuses.com domain wasn't registered until 2014. (It now redirects to igeniuses.com, which was registered in November of last year.)
>
More stupidly, iGeniuses' lawyer doesn't know for a fact whether or not the customers he told had agreed to this contractual language actually agreed to this contractual language.
I asked Cammack whether the web site worked the same way when two of the consumers had completed their transactions in 2015, and indeed whether the contract was the same when one of the consumers had sent his computer to iGeniuses in 2013. Cammack said he didn’t know the answers to these questions and that I would thus have to speak to his client. But if he didn’t know this basic information, how could he state as a fact that each of consumers had agreed to the contract he was telling them that had breached?
When Levy pressed Cammack on the legality of pursuing this after the passage of a federal law strictly forbidding this exact contractual language, the lawyer ended the conversation.
Finally, perhaps the stupidest thing about this whole fiasco:
Cammack plaintively said that he was just an outside contractor who had been hired to send three letters.
This is the worst: a lawyer willing to put his own reputation on the line to send letters of severely-dubious legality to unhappy customers of a company that would rather charge customers for negative reviews than attempt to make them happier. Cammack throws the weight of his profession behind letters designed to make recipients feel they have no choice but to pay up. With this "I was just following orders" pleading, he throws himself under the bus, saving iGeniuses the trouble. This is good news for the company, which will probably have its hands full dealing with unhappy customers and non-customers alike. Unhappy customers forbidden from screwing with iGeniuses' pagerank by its idiotic contract will now have the satisfaction of watching the company speedily negate its own SEO efforts without their assistance.
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Filed Under: apple repairs, chris cammack, non-disparagement clause, reviews, speak free, threat letters
Companies: i-geniuses, igeniuses
Reader Comments
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"Consumer Alert: Questionable Legal Threats
This business may be trying to abuse the legal system in an effort to stifle free speech, including issuing questionable legal threats against reviewers. As a reminder, reviewers who share their experiences have a First Amendment right to express their opinions on Yelp."
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Re:
And it kinda looks like the only positive reviews on Yelp for them were written by iGeniuses themselves (or more likely by some other company they paid to write reviews for them):
"Mac Geniuses is awesome! I needed a glass bezel repair for my MacBook Pro and the process was so easy and they were quick! On the plus side, they also do nationwide repairs."
"I can not say enough good things about The Mac Geniuses! They had my MacBook Pro back to me within a week (over a holiday weekend too!). I had a little spill on my MacBook and was devastated that it was not working. I took it to the Apple store first and they quoted me a whopping $800 flat fee for liquid damage. So my husband and I were trying to think of any way not to pay that for the Mac. Luckily I found The Mac Geniuses through Google and called to set up a drop off appointment. They were so wonderful! My MacBook Pro is back to me and working perfectly. They went above and beyond with their service and I know that this is the only place I will be going for any of my Apple repair or upgrades! I wish I had more friends with Macs so that I could tell them this is the only place they will ever need to go!
Thank you for the wonderful service Anthony and The Mac Geniuses!"
What real person writes a review that sounds like that? Who the fuck talks about their own personal experience in terms of "nationwide repairs" or wishes they had more friends with macs just so that they could refer more people?
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... Unless iGenius says otherwise in court.
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Schadenfreud
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Correct name
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And what does he call this service?
iThug?
Fraud On Demand?
Chris Cammack's Barratry Emporium?
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wait.. wait... it gets better
'to consider the merits and demerits of and judge accordingly : evaluate ' is the
first definition of crititize in Websters. therefore POSITIVE reviews are also subject to the 2500 dollar value added fine.
this fee would be required to reinstate the Geniuses BAD reputation. win win
peace out
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Customer Satisfaction Policy (short version)
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Can the Bar Assoc get involved?
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Re: Can the Bar Assoc get involved?
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You know what is really funny?
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H.R.5111 - Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016
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Customer Satisfaction
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i-Geniuses Trademark infringement
Hey, i-Geniuses – do battle with the big dogs.
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More fake reviews in their Twitter feed
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Re: More fake reviews in their Twitter feed
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Re: You know what is really funny?
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Re: Customer Satisfaction Policy (short version)
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Re: i-Geniuses Trademark infringement
20 years ago there was a big annoying computer industry fad in naming things iThis and iThat. Compaq's iPAQ PCs and Pocket PCs for example. The trend was finally dying out when Apple introduced the iPod.
The "iPod" trademark was already in use for other products including Internet kiosks. Likewise the "iPhone", "iCloud" and other now-Apple iNames were already in use before Apple joined the fad.
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Instead of Angry Customer going on RipOffReport.com and complaining about iGeniuses, Angry Customer's Daughter can do it:
"So my dad took his computer to this repair shop and let me tell you about the crappy service he got..."
Even if these clauses were legally valid, there's nothing the could do about that.
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Re: Re: i-Geniuses Trademark infringement
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Re: Re:
"What real person writes a review that sounds like that?"
A person with a whole bag full o' exclamation points, just itchin' to sprinkle 'em around!
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Re: Re: Customer Satisfaction Policy (short version)
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Re: Correct name
No. Always. No. Every time people bring this up, yes even lawyers who should know better, the answer is 99.99% NO!
In fact, the courts are so tired of RICO allegations being tacked on to lawsuits (and criminal charges) that there is a specific form for it in many jurisdictions and it requires very specific criteria to be answered and if they can't, the court will toss the charge.
https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-dammit/
READ IT. UNDERSTAND IT.
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Re: Re: i-Geniuses Trademark infringement
But combine their existing Genius support service with many of their products being an iDevice, and Apple might have a case on claiming consumer confusion with iGeniuses being affliated with Apple.
If not a trademark infringement case, they might be able to go with trademark dilution. Or claim iGeniuses are misrepresenting themselves. Or something equally bad that would cause Techdirt to write an article about bad case law and precedents. :)
But I'd say Apple is definitely watching now, because they're very protective of their products and the experience people have with them. They may yet intervene somehow.
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Re: Re: Re: i-Geniuses Trademark infringement
There. Now they have evidence.
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Any company scumming and terrible enough to try to slip in a gag-clause is also likely to be scumming and terrible enough to argue that clearly you told your friend/family about your experience, and that counts, so therefore say goodbye to your money for 'defaming' them.
It wouldn't be a good argument, but it would be a consistent one.
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May I counter your despicable but valid argument with an equally despicable yet also valid one..?
Said daughter may have actually been present at the time of said crappy service in which case no actual disparaging took place. Daughter may in fact be a bona fide witness...
I'll get my coat.
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Re: You know what is really funny?
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Hold the lawyer accountable
1) He doesn't know threats like these aren't enforceable in court.
2) He does know threats like these aren't enforceable in court but took the company's money and sent the threats anyway.
So which option is worse? And when will the court system start punishing lawyers for doing things like this, *especially* when they're "just following orders" instead of following the law.
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I-geniuses scam
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