A
Utah couple is sent an email from the company Kleargear.com concerning a
negative report the wife posted on riffoffreport.com. This report was posted three years previous
to the email. Kleargear told the Palmers
they must pay $3,500 to them if this poor review was not taken down within 72
hours. The negative report was posted
when the Palmers ordered some products off Kleargear.com and never received them. The transaction was canceled and they were
refunded the money, but they still wanted to figure out what went wrong. The Palmers called every number on the
website and tried multiple times to contact the company but were unsuccessful.
What
does this mean that they are not allowed to post negative things about the
company? Evidently when they made the
report on riffoffreport.com they were violating the terms and conditions of the
company. In the fine print it said that
anyone who says anything negative about the company on any website would have
to pay a $3,500 fine. This is called a
non-disparagement clause. The Palmers
were not legally not required to pay this even though they could not get the
report off of the website because of errors in the system.
After
reading this you might think that Kleargear was violating the Palmers' right to
free speech. Sadly it is not, and many
online companies are adding non-disparagement clauses to their fine print. This is completely different than what most
companies are known for doing, protecting first the customer, instead of
attacking them. By agreeing to the terms
and conditions you may be signing away your right to free speech without even
knowing it. In this situation the case
would have never made it in court because it was extremely unfair and not made in
good faith. These are both parts of the
ARTFORME points of social media to consider.
The company was not open either, or willing to cooperate or communicate
with the customer. Although it would not
hold up in court, it did do damage enough to their credit score to make it hard
for them to get a loan on a second vehicle.
The
thing that is so bizarre to me about this whole situation is that the complaint
had been online for three whole years before the email was sent. Honestly another 72 hours is going to make
that much of an impact on the company? There
is no other logical explanation for the email, than a scam to take people’s
money. I believe this company probably operates
this way to scam people out of their money, never really delivering a product
or service, just canceling orders and aggravating customers until they
complain. This company was especially
shady when CNN could not even get in contact with them. This is very comical to me due to the fact
that the company’s name is Kleargear, because it was about as clear as mud with
its intentions and communication.
Now
how do you protect yourself from what happened to the Palmers? First you could make sure to do a little
research on the companies you are purchasing from. Next you might check how sketchy they are
when you look at them. Lastly you can
read the fine print in the terms and conditions. No one has time for this, and if you do you
probably need to get a job or hobby. I
believe the best way to protect yourself is to only buy from companies that
have a reputation for being fair and good to their customers.
The
situation the Palmers' were in honestly sickens me. It was completely undeserved and unethical in
my opinion. It also makes me very leery
of online purchasing because of how close to home this family is. They are located in our own State. From the video they seemed just like your
average family down the street, not doing anything to controversial to deserve
this. This goes to show that you can’t
trust everyone on the internet.
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