When You Leave a Bad Review and They Threaten to Sue

Yeah, that’s not a good look. Stifling free speech? GAG clauses? This is not what you expect to see when you pull up Yelp, but it’s what happens when the system is working.

SO.

How Did We Get Here?

Let me introduce you to Liberty Bell Moving and Storage, Inc. which operates through around ten locations in Maine and New Hampshire. This company is owned by Kevin Finkenaur, and boy that’s a cool name. I wonder what we’ll see if we do a quick Google of him.

What a dude.

So, now knowing THAT, knowing that he’s kind of a sore loser type who attacks those who disagree with him, it shouldn’t come as much of surprise that Liberty Bell Moving’s contracts - the things people sign in order to do business with them - often prohibited negative reviews and warned that reviewers could incur a “$1000 defamation management fee” if they refused to remove a negative review within three days.

Now I’ll pose a question. But first, a little set up. So few people write reviews. It takes time and effort and generally doesn’t do YOU any good. But sometimes a product or service is so bad that you NEED to leave that review, you NEED the catharsis. Let’s say you moved houses, had a bad time of time, and left that harsh review, the first review you’ve written in years.

NOW, I ask- if, with you in that state of mind, the company at fault reached out and reminded you how you signed a little piece of paper to NOT post a negative review, so could you please remove it? WOULD YOU DO A DAMN THING?! Of course not!!

Where does that leave the company?

Calling someone a bad customer. Name calling (man, that sounds familiar). Saying FAKE NEWS! (I SWEAR I’ve heard that somewhere before). And I don’t even want to unpack how or why the Black Santa emoji is somehow in the same category as LaughCry, Clown, and Shit.

Oh, and I have to add, that tacked on the end of each of those Owner Responses were little commercial pitches, declaring Liberty Bell the best mover in Maine, talking about how they are the best piano movers too, so on and so forth (you do see a bit of that on that last one there).

But you weren’t convinced he’s a bad dude, right? You need more?

You know you’ve gotten under someone’s skin when they go digging into YOUR life to try and pick on whatever they can. And again, more juvenile name calling.

But the big point here is Anthony’s update, referring to Kevin trying to get him to remove the review. Well. Apparently things went farther than that.

APPARENTLY Liberty Bell created an email address in order to send messages that looked like they were coming from an attorney.

Let’s let FOX BUSINESS tell us the details here:

The email address was used to deliver threats about lawsuits seeking "$2,500 per day the review(s) are left up" and reimbursement for "lawyer fees upwards of $9,500" and warned the company "WILL NOT remove the lawsuit even if the reviews are taken down" after a deadline. 

The company also warned of a "defamation fee" totaling $1,000 that would be assessed if the negative reviews are left up that would be subject to a 2.5% interest rate compounded daily – which "will essentially double the amount" to $2,000 after 30 days.

Obviously, the people were not intimidated.

They went back to Google, Yelp, and I assume an authority such that it rose to the level of the Maine Attorney General, and they made a stink about this guy and his business practices.

As you saw from the lead image, Yelp has a banner for this sort of thing (read here about other Yelp content warnings), and Liberty Bell has settled the case with the AG.

Per Entrepreneur.com (they are experts, I am not):

Liberty and its owner, Kevin Finkenaur, was ordered to pay $125,000, though, according to local outlet WMTW, Finkenaur "denies any wrongdoing."

The threats made by Finkenaur and his company were in direct violation of the Federal Consumer Review Fairness Act, Maine's Unfair Trade Practices Act, and other regulatory moving service laws on the federal level, the Attorney General's Office said.

"It is ironic that a company named for an iconic symbol of freedom would concern itself with violating the free speech and other legally entitled rights of consumers," said Maine's Attorney General, Aaron M. Frey, in a release. "I hope this case will remind consumers that no business can require you to waive your right to leave honest reviews of businesses and products."

I am an expert at bolding, though. So you’re welcome, you skim-readers.

So. All’s well that ends well? I don’t know that the story is truly over. I doubt lessons have been learned. But the law still won out. Consumers were protected. And yes, that is good.