Complaint Response Failure: Suing Your Customer
September 3, 2009 by Becky Scott
Filed under Marketing
Speaking of responding to Twitter complaints, I was reading a story from late summer about a Chicago woman who is being sued for defamation because of her — you guessed it — Twitter complaint.
Amanda Bonnen’s tweet said that her apartment management company thinks it’s okay to sleep in a moldy apartment (paraphrased). And Horizon Group Management filed a defamation lawsuit citing damage to the company’s business reputation.
Although Bonnen’s account was later deleted, the Chicago Bar-tender blog reported that she only had 20 followers. And since the tweet was an @ reply, only people following both Bonnen and the person she tweeted to would have seen it.
And now, thousands have seen the tweet.
In the court of public opinion, it appears that Horizon just may be losing. So did the tweet really damage their reputation? Or are they doing more damage by responding the way they did?
My immediate reaction when I read about the lawsuit was that a big company appears to be bullying an individual. What average person can afford to defend themselves against a $50,000 lawsuit? But since I haven’t read all of the court documents, I can’t say all of the details for certain yet — only what my initial thoughts were.
This seems like an extreme reaction for a company. So many other companies (Zappos, Comcast, Dell) are jumping in to help resolve customer issues when they see a tweeted complaint. One would think that’s a lot less expensive and better PR than jumping into a lawsuit.
Is a tweeted complaint protected free speech? Is it really defamation? What about other complaints on blogs or sites like Yelp and Facebook and Amazon? Will companies start trolling them for questionable items? Will it make consumers afraid to offer their opinions?
I really hope that if your business encounters a similar situation, that you will think about positive ways to respond and resolve the problem. It’s an opportunity to satisfy a customer, gain new ones, and see some positive word of mouth. You may just gain a lifetime customer.
