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back to article Trading Standards pokes Amazon over 'libellous' review

Trading Standards has this week intervened on behalf of a small business owner to ask Amazon to reconsider its refusal to remove a factually inaccurate review. Steve Smith, director of nuisance call screening company trueCall Care, complained to Amazon regarding a serious claim his device blocks all incoming calls from the …

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    1. Julian Bradfield
      Reply Icon

      Re: The review isn't factually incorrect.

      (a) The review is talking about the *default* configuration

      (b) The review is talking about the Truecall Care model.

      I've checked its manual, and the review is factually incorrect according to the manual.

      4 1 Reply
  2. Roger Gann
    Coat

    Jurisdiction

    With Amazon being registered in Luxembourg I suspect that UK legal remedies might be limited.

    1 5 Reply
    1. tfewster
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Re: Jurisdiction

      Damn, foiled. OK then, if they won't comply with UK trading law, we'll just have to stop them from trading in the UK. *Throws gas on the fire* No loss to UKGOV, as they don't pay taxes anyway.

      Is everyone happy now?

      2 0 Reply
  3. Bob Dole (tm)

    At the end of the day I support Amazon's decision on this.

    If they were supposed to police everything people posted on their site(s) for veracity, then I'd guess the vast majority of reviews (positive and negative) would have to be removed. Many companies have engaged in posting phony positive reviews about their products and phony negative reviews about the competition. Yes, that's a job that you can get.

    Hence the reason why a number of places now have "verified owner" reviews which have a higher impact on the rating than unverified owner reviews. Not to prevent bad mouthing, rather, just to prevent *competitors* from getting in on the game.

    Quite frankly, the upvote/downvote activity on this topic is very interesting. So much so that I'd hazard a guess that various people who work for the company in question are down voting anything that doesn't berate Amazon.

    1 2 Reply
  4. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Own goal for Amazon

    one of Amazons selling points (for me) is the fact that a lot of things they sell have a body of genuine reviews behind them. It's not scientific, but looking at my looked at list and purchases, I'd wager that I've bought more because of good reviews than not bought because of bad reviews.

    (Bearing in mind that sometimes it's not a "bad" review, just one which highlights a products particular suitability for a specific job. I may still buy *another* product from Amazon.)

    If the words starts getting out that Amazon reviews are (or can be) stacked, then they will lose one of their key selling points for me - and my wife.

    Be curious to see how Amazon proceed here. Up until now, they have hardly put a foot wrong (in my opinion) since 1997 when I started using them.

    0 1 Reply

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