It seems like telling the truth and speaking your mind will get you in trouble wherever you are. At the very least it will get you some interesting e-mails threatening you with lawyers.
That was exactly what happened again, today. I received another e-mail threatening me with lawyers. Maybe I should start a new category of the blog dedicated to being threatened with lawyers? What would a good name for such a category be, anyone?
Well, lets cut to the case. This time there is no direct referral to juridical steps or lawyers, they are simply saying they will take any steps necessary to have me remove the page concerning their company. And I choose to believe that they are talking lawyers and not baseball bats when they say that.
Not long ago it was Nikken who wanted me to remove some pages, this time around its the Norwegian search optimisation company Mosaikk Gruppen. In this case its for calling them spammers in my Norwegian blog, after having received 10 e-mails and been in contact with them a number of times to be remove from their spam list. I even got a written apology and promises that we would never hear from them again from their general manager in November 2003, so I really felt like venting when I received yet another spam from them in April 2004.
Some explanations and an English translation of some of the juicier parts of the threatening weblog comment in the extended entry.
Yeah, I know – spam is a huge problem. Personally I get several hundred every day. So why even bother commenting about this company?
Well, in Norway most companies understand that the way to get business is not by ways of unsolicited e-mails. And in the cases where they don’t understand it, its actually possible to get in contact with most of them. In this particular case I even know the company and the guy that handles their hosting. But getting in contact with the general manager, and talking directly with their hosting company wasn’t enough to have them stop spamming, so I finally had to rant about them in my Norwegian blog.
Here is an excerpt from their threatening weblog comment, translated from Norwegian to English. The original can be found here:
Just a brief intro: The comment is from the sales director of Mosaikk Gruppen (he is also the CEO), and he starts the comment with an apology for their unsolicited e-mailing and promises they will change their systems so it won’t happen again.
He also acknowledges that I have the right to free speech before he goes on to threaten me to remove the blog entry in question.
What I can not accept, and where I will react strongly if nothing is done, is your characteristics of Mosaikk Gruppen as a supplier of services associated with search engine optimisation. You claim that you have deliberately placed your criticism of Mosaikk Gruppen in the search engines, where it now is at number 4 in Google if you search for Mosaikk Gruppen. When you comment about our business based on mailings, and where you in very specific terms recommend potential clients to keep away from Mosaikk Gruppen you find yourself in very unsafe terrain. If nothing is done, and you remove all your characteristics of our services, employees and other products etc. WILL we take the necessary steps to make you remove this page. We take this matter very seriously, and I expect a written reply ASAP.
I might find it in me to comment on every aspect of the comment left from Mosaikk Gruppen and Knut H
There are a couple of comments that I want to make on this issue, seeing as I have experienced similar accusations from companies when I review sites on Flazoom.com. My comments get a high rank on Google, just because the nature of a blog makes it more likely to return a high page rank, and therefore the company ‘ego searches’ always include a reference to my review. If the review is negative, then I’ll probably get a note from someone asking me to take it down. So, my comments:
1. First off, everyone has a right to state their opinion on a company’s services or ways of doing business. Companies need to remember that in today’s connected age, pissing off a customer, especially a customer who can write and has a blog, is a bad way of doing business. A case in point, I used to always review new VW flash sites pretty favorably (they do cool stuff in Flash) but after my three year old Passat needed a new engine and VW took nearly 6 weeks to repair it, I make sure to mention their lack of good service when I blog about VW now. If VW didn’t want this to happen, then they would have made sure that their customer service was not conducted in a way to piss people off. It sounds to me like Mosaikk Gruppen needs to learn the lessons of doing business in today’s connected world. From their actions, it doesn’t sound like they are learning.
2. I find it very funny that a company that provides search engine optimization (SEO) services would make a claim like this. Obviously Mosaikk Gruppen doesn’t know the SEO service very well. If they did then they would know that blogs, especially ones that follow web standards, are highly valued in Google and other search engines. All you have done is shown a commitment to blogging and following good HTML practices.
What Mosaikk Gruppen needs to do is apologize to you, and they should have done that the first time you registered a complaint about their spamming your account. I find it funny that the only time they care about your opinion is when you share it with the world on your blog. Bah humbug on them.
the CEO should go back to school (joke) !
# laughable situation
Don’t ever threaten a blogger!
Weblogger Jarle has provoked a Norwegian company – Mosaikk Gruppen – by writing on his blog that they are sending him spam mail even after he has complaint directly to the company. The CEO of this company answered Jarle -…
I suggest demanding compensation for a: the threatening email and B: them spamming you again! companies normally hide under desks at the word ‘compensation’ hehe ;) Seriously tho dont stand for it! GO THE UNDERDOG!! :D