Is it illegal to give a company a bad review?

Is it illegal to give a company a bad review?

Reviews Are Protected By the First Amendment… To back this up, Congress passed a law in 2016 called the Consumer Review Fairness Act, which made it illegal for companies to add terms to their contracts that banned customers from posting negative reviews—or fined them if they do.

Can you get sued for saying something bad about a company?

The Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA) “… If you leave an honest bad review online, the CRFA protects you from being sued by a business that claims (whether true or not) to have a non-disparagement provision. If a company ends up suing you on these grounds, report the matter on the FTC website.

Can I get in trouble for writing a bad review?

To be honest, the answer is: It depends. For the most part, reviews are covered under the First Amendment, which protects free speech. If a customer posts a review that is factually inaccurate or contains accusations about your business that are untrue, you may have grounds to sue the online reviewer for defamation.

Is it illegal to leave a lot of bad reviews?

A person can post a review of someone even if it is negative in nature without committing the tort of defamation. Truth is an absolute defense to this type of legal cause of action. Additionally, a person can provide an opinion about an experience that he or she had so long as it not based on a fact that is untrue.

Can you sue someone for a bad review?

Yet, to sue someone for a bad review, the review must: 1 Be defamatory or legally actionable; 2 Violate an online review platform’s Terms of Service (ToS); or 3 Attempt to extort or harass your business.

Should you hire a lawyer to get a bad review removed?

The truth is, it takes a significant amount of time, money and energy to hire a lawyer and bring a suit to court in order to get a bad review removed from a review site. But, if the comment is extremely harmful to your business (and you can prove it to be false), it may be worth that time, money and energy.

Is it illegal for a company to ban a review?

In the US, reviews are protected by the First Amendment, which covers freedom of speech. To back this up, Congress passed a law in 2016 called the Consumer Review Fairness Act, which made it illegal for companies to add terms to their contracts that banned customers from posting negative reviews—or fined them if they do.

What happens when a customer reads a bad review?

But if they read a bad review (even if it’s biased, unfair or completely untrue), it’s going to do the opposite—and send those customers straight to your competitors. As a business owner, you want to do everything you can to effectively deal with negative reviews so they don’t ruin your business’ reputation and keep customers from working with you.