I have a customer overseas (USA) who ordered 2 products from my company, the guy paid for 1 as didn't trust our business so I billed him for 1 unit and shipping, payment for other unit upon delivery. So he paid only for 1 unit no shipping. After 2 weeks, I emailed him asking if he was going to collect the items from Europe as they were ready, he then claimed he paid for shipping and got abusive, then we got payment for shipping 3 days later. So we then sent both items. Now the guy has contacted me telling me he will keep 1 unit but wants to return the other unit, so we told him he could but he will have to pay for shipping and duty back to us. As this point the guy got really nasty - telling me he will copy our site and tell everyone what a poor quality my goods are as well as posting false emails on his website to damage our business. If he does this what can I do?? I have told him to return the goods and I cannot understand his behavour, we think we have been more than reasonable. Any advice is worth listening to.
If he does do as he said (post false e-mails and information), I would advise you to send him a cease and desist letter. If you did everything you stated and he claims something to the contrary, it could be considered libel (I am not a lawyer, so definitely seek professional advice before taking action). You could also send a complaint to the person's Web hosting company and let them know that he is engaging in illegal activity. They may warn him or even take the site down completely. It will be interesting to see what other posters recommend.
in my opinion (not legal trained at all). Even if he did would it really affect your business a hugh amount? Alot of people can and will see through people "smear campaigns" and not take alot of notice of it at all, your customers should also see through this! Even if he did make a copy website it will take months to get a decent amount of time, money and effort to get traffic onto the copy website and by that time he surely would just get bored and give up. I doubt very much he would know how to clone your site to the fine detail. If you Google nearly any business name and there is at least one "customer" who has nothing else to do but put up a few bad reviews and moan moan moan and then give up within a few days but this doesnt affect business at all and surely your business will be the same. I have had a client who complained when godaddy didnt change his nameservers within 30seconds(as this was my fault) and then demanded a refund plus compo, and then carried on to get quite nasty even though his site was up within two hours of the domain purchase he still moaned and moaned. He then went to do a review on some blog how bad my service was. The blog was only ever really seen by myself and about ten others as the idiot built the blog on my own server......didnt affect business at all and he got bored.....im sure this will be the same
a cease and desist letter is good, provided that the website has been correctly registered, full contact and so on. if the website has failed to be registered coorrectly, you should then contact the registrar for the domain and explain your problem and the fact of the false information in whois checks.
usually some one making threats don't follow through. but if he creates this web site and any attempts to solve the issue personally don't work then i believe you can take legal action.
I had some experience of similar things but different type of site. I own a motorcycle club and banned a number of people from the forum for being abusive. They set up a domain copying mine. With mine being xxxbikeclub and they had notxxxbikeclub. Seems petty but they put a lot of damaging and false information on their. After contacting thier ISP and the domain registrar they had the domain revoked and a written warning from their isp. Just speak to the right people and explain your situation. As long as you have proof of their potential sabotage of your business you are covered, both with the court system and possily the police, depending on how far it goes (threatening behaviour??). Hope that helps.
tbfm... you know that is interesting since I came across a site for all the people that were banned on Digital Point. Hehe... that was funny in my own opinion. I wonder if DP will take legal action against them lol.