DISQUS

Trish · 1 year ago

This happened to a friend of mine as well, and it started to hurt her business, simply because someone was mad at her about something, so they purposely published false allegations under a false name. My friend found out and had to write a rebuttal, but it's still hurting her.

<abbr>Trish´s last blog post..The Magic of Macy's at Christmas</abbr>

Danny · 1 year ago

I'm sorry to hear about your friend's experience, Trish. Unfortunately, this seems to be a growing problem with the ease in which information can be shared so quickly online.

The only thing that can be done is counter-claiming and cleaning up the mess, it would seem. Meeting it head-on as opposed to hiding away, although it can be easier said than done.

Thanks for reading and sharing your friend's experience, and hopefully she'll be viewed more positively sooner rather than later.

trisha@momdot · 1 year ago

(im a trisha too).

Trisha above is talking about me. Someone did that because they were mad at a BLOG i wrote, so they attacked my business, having never even purchased. Even said i fraudulently charged a credit card. I think ROR is shameful and is a scam. They make you pay them so they can "close" it and have been investigated for even making up material to add.

Im just a mom that makes a few products from home, and i have never had a complaint. My business pays my car payment and my daughters schooling and it has really hurt me.

Emotionally, it has been worse that people can use the internet to attack with zero repercussions, but to be honest, i have not ruled out a civil lawsuit. It wont cost me that much to file and is easily provable. And i can show it was false and caused me monetary damages.

I am just trying to decide if i should civilly sue or consult an attorney.

The thing is, once someone realizes that you talk about it and you face it, they do it again and again and again as punishment. Its pathetic, shameful, and embarrassing for those people.

I am sorry about your friend.

<abbr>trisha@momdot´s last blog post..Blog Party!!!!!!!!</abbr>

Danny · 1 year ago

Hi Trisha.

I'm really sorry to hear about your experience. Sites like the Rip Off Report really annoy me - how can they possibly allow information to go online without checking the facts? To me, that's just exacerbating the problem, particularly as they have such a wide readership. It basically means open season for spiteful individuals to try and damage the reputation of otherwise innocent people as you've sadly found out.

Taking legal action seems to be the only recourse (along with "damage reparation" via online methods) but as you say, the damage has been done, emotionally and professionally.

There are various online regulatory bodies that should be able to do something, which I will be looking into for a future post. I know that doesn't help you now, and I can only wish you all the best at tackling this individual in the way that's best for you.

Thanks for sharing your story - it seems there's a lot of this going on.

Best,

Danny.

Barb Chamberlain · 1 year ago

I'd never heard of the ROR. I'm wondering if there's a counter-strategy if you become a member of the Better Business Bureau and work diligently with them so you can point to that as an objective evaluation of your business practices.

A tool I use to monitor online mentions is Social Media Firehose, which you can set to come into your Google Reader: http://pipes.yahoo.com/update_maker/social_medi...

I'm using it both for my employer and several key terms related to us, and for myself. Among other things, it's helped me catch a few @ replies on Twitter that I might have missed. (As an aside that I should send to Twitter, why does Twitter show you the number of DMs you've had, but not the @ replies? That's why I wasn't clicking on that box in their interface--assumed that nothing on the home pg meant nothing behind that nav option.)

@BarbChamberlain

Danny · 1 year ago

While working with the BBB is certainly advisable for any business to protect its name, unfortunately I doubt whether it would hold as much stead where the RoR is concerned. After all, this is a website where the owner happily boasts about printing anything and it's up to the accused to change it (at a cost). Never has a website been so aptly named...

I hadn't heard of that tool - I will definitely check it out as it seems as if it could offer an invaluable source of information.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your info, Barb, always good to see you here. :)

witchypoo · 1 year ago

In my business, my reputation is everything. Most of it is word of mouth. Word of keyboard is terribly destructive to this.

<abbr>witchypoo´s last blog post..Mining the Search Strings</abbr>

Danny · 1 year ago

That's an excellent description, witchypoo - "word of keyboard". That's the problem with the ease a comment can be posted and the scale that it can reach. Old-style word of mouth may have been limited to your local area - online negative news traverses the world. Scary times...

Mitch · 1 year ago

It's too bad that these people who want to say things like this always hide who they are. That's the one bad thing about the internet; it breeds a lot of punks. But I've heard of other sites like this one. Maybe they need the tables turned on them by a community of bloggers that write about the site and the negatives of it. Maybe find a way to get 100 people to write about it all at once, and find a post (does it do posts) within its site to link to, as we would with a blog. I don't know; I just hate bullies and people who hide behind the first amendment on things like this.

<abbr>Mitch´s last blog post..I Want More RSS Subscribers</abbr>

Danny · 1 year ago

I agree, Mitch, and that's the main problem - the ones that generally do all the damage are the ones that hide the most. Surely if the claim was valid, then there wouldn't be any need to hide?

That's actually not a bad idea that you have there - sometimes it takes that kind of "free PR" that no-one really wants to get a point across. Certainly food for thought...

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your views, appreciate it and hope to see you around here again.

Deborah Richmond · 6 months ago

Great information. I need to find out more about how to investigate on a corporate level. Can you suggest any good sites for that type of information?

Danny Brown · 6 months ago

Hi there Deborah,

There are some great sites/tools to check out - some are free, like the ones mentioned here, and some are premium-based. I did a follow-up post recently with some of the best options. You can find that here:

http://dannybrown.me/2009/06/16/how-long-do-you...

Hope that helps!