The letter wants me to remove a comment by a user calling himself Timmythedog on my post about issues I had with car rental company Easycar.
The comment says:
You need to pick and choose – we’ve never had a problem with Easy Car but be aware of Argus Car hire and their supplier National Car Hire. Despite them promising that they ’search the net for the cheapest prices so you don’t have to’ we had an appaling experience with them and National Car Hire at Carcassonne Airport at Christmas 06/07 and they are not recommended!
In summary they downgraded our car without notice from a c class (Focus/Astra) to a Citroen C1 – as four adults with cases and bags we couldn’t fit in the car – it was Dec. 27 and we had no travel alternatives. We had to duplicate trips to get eveyone to our destination with significant inconvenience and cost. We were cautioned by the police for overloading the car on the one occasion that we squeezed everyone in. Our holiday was ruined as we couldn’t really use the car and since then they have refused to refund us the cost of the car (which also had no rear wiper – when we went back to the office to point this out it was closed).
They couldn’t care less, do not man their phones as stated 364 days a year (we couldn’t get them in head office on Dec 27 to see what we could do) and Hertz was cheaper at their own admission. We have tried to speak to Greg Turley – Argus MD but he refuses to return our calls. In conclusion Argus and National overbook, you run the risk of a ruined holiday and neither could care less. Do not use them – they are appalling.
This seems like fair comment to me by someone expressing their opinion after having had a poor customer experience. Etrawler haven’t yet realised, it seems, that people can have negative opinions about your products and services – and worse – they tell others! We can’t have that now, can we?
Etrawler ltd could learn a lot from Easycar – they didn’t issue a takedown notice on my post. Instead their rep Jean Marie came back to my post time and again to tirelessly answer comments by other people who had problems with Easycar’s service. As a consequence my opinion of Easycar (and I suspect many who read Jean Marie’s responses) was completely turned around.
If the Internet has taught us anything it is that companies need to put the consumer in the center of their thinking. Not their brand.
I wonder if I’ll receive a takedown notice for this post now as well.
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The fact they’ve sent you a Word file with all the spelling and grammar markings left in rather than, say, rendering it to a PDF might be a clue as to their incompetence.
Yet another business that will learn the hard way thatt the Streisand Effect works at hyperspeed in a world of hyperlinks, Google and blogs. D’oh!
Well, they are certainly showing a complete lack of understanding regarding not only the internet but public forums in general.
The next time that I’m at my favorite restaurant, I may say to Sarah, “I can’t recommend the stuffed chicken, it’s not their best dish.” I suppose that if this firm represents said restaurant too, I may be threatened with legal action and/or forced to make a public statement retracting my comments.
Unbelievable.
Is there any chance you could post “the provisions of Directive 2000/31/EC”? I’d love to see how far they’re stretching that.
Hey James, this seems to be the relevant legislation on the Irish statute books – good luck figuring it out!
That’s true and I am absolutely agree that in modern economy the main thing is a consumer, because just a person has a wallet with money and he decides, where to spend these paper or electronic money!
Every time a fat cat thinks he can scare someone away… he fails and makes a disgrace of himself
An important facet of this boilerplate letter is the spine of your blog’s host. Some hosts roll over with legalese threats.
Fortunately, I am in the somewhat unique situation that I host my blog on my own server in my own data center! As such, I can be reasonably confident that my host is unlikely to bow to this empty legal huffing and puffing!
The extent to which Messers Cease & Desist will be successful might depend on the physical location of the server that hosts your posts. Given your physical location, the location of the blog, the location of the poster, and the location of the service being complained about, figuring out where such a case would be adjudicated could be complex.
BTW NewsU.org has a great little online course on this kind of thing