It's now illegal for businesses in the US to punish customers for negative feedback

[Guest Kloaked]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

But what if I wanted to tell everyone on every store that carried it?

Why would you want to go through the trouble? You should write the review on the platform you purchased from should you feel compelled to write one. It makes the review sections on other websites less cluttered.

 

If they filtered out reviews by people who didn't even purchase the product through Amazon by default, I'd be fine with it personally.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Kloaked said:

Why would you want to go through the trouble? You should write the review on the platform you purchased from should you feel compelled to write one. It makes the review sections on other websites less cluttered.

 

If they filtered out reviews by people who didn't even purchase the product through Amazon by default, I'd be fine with it personally.

Because I reaaaaaalllllyyyy  want to tell the world how great (or crap) this product is!

 

You think people think rationally all the time?

[NumLock21]

This law should not even exist in the first place, if they would actually filter out the real negative criticism and used that to improve their business. Too bad once they see that, butthurt level skyrockets.

Your product sucks, then it sucks.

Law should be named, the toughen up and improve your business, stop being butthurt act

 

 

[biggiebody]

29 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

I wasn't aware that companies could "punish" people for negative reviews in the first place. I've also never heard of this happening before in the US in my entire life.

 

Unless you signed a contract agreeing to not leave negative feedback then on what basis can a company charge you?

 

This doesn't really make sense to me...

It's happened quite a few times that the business tied to sue a reviewer because they wrote a negative review.  It's been on the news a couple times and as expected the business got trashed by the general public because of it.

[AresKrieger]

9 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

somewhere that's super hard for a customer to access that basically says "I can be an asshole to you and ruin your life if you so much as disagree with me"?

Well yeah I agree with getting rid of agreement traps, we should get rid of eula and such in general as well but generally fine print agreements didn't stand up in court anyway, plus you don't want to piss people off to that degree unless you want to end up dead.

[alexyy]

39 minutes ago, aneil1998 said:

Let's hope that this makes other countries do the same.

They already do.

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

This law should not even exist in the first place, if they would actually filter out the real negative criticism and used that to improve their business. Too bad once they see that, butthurt level skyrockets.

Your product sucks, then it sucks.

Law should be named, the toughen up and improve your business, stop being butthurt act

 

 

To some extent I agree the law shouldn't have to exist. But not for that reason. The reason is because this is the internet. Once you make the news or social media about being an asshole, your business will not survive.

[manikyath]

i cliked on "it's now illegal for..." and i expected bullshit.

 

what i got however is bullshit: HOW WAS THIS EVEN LEGAL IN THE FIRST PLACE?

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

i cliked on "it's now illegal for..." and i expected bullshit.

 

what i got however is bullshit: HOW WAS THIS EVEN LEGAL IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Because we hoped people would be decent?

 

Laws don't magically spring up because someone thought of every use case and every bad practice.

[NumLock21]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

To some extent I agree the law shouldn't have to exist. But not for that reason. The reason is because this is the internet. Once you make the news or social media about being an asshole, your business will not survive.

Simple, just don't setup social media crap.

[AresKrieger]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i cliked on "it's now illegal for..." and i expected bullshit.

 

what i got however is bullshit: HOW WAS THIS EVEN LEGAL IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Terms of a contract can include anything that isn't explicitly illegal, I can think of scenarios where blocking review is legitimate NDA for example however after reviewing this law it would appear it is specific enough (hopefully) to target only malicious hiding of bad service/products

 

However the BBB also helped address some of this prior to a federal law

[kirashi]

Due to freedom of speech, I'm not sure how it was illegal before... As long as a customer is telling a truthful story about the service or products a company is selling, it's not slander, and thus falls under free speech, which I thought was a protected right in the US of A.

 

Obviously, slander or statements about a company you've never had any dealings with are wrong, whether illegal or not, but if you had a bad experience prior to this legal change, I'm not sure how they could justify your opinion as damage to their brand if what you are saying is true.

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Because we hoped people would be decent?

 

Laws don't magically spring up because someone thought of every use case and every bad practice.

the thing is, giving consumers BS fees in general (like for example restaurants randomly also charging a "dishwashing fee" at the end of the evning) is banned here, and i would expect it to be the same over there. there in essence *shouldnt need to be* a law for this, because it should fall under other consumer protection laws anyways.

EDIT: @AresKrieger

[AresKrieger]

Just now, kirashi said:

 

Due to freedom of speech, I'm not sure how it was illegal before... As long as a customer is telling a truthful story about the service or products a company is selling, it's not slander, and thus falls under free speech, which I thought was a protected right in the US of A.

 

You are free to relinquish your freedom of speech in a contract if you choose to do so

[AresKrieger]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

the thing is, giving consumers BS fees in general (like for example restaurants randomly also charging a "dishwashing fee" at the end of the evning) is banned here, and i would expect it to be the same over there. there in essence *shouldnt need to be* a law for this, because it should fall under other consumer protection laws anyways.

EDIT: @AresKrieger

The states handle laws like that usually due to the 10th amendment thus it would vary state to state until federal laws to precedent

Spoiler

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. The Tenth Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to further define the balance of power between the federal government and the states.

 

[kirashi]

12 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

You are free to relinquish your freedom of speech in a contract if you choose to do so

Ah righto - I forgot that somehow business contracts override a Country's laws. /sarcasm off?

 

Last I checked, federal law > provincial / state law > contract you could otherwise agree to, making such a clause invalid.

If that's not the case in the US of A, then I feel terribly sorry for everyone who lives there, and this change is indeed a good one.  

EDIT: Obviously NDA's don't apply here, since that would be leaking company secrets, same as confidential government documents.

[AresKrieger]

6 minutes ago, kirashi said:

snip

You can agree not to disclose information in an NDA, freedom of speech only applies to laws being made ie the government can't do anything but for example twitter can ban your account, it just means you can't be held criminally liable but civil suits don't need any justification and a contract is a contract

[DevilishBooster]

52 minutes ago, dragosudeki said:

The bill sounds like it protects ALL reviews. Its truly up to the reader to determine whether it is credible or not.

Woah woah woah!! You mean I have to be RESPONSIBLE for forming my own opinion on what I choose to believe!? I didn't sign up for that!

[TetraSky]

Wait, this was a thing in the US? Businesses going after consumers for a bad review? Wow.. no shame at all.

[JoseGuya]

1 hour ago, kirashi said:

Due to freedom of speech, I'm not sure how it was illegal before... As long as a customer is telling a truthful story about the service or products a company is selling, it's not slander, and thus falls under free speech, which I thought was a protected right in the US of A.

 

Obviously, slander or statements about a company you've never had any dealings with are wrong, whether illegal or not, but if you had a bad experience prior to this legal change, I'm not sure how they could justify your opinion as damage to their brand if what you are saying is true.

Well, a company is free to charge extra if they want to, for whatever reason, notifying it first of course. 

 

If you leaved a bad review for a product, why bother trying to buy again from the same guy? 

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, JoseGuya said:

Well, a company is free to charge extra if they want to, for whatever reason, notifying it first of course. 

 

If you leaved a bad review for a product, why bother trying to buy again from the same guy? 

They're free to do that, but is it fair or "right" to do so? Like is it fair for AT&T to claim you have unlimited data, even though they throttle your speed after X amount of GB? Technically you can still get all the data you want since they allow you to download the data. It just takes forever.

 

And it's not leaving a bad review and coming back, it's leaving a bad review for others to avoid the thing. Companies see that as hurting their business.

[JoseGuya]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

They're free to do that, but is it fair or "right" to do so? Like is it fair for AT&T to claim you have unlimited data, even though they throttle your speed after X amount of GB? Technically you can still get all the data you want since they allow you to download the data. It just takes forever.

 

And it's not leaving a bad review and coming back, it's leaving a bad review for others to avoid the thing. Companies see that as hurting their business.

No, it is not fair at all. And if AT&T does that, and does not tell you that after a data limit they will throttle your speed, that's lying and you could sue them. 

 

 

I don't see how a company could charge you more if you don't come back to buy from them again. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 minutes ago, JoseGuya said:

I don't see how a company could charge you more if you don't come back to buy from them again. 

Uh, it's not that. It's leaving a negative review.

[Lurick]

2 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Wait, this was a thing in the US? Businesses going after consumers for a bad review? Wow.. no shame at all.

Yah, they would claim defamation and sue for millions claiming it lost them business and then engage in mud slinging at whoever wrote the review. There were a few cases of it happening that I've seen. One was a dental practice, another was a reputation management company (that was funny), and smaller firms here and there.

[Bensemus]

3 hours ago, AresKrieger said:

Oh Yelp is involved that adds a stain to this, but it is referring to contract clauses ok does this damage the power of NDA as a result or is it now a grey area since that could technically be described as "blocking review"

You sign into and NDA though. This new law protects people from retribution for writing negative reviews.