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Woman fined $3500 for bad review by online retailer?
This story is unbelievable. If this is allowed to stand then the takeover of corporations and businesses over the individual will be complete. This woman fined for posting a justifiable bad review?
The Palmer family made various attempts to contact the company and was unable to do so. Jen Palmer took the correct action to make others aware of her experience with the company. After all, companies must earn the trust of consumers lest consumers remain at a disadvantage in the transaction. Jen Palmer posted the review at Ripoff Review.
KUTV reports that,
For Christmas several years ago, Jen Palmer’s husband ordered her a number of trinkets from the website Kleargear.com. But for 30 days, Kleargear.com never sent the products so the transaction was automatically cancelled by Paypal, Jen said. …
“There is absolutely no way to get in touch with a physical human being,” it says. And it accuses Kleargear.com of having “horrible customer service practices.”
That was the end of it, Jen thought, until three years later when Jen’s husband got an email from Kleargear.com demanding the post be removed or they would be fined. Kleargear.com says Jen violated a non-disparagement clause. It turns out that, hidden within the terms of sale on Kleargear.com there is a clause that reads:
“In an effort to ensure fair and honest public feedback, and to prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts Kleargear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.”
The clause goes on to say if a consumer violates the contract they will have 72 hours to remove your post or face a $3500 fine. If that fine is not paid, the delinquency will be reported to the nation’s credit bureaus.
The company reported the fine to the credit bureaus as unpaid which has affected their credit. They intend to fight it.
This is a story we must monitor. A woman fined for a justifiable posting of a bad review must not stand. The constant encroachment of the rights of corporations over the individual must not stand.
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I would assume that contract void,in any event, not performed by the company and no consideration (money) was paid.
If the company never sent the products, does it even qualify as a sale under the terms?
Uhh . . . something here I do not understand. “Fines” are monetary punishments, usually levied by *governmental entity* of some kind after a *legal* proceeding. Sionce when does a private company have the right to levie fines? Particularly since they totally failed to hold up thier end of the contract, and then took three years to make a stink about it? Seems to me that a lawyer for the Palmers would find this case extremely interesting.
I’m wondering how the company had access to put things in the Palmers’ credit reports in the first place. Normally you’d think that kind of power would be limited to companies that extend some form of credit to people – social security numbers get submitted, etc. Since the transaction-that-never-happened was supposed to be paid through PayPal, how the heck did this happen?
Kleargear’s website is on Yahoo Stores. Why is it still hosted there?
$ host http://www.kleargear.com
http://www.kleargear.com is an alias for stores.yahoo.net.
stores.yahoo.net is an alias for html.store.yahoodns.net.
html.store.yahoodns.net has address 66.218.72.112
Perhaps someone might like to try and get a response from Yahoo?