Amazon banned Mediabridge Products from selling on its site after it threatened to sue a customer reviewer
Amazon taught one of its sellers a valuable lesson today, and in fact, any company who receives negative reviews and reacts badly.
The online retailer revoked Mediabridge Products’ Amazon seller account after it threatened to sue a customer who negatively reviewed one of its routers.
According to The Verge and Ars Technica, Mediabridge claimed the customer set out on an “illegal campaign to damage, discredit, defame and libel Mediabridge.”
The company’s lawyer then sent a letter threatening to sue the individual who goes by the name of ‘Trevely’.
An official statement from Mediabridge read: “It’s our sincere belief that reasonable people understand that not only is it within our rights to take steps to protect our integrity, but that it should be expected that we would do so when it is recklessly attacked.
“The reviewer has since changed his review completely to remove the libelous statements, but unfortunately not before having an army attack us on the internet.”
The statement then went on to say it did not think Amazon dealt with the situation in a positive way. “Many hard-working employees whose livelihood depended on that business will likely be put out of a job, by a situation that has been distorted and blown out of proportion,” it said.
Just to add fuel to the fire, the reviewer in question then decided to share his experience on Reddit. And that, of course, attracted a lot of attention from around the globe.
One Amazon employee expressed in the comments on the Reddit post that, “We learn this on day one at Amazon: customers come first. Customers are the reason we are here and they are who we work for.”
Looks like Amazon wanted to keep its reputation alive in this example.
If you were hoping to see the review or the letter the customer posted to Reddit, you’re unfortunately out of luck because both have been removed.
The one lesson we can take from this is that wherever negative reviews rear their head, whether on specific review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Zagat or even Amazon, it’s important to address them calmly and take the opportunity to reply to the customer in a positive way. After all, those negative reviewers could, one day, be a customer once again.
SweetiQ’s review monitoring tool allows you to monitor both positive and negative reviews of your company and products on the internet, making it much easier to manage your reputation in an effective way.