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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.
I own a tiny one person business. In order for me to reply to comments on Yelp! I have to pay them a monthly fee. Last time I looked one patient gave me a glowing review. Before that I was "invisible." After that I got 30 calls from people working for Yelp! trying to get to to 'join.'
Meanwhile, other business review websites have popped up, giving me 4/5 stars. Basically, they quote the Yelp! review, but knock it down one star. For low number of reviews? For?
For me fortunately it probably makes no difference. But at the same time if I'm looking for a plumber it is so easy to go with the guy with good reviews.
My dad pretty much does this. He says sometimes there are customers not worth having. They bitch and moan, saying everything is wrong even though the product is 100% fine. He would not have been in business 40 years if it wasn't, with almost all of his customers being repeat clients. These people just trying to get a massive discount on a product . So my dad just tells them to go to his competitor because he no longer wants their business.
It's like the people in a restaurant who eat 80% of their food then say they don't like it and ask for refund.
I worked at a small independent grocery store where sometimes we had loss leaders. Well there was this one lady who owned a local restaurant and would come in and load up her cart full of the sale item. We told her she couldn't do that and was meant for families. So we started putting limit signs. She would then start sending in her kids to get more. After so much hassle and constantly running out of product annoying others customers, the owner banned her and her family from the store
Agreed. I always go straight to the bad reviews. Usually the 2-3 star are the most useful. 1 star is often posted by people that will never be happy and is usually a rant about something insignificant, unless there are lots of them. Even a company with 99% ratings, I'll look at those 2-3 stars to see how they handle things when they DO have problems,
That's the real lesson companies need to learn. Bad reviews are a great chance for good PR. It's ok to screw up. Last time I logged a complaint at Amazon, I almost felt bad about having said anything. THAT is why they're dominating the market. I have paid extra to buy things through them rather than direct from a dealer because the Amazon backing had that much value to me. I didn't know if the dealer would back the product, but I *KNEW* Amazon would.
Does this mean that DeWitt clauses (http://sqlmag.com/sql-server/devils-dewitt-clause) prohibiting publication of benchmark results are now invalid by statute in California? I'm sure that would be he very definition of 'unintended consequence', but I'd love for it to be true.