One Mistake: The Fall of Mediabridge

Some product listings on Amazon can receive tens of thousands of reviews, more than any consumer could ever reasonably hope to read when deciding to purchase a product. The company compensates for this reality by allowing customers to rate reviews as “helpful” or “unhelpful,” and the reviews ranked most helpful percolate to the top of the list, many appearing on the product’s main listing page.

A key factor in Mediabridge’s decision to pursue action against TD was that his review quickly garnered many “helpful” votes, and appeared for many months on the router’s main Amazon page. Mr. Smith claims that Mediabridge saw a nearly 30 percent decline in sales once TD’s review hit the main page, a significant drop likely based on information which the company viewed as completely false.

Honey or Vinegar?

It’s a safe bet that TD’s statements, particularly those alleging the existence of paid reviews, were injurious to Mediabridge, and a case could arguably be made that the statements were not true. But was the company’s response justified?

The letters sent to TD, one demanding a conditioned settlement to avoid litigation and the other instructing him to preserve documents in the event of said litigation, were harsh to say the least. They’ve since been taken down but here are some excerpts to demonstrate their tone:

Your false and defamatory statements have resulted in substantial and damaging confusion for Mediabridge/Medialink and its customers. You have harmed Mediabridge and we intend to hold you liable for all damages sustained.

These false accusations were made with intentional disregard for the truth or in reckless disregard of the truth. Make no mistake these libelous statements you made in a public forum are false and you cannot support them with any proof. Indeed, as such, these statements are bold-faced lies that can only be viewed as an illegal attempt to improperly and intentionally interfere with Mediabridge’s business, disparage the excellent reputation of Mediabridge in the industry, and/or gain for someone else an unfair and illegal competitive advantage; or to gain notoriety for yourself, at Mediabridge’s expense.

Be advised that Mediabridge zealously guards its hard earned reputation and is going to seek a court award of consequential, compensatory, and punitive damages against you. We will also seek recovery and reimbursement of Mediabridge’s attorneys’ fees and costs.

The only way “to avoid this coming litigation,” the letter informs, is for TD to agree to remove his review from Amazon, agree to never purchase another Mediabridge product, and agree to never publicly comment online about the company again.

We asked Mr. Smith about the letter’s tone, and if he had vetted it before it was sent to TD. While Mr. Smith agrees with the general point of the letter, to get TD to remove his allegedly libelous Amazon review, he admits that he didn’t see the exact text before it was sent, and that he would not have personally used such harsh language. Mr. Smith also stresses that, while his company was within its rights to do so, it was not a foregone conclusion that a lawsuit against TD would have proceeded had TD resisted the letter’s demands.

“We’ve been in business for over six years, and have tens of thousands of customers who have left reviews. We’ve never sued or wanted to sue anyone,” Mr. Smith told TekRevue. “But [TD] didn’t give his opinion, he made statements as if they were facts, and those statements were absolutely untrue.”

Consequences

By the end of last week, Mediabridge was already reeling from the social media backlash. But things were about to get much, much worse. On Thursday, the company made an official statement on its Facebook page (now removed as the page has been taken down), revealing that Amazon had revoked the company’s right to sell products through the online retail giant. Although Mediabridge now sells products directly via its own website, the move was especially devastating as Amazon was the company’s primary sales channel.

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In a terse message, Amazon informed Mediabridge that it could no longer sell its products via the website due to a violation of the company’s “Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions” policy, which explicitly states: “You may not ask buyers to remove negative reviews.”

At first glance, it seems clear that Mediabridge violated this policy. After all, the letter from the company’s attorney directed TD to “completely remove your ‘Product Review’ from Amazon.com as well as from any and all other sites on which you posted anything about Mediabridge WITHIN THREE (3) DAYS OF YOUR RECEIPT OF THIS LETTER” (emphasis in original).

But Mr. Smith argues that Amazon’s policies only cover actual reviews, and that TD’s statements about the company do not constitute a “review” at all: “A review should be someone’s opinion, what they liked about the product, what they didn’t, and so on,” Mr. Smith explained. “[TD]’s ‘review’ contains none of that, just attacks against our company and its credibility, attacks with nothing to support them.”

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