California Tells Businesses: Stop Trying To Ban Consumer Reviews

ericgoldman writes Some businesses are so paranoid about negative consumer reviews that they have contractually banned their customers from writing reviews or imposed fines on consumers who bash them. California has told businesses to stop it. AB 2365--signed by Governor Brown yesterday, and the first law of its kind in the nation--says any contract provisions restricting consumer reviews are void, and simply including an anti-review clause in the contract can trigger penalties of $2,500.

Comments

One Sure Way

[danaris]

There is one sure way to reduce negative reviews: Make sure your product and/or service is good quality.

Nothing can entirely eliminate negative reviews, because sometimes people just get a lemon product, or the person giving them service was having a bad day, or they're just ornery people who can't be satisfied. But if you do your job right, monitor your employees to make sure they're not slacking off or mistreating your customers—and, of course, the best way to do this is to make sure they're satisfied with their jobs in the first place—and don't skimp monetarily on the quality of your product, service, or employees, then you're likely to get more good reviews than bad.

Dan Aris

Re:One Sure Way

[vux984]

because for example a good pair of shoes will last much longer than a bad pair that you'll have to replace much sooner.

Thing is there is no correlation between quality and cost.

I've had $100 runners fall apart within months. I've had $2 runners bought at the chinese night market last 4 years. (I had a belt bought the same night for under a buck fall apart the first time I tried using it. But I have inexpensive belts from inexpensive stores that have been with me since high school and are still just fine.

Like you I'm willing to pay more for better. But as often as not I'm paying more for same.

I can buy a car charger online for $2. I can buy another charger online for $10 and its just as good as the OEM one. I can walk into a local cellular store and buy their 'store brand' charger for $35 and find out its the SAME charger as the $2 one. Or I can pay $50 and get an OEM charger from Samsung or Apple etc and its just as good as the $10 generic online one but with a brand name logo and smarter packaging.

So I have to pay 25 times as much to reliably get a few nickels worth of resisters and slightly higher grade plastic? Because anything less, and I'm risking counterfiet goods or horrifically inferior product... but the difference between quality and junk is less than a $1 worth of actual parts/cost.

Re:hmmmm

[ledow]

I don't care how many 1-star reviews a place get. You know what matters? How they respond to them.

I'd rather go to a place that replies politely to every negative review than one that ignores them entirely. And if they are genuinely fake, things such as "We have no record of your stay, but we're sorry that you had trouble" speak a thousand times more to what's actually happening then any amount of ignorance.

Everywhere gets bad reviews. You cannot have perfection. What matters is how you deal with when you fuck up.

We need more of this

[gman003]

We need more penalties just for trying to include illegal terms in a non-negotiable contract. It's not enough to simply say "well, the courts will toss it out if they try to enforce it" - because that relies on people being able to fight a legal battle that they shouldn't have needed to fight to begin with.

Re:hmmmm

[SydShamino]

What you're saying is, every small business has to do business with Yelp. They're the 1000 lb gorilla in this case, and Yelp itself has earned plenty of bad reviews from businesses forced to deal with them.

Re:hmmmm

[MaskedSlacker]

You don't get to opt-out of being the subject of other people's freedom of speech.

Unless you're Kim Jong Un.