Quote:
Originally Posted by Deskisamess
Sure, I totally get that. I've seen it myself for other businesses that have social media accounts. I've never had my own business. Social Media in general is a cesspool. I can't imagine dealing with it.
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I don't want to get into the details, here, because oddly enough, this is one of those situations where if people go searching and then worse, try to HELP,
it actually makes things worse, (so please, just take my word for all of this), but about 8 years ago, we had a competitor try to hurt us. And bygod, he DID. He posed as a customer and posted this fake review on one of those Revenge sites. And Gargle LUVS those sites and they would pop up this totally fake thing, each time someone would search on us.
People think, "oh, that's no big deal, b/c you can tell your side of the story," but what happens is, you never get to. They see that, in the search results (on page 1, thanks so MUCH, Gargle!) and they bounce away, to the next-business-in-sequence. Your search and inquiry volume falls overnight. When this happened to us--literally--our inquiry traffic and business dropped 80%--overnight.
OVERNIGHT. And as long as Gargle keeps showing the fake thing, you're effed and believe me, they love those fake review sites a lot more than they love YOU. It took me 7 months of posting new site articles, doing press releases, all this BS "SEO" stuff to "push" the bad search result, for the PHONY bad review, back 8 pages, so that people wouldn't see it first thing. I funded the entire biz, all my employees, everything from my own funds, for the 7 months, while we got our biz back. That's what ONE, repeat, ONE lousy fake review did. Now, think about trying to maintain a business, today, in that environment.
You
cannot get the fake review removed; thanks to CDA 230 (and don't get me started on that, worst thing ever), the site owner has ZERO obligation to remove it, even if you can prove it's defamatory. All you can do is sue the alleged poster (who of course, posts from some cyber cafe), whom you cannot serve, so you can't sue...and if you DO get lucky and find the perpetrator, then the BEST you can do, under CDA 230, is to serve Gargle with a copy of the eventual judgment, and have it removed from Gargle's search results.
People who haven't dealt with this, have NO idea what CDA 230 has done to ordinary, regular businesses. It's Open season for any nefarious schmuck who wants to rip you off. We get this surprisingly often--"If you don't do this for free, or let me have this other service, I'll post a bad review of you on [insert social media site or Revenge Reporting site here]."
And anybody who has a business today has learnt the hard way, you cannot--cannot--ignore those sorts of threats and what happens is, you cave. Or you settle or something.
I had a guy that bought a fixed-layout eBook from us. We made the eBook. I had told him, UPFRONT, that fixed-layout ebooks don't work on all devices. Right?
We give him the book and he's happy. One day later, his buddy tries to buy and download the book, and can't, because he has a K Voyage, right?
And now, he demands that we REFUND him every penny. Even Amazon, mind you, tells him that the eBook is made perfectly. We did absolutely everything right, it meets their highest standards for that format, right? Nonetheless, he claims I 'misled" him, because in my various emails, I used the term "MOBI" (even though our quote, BTW, says "Kindle ebook"). He threatens me, that he'll be all over social media, telling everyone how we ripped him off and misled him, etc.
I finally gave him his money back. For under $400, it wasn't worth it. But that's what happens. It's not just me. Everybody I know that is heavily online--in other words, people go to your websites and find you--has the EXACT same problem.
It's pretty effing horrible. (n.b.: we've never--never--had one legitimate, unhappy review from a real customer. Not once in now-12 years.)
Social Media is Satan and honestly, the sooner those businesses implode and go away, the better for society, IMHO.
BTW, I do want to say, this
wasn't really where I meant to go when I posted the thing about the grammar and the rant--I was sympathizing with you. I can really appreciate a good, well-written rant. The ones that look like someone dictated it to their 8-y.o. who is typing on a smartphone--those kill me. I can't read them, no matter how legit they may be. So...I'm with you AND on the irony of the fake reviews to combat fake reviews. I do also, though, sympathize with The Ranter a bit, too. ;-)
sorry for the length.
Hitch