You’ve been flamed on the internet by a customer or employee ….. now what?

As a business owner, at some point you’ve no doubt been the subject of an unfair negative review.

These reviews can range from the absurd – “1/5 Stars: I wanted spaghetti, but they refused to serve me because ‘this is a frozen yogurt stand.’ – to the abusive – “0/5 Stars: These [four-letter words] hire [protected class] because they’re [more four-letter words] that hate America!! BYCOTT IMEDETLY” [sic] – to a current or former employee providing a review on a consumer site of a manager or even an internal process.

Regardless of what particular flavor any given unhinged review comes in, they all have one thing in common: you want them to come down, both for the sake of your business, and for public decency. Unfortunately, getting even obviously libelous (or even overtly threatening) reviews pulled offline is harder than you might think. 

Because this issue is so depressingly common, we’ve learned a few methods that have a higher success rate than others. That said, we don’t want to sugarcoat this: there’s a good chance that a lot of these reviews are going to stay up. For instance, our hypothetical spaghetti-lover’s complaint from the beginning of this article is almost certainly going to stay up. But thankfully, the bigoted screed from our second example is almost certainly going to come down, provided you approach things in a systematic methodical way.

Here's what it boils down to: there is exactly one basis upon which any of these websites – Google, Apple, Yelp, Facebook, etc. (collectively the “Internet” for convenience) – will take action and remove a review: a specific violation of their individual Terms of Service (“TOS”).

“But this review is untrue, and I can prove it!” Sorry to be the bearer of bad news – and please don’t shoot the messenger – but this just doesn’t matter to the Internet. This isn’t us siding with the reviewer, or condoning the Internet’s policy, but we need to underline this point: the Internet does not care (rather like Melani and the viral We Do Not Care Club movement) whether any given review is true or false.

These are multi-billion dollar companies that operate exclusively for profit. By in large, they do not care about ethics, let alone your individual grievances. After all, what are you going to do, not use their services? At this point, that would be like trying to boycott the public power grid, water lines, or highways; you need them infinitely more than they need you. An appeal to conscience will get you nowhere on the Internet, so don’t bother.

Worse than that, you’re only going to get one chance to get any given review pulled, and if you open with “this is a lie!”, the overworked technician responding to your complaint – who can only afford to spend approximately 30 seconds on your issue – is going to stop reading then and there, and send you a form letter irrevocably marking your complaint number as “resolved.”

“But this person was never even a customer, and I can prove it!” or “We’ve never had an employee named Napoleon Bonaparte”.  We believe you but see above.

“Not only was this person never even a customer, but they’re also actually a competitor of mine trying to steal my business by slandering my company!” Well, if you really can prove this, what you have here is a cause of action for libel, but unfortunately not usually a basis for “the Internet” to remove the review.

Here’s what we’ve learned through hours’ worth of email correspondence – and, on one occasion, hours on the actual telephone (what is this, 1996?): unless the review itself proves that the review violates the individual website’s TOS, the internet provider/website not going to take any action. As frustrating as it is, the reality is that the Internet has neither the time nor the inclination to try to determine who is telling the truth regarding any given dispute.

This is where a legal background helps, because this concept is trickier to grasp than you might think. Attorneys spend months of our first year in law school learning concepts like “prima facie,” “res ipsa loquitur,” and “pleading objections are limited to the four corners of the complaint.” Without this foundation, it’s very easy to get stuck on “but we can prove this is false.”

Let’s use our first hypothetical review as an example. The company might say “We are literally a frozen yogurt stand. Just look at all these photos! Here’s a copy of our menu! This review is objectively ridiculous!” But none of that matters, because the Internet will not look beyond the review itself for a TOS violation. Much like a Complaint is a lawsuit, your arguments are limited to the “four corners” of the review. And unless there is a prima facie TOS violation within the review itself, you are out of luck; the review is staying up.

From here, you have three options: (1) let it go, and trust your customer base to see how absurd the review is; (2) post a thoughtful response, e.g. “We’re so sorry that our frozen yogurt stand does not currently stock Italian cuisine! Perhaps you might enjoy our “Cherry Delight” flavor option, which we’ve been told shares a color palette with marina sauce?”; or (3) sue for libel. 

Sorry for one last brief detour, but we can’t let no. 3 above pass without begging you to take a step back from that proverbial ledge. While there are cases where a defamation suit is the only reasonable option, we can promise you that it’s almost never the right response to a negative review. Firstly, what happens when they post your cease-and-desist letter and/or lawsuit to your review page and their personal page(s) and declare – with proof! – that you are the sort of business that threatens litigation for customers as a result of negative reviews. Suddenly your 1,000+ 5-star reviews mean nothing at all to discerning customers. You’re shooting yourself in the foot here.

Secondly, proving damages for defamation is even harder than it sounds. Unless you have a letter from a customer saying, “I was just about to spend $500 at your business, but then I saw this review and decided against it,” the court won’t be willing to assume that a given review cost you business, no matter how egregious it was. And even if you do have a letter like we just described, are you prepared to spend 6 – 12+ months in litigation to recover that $500? We promise that your sense of injustice will burn out after you receive a discovery request accounting for all of your profit margins for the last 3 years. In all our years, we’ve seen one negative review campaign that justified a defamation claim. The other 99% of the time, it is just not worth it.

So, what can you do? Well, let’s take another look at our second hypothetical review. After all this doom and gloom, we’re happy to finally give you some good news: this review is absolutely coming down. The difference is that the notion of “true and false” is irrelevant here; this review uses profanity (and likely hate-speech), which is expressly forbidden by any reputable website’s TOS. We don’t need to get into just how abhorrent the poster’s views are, or the fact that you were closed the day they alleged they came in, or anything else. We’ll cite the specific TOS violation at issue – “Per Section V(B)(ii)(k), this review violates your terms of service by using profanity and hate-speech…” – and the review will quietly disappear. 

The tricky part is identifying the exact TOS violation at issue – the Internet is not going to look it up for you – citing it correctly and directing your complaint to the right department. Luckily, we’ve jumped through most if not all of these hoops before, so if you’d like us to save you some time, we’re standing by with a collection of annotated TOSs.  Reach out if you’d like to know more.