Big Dave

FYI, debts incurred through fraud/misrepresentation can be protected from discharge in bankruptcy. It would require the creditor to get a lawyer and sue (i.e., an adversary proceeding in the bankruptcy case), but the option is there. See 11 USC Sec. 523.

Bigfoot928

I agree every forum should have one but
problem with having a "Bad Shop or Bad Vendor list" is the immediate attack the victim will receive. Then there are the cases where it's just a verdictive customer.
In this case, how many poster's will be lining up in the " crow eating " contest, doubt any[/QUOTE]

Numerous IB forums have bad vendor areas. I suggested it here through the mods, directly to IB and was shot down.

drooman

I agree every forum should have one but
problem with having a "Bad Shop or Bad Vendor list" is the immediate attack the victim will receive. Then there are the cases where it's just a verdictive customer.
In this case, how many poster's will be lining up in the " crow eating " contest, doubt any[/QUOTE]

Numerous IB forums have bad vendor areas. I suggested it here through the mods, directly to IB and was shot down.[/QUOTE]

No doubt it would have to be "controlled" .. but we manage to do it in the picture thread. Someone doesn't post a new 928 pic and they're called out....not by Mods, by us. I think rule #1 in a theoretical bad vendor thread would be the requirement to post "publicly available" and "legally filed" complaints/ documents, etc. Then limit comments to personal experiences and outcomes of the case between that vendor and customer.

When does a shop that advertises, takes in cars, and collects money for services become a "public figure" like a celebrity or a politician? These groups of people are WIDE OPEN for personal attacks and verbal abuse *almost* without limit on here and pretty much everywhere else. In this community the shops and vendors are the "public figures" and fortunately the good ones far outnumber the bad. The time and effort that Mods put in to herding cats over in the P&C threads far exceeds what a Vendor thread would require, and would be imminently more useful to all of us.

So yes, it would be on us to stay within the rules, and work for the mods to ensure that... and it's worth doing.

Shawn Stanford

I'm not surprised that IB won't allow a thread specifically for bad-mouthing vendors. I'm surprised they allow such threads anywhere, as that seems like a libel suit waiting to happen. It's one thing if posters complain on their own, quite another if it's assisted and encouraged by IB.

The problem is that unhappy people are far more likely to complain than happy people are to compliment. I have a local mechanic I've been working with for going-on 20 years. They've always been very reasonable and accommodating, and I trust them implicitly. However, if you do a search here for the shop, you'll find nothing but a couple of heated complaint threads. But the obvious counterpoint is that if someone is truly a bad actor, there should be some way for us as a community to alert our fellows.

Adamant1971

Exactly, when I owned a Sunset Grill franchise my Google rating was ****. But if you came in my restaurant it was always full of very happy regulars. So much so that when I sold it many customers stopped going altogether.

In this day of social media opinions are like A$$ Holes, everyone’s got one. Ha Ha

Kevin in Atlanta

At the end of the day it comes down to thoroughly vetting the shop yourself. Yelp and Google reviews are crap.

hernanca

The Samba classifieds has a system that has worked for me. Every "for sale" ad and every post has a "feedback" button. You press that button and it takes you to posted experiences, good or bad, that anyone has had with that user. To post such experiences you have to follow a specific format so that the button finds your posted experience. This set up probably helps buffer the hosting site liability (the old "we are not responsible for the user content" defense), plus it is not specifically a "bad" list.


^^^ These and the like (e.g., SuperPages) have a built-in conflict of interest. The businesses they list are PAYING customers, while the reviewers are typically not. I caught them red-handed when they mistakenly sent me an email (purpose-built account to mimic the bad vendor's email address), advising on how to clear their negative feedback (turn off all feedback, then turn it back on). In another instance, my negative feedback kept getting rejected for more and more nit-picky reasons as I continued to comply and refine it.

Auction content: does anyone know how many of the Auction cars are still disconnected from their rightful owners?

Kevin in Atlanta

FWIW, I tried to wave someone away from doing business with RVM. He then turned around and outed me to RVM.

And that person ended up with a block with a crack in it.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Landseer

Rennlisters here have shown repeated stupidity.

We had an outfit, 928WW on here. Couple guys had problems. Conman model noted above, created obfuscation. Northeast guys, treated very well by mason, naively laid down cover, perpetuating the con. Many more guys got hurt.

Lots more examples. Nearly all sponsering suppliers have had occasional fitment issues. A couple here take the position that they will make it right, immediately. Others fought it. Again, guys singing virtues on their experience clouded the sutuation while other customers begged for relief.

If it smells off, it probably is. if you see a guy, especially more than one, having a transaction problem, please dont pile on with the virtues of how your transaction was perfectly fine. That is generally irrelevant. Force suppliers, or even individuals in the case of cross rennlister sales, to stand on that transaction in question.

Shine light, stand together, break the con.

When choosing a supplier, if you see any evidence of past problems where the answer doesnt begin with "the customer is always right", unqualified, then just say no.

DKWalser

Unfortunately, bad behavior isn't limited to the business being reviewed. That is, sometimes bad comments and complaints are posted by people with nefarious intent. I had a client whose restaurant had a sterling reputation and was rapidly gaining in popularity. Suddenly, the restaurant's Yelp and similar review pages were swamped with negative reviews. Some were clearly posted by people who had never eaten at the restaurant because they complained about dishes the restaurant doesn't serve. (These weren't complaints about a lacking of menu choices, but of the quality of food allegedly served.) Others complained about the poor service of the waitstaff -- having to wait a long time before someone came to take their order and the like. The problem? The restaurant doesn't have waitstaff. You order your food at the counter and are then called to pick it up when its ready. Some digging revealed that many of the poor reviews were made from the same IP address. The speculation is that a competitor was trying to drive down my client's Yelp rating.

In another example, a client received a pitch for a service that would help him increase his positive exposure on the intranet. The firm promised it could increase my client's review scores and 'clean up' many of the bad reviews. My client said he didn't have any bad reviews. Within a couple of days, he did!

And, of course, other times, a customer may just be unreasonable and will intentionally exaggerate a business' bad behavior as a way of extracting revenge.

People lie. Surprisingly, they even do it on the internet.

drooman

In "off topic" they ban a lot of time wasting, dead end, pointless, and spiraling subjects that have shown to be UNRESOLVABLE for centuries (politics and religion) leaving resources to root out the members that are ripping off the other members.

Landseer

Jalopy journal used to do a good job. Zero tolerance for rip offs. Zero tolerance for guys that exaggerated. Felt kind of like a group of pole cats were hanging in the background maintaing order.

M. Requin

Actually, there are more than enough to go around.

GT6ixer

You've just described every oil and auto vs. manual thread on this forum...lol

Bigfoot928

Don't forget the sport seat email thread back when it was PorscheFan before RL.