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Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts

Lawsuit in Victoria against Google over false reviews for artifical plant company

The Age newspaper has this story regarding false reviews of an artificial patents business, that alleged were posted when the business had a dispute with a moving company.

See https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/david-and-georgina-had-a-dispute-with-their-removalists-four-years-later-they-ve-taken-google-to-court-20220707-p5azub.html

Interestingly, they are suing Google.

Similar story to the Titan Sheds dispute that ended up in the Federal Court in Brisbane a few years back.  There are about 3 court decisions.  One involved trying to get evidence from Google, but because Google was offshore, this was difficult.  See Note

Suing Google for online review

A lawyer who is trying to track down the person who posted a bad review of her lost an application against Google, seemingly on the basis that she did not follow court proper procedures.

"However, if such a proceeding is to be brought it must be brought on proper material, on notice to Google, and it must be conducted efficiently and expeditiously. That is not how this proceeding has been conducted. One thing that must be avoided is the provision of a flurry of materials making inchoate arguments shortly before a hearing."

Garde-Wilson v Google LLC [2021] FCA 243

From The Age:  Gangland lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson says she will take a court fight directly to Google after the Federal Court dismissed her bid to force the search engine giant to reveal who was behind negative online reviews.

Ms Garde-Wilson, who rose to prominence representing the who’s who of Melbourne’s gangland war, suspects a rival lawyer is behind a negative Google review left under the name “Mohamed Ahmed”.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/zarah-garde-wilson-loses-bid-to-find-who-was-behind-bad-google-reviews-20210318-p57byd.html


Arrested for giving a bad review

An American who complained on TripAdvisor that a resort hotel in Thailand wanted to charge him a $15 corkage fee for bringing his own bottle of gin to the restaurant was arrested this month and spent a weekend in jail. If convicted of criminal defamation, he faces up to two years in prison. So don't write anything bad about the Sea View Koh Chang resort, which had the charges brought.

After a backlash, the resort had some regrets. “We agree that using a defamation law may be viewed as excessive for this situation,” the hotel acknowledged.

Fake Reviews!

Online odd jobs platform Service Seeking has been fined $600,000 for falsely representing that reviews on its platform were written by customers when in fact they were written by the businesses themselves.



Another ACCC case regarding misleading consumer reviews

The ACCC has launched another case against ServiceSeeking regarding misleading online reviews of tradespeople.  See story here.

This is similar to the Meriton case, discussed in posts below, regarding misleading hotel reviews on TripAdvisor.

Meriton found guilty of manipulating TripAdvisor Reviews

Serviced apartment and hotel operator Meriton was found to have engaged in illegal conduct by manipulating TripAdvisor reviews.  The ACCC sued Meriton and won.  The ACCC brought actions under s18 and the little used s34 of the Australian Consumer Law.

See judgment at:  http://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2017/2017fca1305

According to the judgment, Meriton manipulated TripAdvisor in two ways:

"The respondent (Meriton) conducts a business of offering serviced apartment accommodation at (at least) 13 properties in Queensland and New South Wales. These properties appear on the TripAdvisor website. During the period November 2014 to October 2015 (the relevant period), Meriton participated in the Review Express service offered by TripAdvisor.  On a weekly basis, Meriton provided TripAdvisor with the email addresses of guests who had stayed at its properties and TripAdvisor sent email invitations to these guests to post a review. However, rather than sending TripAdvisor the email addresses of all guests who had stayed at its properties (other than those who had requested that their details not be provided), Meriton adopted the following two practices:
(a)    The first practice was to add the letters MSA” (which stand for Meriton Serviced Apartments) to the front of the email addresses of certain guests. This rendered the email address invalid. This practice was applied to guests who had made a complaint or were otherwise considered likely to have had a negative experience at a Meriton property.  I will refer to this practice as the MSA-masking practice.
(b)    The second practice was to withhold from TripAdvisor the email addresses of all the guests who had stayed at a property during a period of time when there had been major service disruption (such as the lifts not working, no hot water, etc). I will refer to this practice as the bulk withholding practice."

Lawsuit over bad Yelp review

See this story regarding a lawsuit by a builder against his customer who posted a bad review on Yelp.

The article includes the following:

For a while, online reviewers have been free to say whatever they like about businesses without much in the way of fact-checking by the review websites that host their comments.
And because review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Angie’s List often refuse to remove negative reviews without a court injunction, many businesses resort to responding to reviewers personally through the sites.
But others, like Deitz, have decided to cut out the middle man and lawyer up — no doubt because sites like Yelp are exerting increasing influence over consumers' buying decisions, from which plumber to hire to fix a leaky toilet to which spa to patronise to get a massage.
Thanks to their efforts, anonymity as an online reviewer may be a thing of the past.
In a major win for business owners in the US, a Virginia appeals court ruled earlier this month that Yelp must reveal the identities of seven users who wrote negative reviews of a local carpet cleaning business.
In that case, the customers weren't actually patrons of the shop, business owner claimed, which made their reviews false statements rather than opinions protected by the First Amendment. Yelp wasn't happy about the ruling, but they forked over the names anyway.

Hotel Executive In Trouble over TripAdvisor reviews

A hotel PR person posted TripAdvisor reviews (mostly about restaurants) and got it serious trouble for it.  See stories here and here.

Are Online Reviews Reliable?

A recent newspaper article discusses whether online review websites, such as TripAdvisor, are reliable.

See Bad Reputation.

Misleading Online Reviews

A blog entry from the NY Times: Discounting Bad Reviews

"Are reviews of products and services on the Internet believable? Probably not. In the latest case, a merchant offered a rebate in exchange for getting a customer to revise a rating, but it says that is not the way it usually does things."

How should damages be assessed for privacy and cybersecurity breaches

Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits. The Lawyers Weekly Show host J...