Sued over bad review??

If this is accurate, your story, this makes me boil. They hacked up your truck, then threaten to sue you? Fuck them, send them a nasty letter from your lawyer to scare em a bit.

 

If it cost $150 to fix it must not have been that bad. Also, I try to leave opinion out of my reviews.

 

This is the very reason that I try real hard Not to let anyone work on my vehicles without being absolutely necessary.

 

I guess you should stay off yelp.

 

Sure you can post a bad review and sure, they can sue you. For them to win the suit they have prove your allegations are false and they received damages as a result. If I read correctly, you are out $130. What is the time and aggravation worth to you?

I wanted my wife to write a 5 Star review of the service department for the dealer where we bought our car. Every month when we bring the car back for another problem they are very nice and sympathetic. The fact the car is a lemon and the dealership should have bought it back is irrelevant to the wonderful review of the poor mechanics that have to keep repairing this piece of shit car over and over and over. Service manager felt so bad they even worked a deal to do repairs at a discounted rate and cover some of the cost on parts.

I could easily write a truthful 5 star review that highly compliments the service department while back handedly trashing the dealership overall.

 

this is why Rich folks seldom go to jail they can afford to pay for the best defense money can buy, where the middle class gets the hard jail time

 

This is probably a bluff. They likely won't sue. They basically have to establish that what you wrote is untrue (i.e. false) and that you made a statement that was untrue without sufficient research into its factuality.

These are very high standards.

That said, I would take a very careful look at the language in the liability form that you signed.

Edit: Although this example is mainly about celebrities/public figures, for whom an even higher standard applies in defamation suits, U.S. law generally makes defamation actions so difficult that most, for instance, British tabloids and gossip sites are legally based here in the U.S. So the fundamentals are sort of on your side here. The one caveat, again, is what you agreed to in that liability form.

 

Let's see a pic of the letter from the "lawyer." My guess is that it was bogus and just typed up in their office.

 

Well don't beat yourself up too bad.

Life is too short, my friend.

 

I would update the review to say "not only did this shop do a bad job, they threatened to sue me for telling people what a bad job it was."

 

WTF. Leave the post up, if its true you have no worries.

 

Send everything to jalopnik. This is exactly the kind of stuff they like to post about.

tips@jalopnik.com

 

I'm not saying he doesn't have the right to leave a review. And I'm not going to defend or attack the OP's review because I have not read it. I'm simply responding to the substance of the original post, which indicates he's mad at the wrong people and, also based on the original post, I can understand why the shop would be trying to fight back.

Are you really going to review a company based on hearsay? If you did that'd be chicken shit. Don't be that guy.

 

I've learned 2 things from reading reviews. Most of the 1 stars are people that are pissed off from 1 bad experience. Most of the 5 stars are fake. i.e. next time you go to buy something off of Amazon, but the url in fakespot.com

 

You really took that post seriously? Of course I’m not going to write a review about a shop I have never used...

The shop has no legs to stand on to fight back so I’m not sure why you can understand. They messed up, period. They deserve their bad review. Toyota is not to blame, they shouldn’t have to fix those wires to begin with and you can’t expect them to find everything the other shop messed up. Mad at Toyota? What planet are you on.

 

Why not? You do it on here all the time!

 

Also, I would like to have seen the original post. I feel there could have been some slander or libel there. Feel like I'm not getting the full story. Why would a shop go through the trouble of hiring a lawyer for this?

 

Do what? I’ve only posted 1 real review and it was a good one.

 

If it is a post then it is libel (although both fall under defamation). He has to have said something provably untrue, and to have done so essentially wrecklessly, for defamation (for a celebrity/public figure, you can add maliciously). The standard is high. There is a reason this is not a particularly popular type of civil action in the US (in other societies where the standard is lower it is more popular).

The central question here is what he agreed to in that liability waiver.

 

Personally, I'd have never signed a damn thing that waived any of my rights on the matter. If the shop pulled the "You have to sign this in order to get reimbursed for repairing the vehicle" nonsense, then you have a case for small claims court.