Is This Legal Or No?

You don't have to be a lawyer to have an opinion about law. In retrospect IMHO the most important thing about law is the ability to interpret whereas some may think that following laws is more important, but you have to understand them first before you can follow them. Furthermore, if you don't understand a law and break it you still are responsible for the punishment.

I see nothing wrong with seeking the guidance and experience from the people of the forum because it's free. Bonafide legal advice is too expensive.

 

Good poits

Good points but I'd rather get an opinion from people I know or have a good idea are knowledgeable on a topic. Many of the people who rely upon pure conjecture from questionably reliable sources are frequently called "defendants."

 

LOL, I agree! It's difficult to argue relying on reliable sources is your best bet, but I like to go along the lines bringing about the unbiased opinion. Politicians and lawmakers look at things one why while the population look at things another way. Lawyers in the mix of things attempt to interpret laws and the constitution, but get that wrong sometimes as well so they can't be the ultimate de facto source of right and wrong. With that said right and wrong isn't always black and white, but how well you can convince someone of your innocence. That's what lawyers do come in. OP in this case is looking for an opinion about what they did and not seeking legal advice about something that they want to do or how to prove their innocence. The "crime" in this case has already been commented and OP is only trying to find out if they should feel guilt or not and have to reply to an accuser.

The accuser in this case needs to seek legal advice in this case and through that advice either push the matter or give up. OP just needs to wait for that outcome.

 

Yes I think this is unethical because you are giving a biased review to get clients.
If this was however an unbiased review from real paying customers then
there's clearly no problem with it.

 

So I don't think the content of the review is the issue because I assume its positive. OP could have even tested the service first hand. The part that is in question is that the review drives traffic toward OPs site and away from his competitors.

 

Of course the content of the "review" is the issue. If it is false or misleading then he has a problem. If it is accurate and objective then there is less concern. As for assuming it is a positive review, that seems a stretch. The point of putting a review of his competitor so he can lure people looking for his competitor in the search engines to his website and then convince them that his free service is better than whatever it is that they offer. That would hardly constitute something positive or they would likely end up signing up with the competitor. In fact, the whole point of his "reviews" is to convince people not to use those services and to use his instead.

What he should be doing is not a "review" but rather a comparison between his offerings and his competitor. Comparisons have consistently been held by the courts to be legal, including mentioning the competing good or service by name. That is why you often hear the language "as compared to" in advertisements. Negatively reviewing your competitors offerings is usually not safe to do, but whether or not he ends up with a real problem is more a business decision by his competitor than a legal one.

 

^^^^ what he said. My impression of the "review" is what is described here. That's perfectly fine, even if it attracts some traffic.

 

OP wasn’t clear about if the accuser wanted the review removed based on the content or because the content according to the OP steals traffic from his competitor. Until the OP clears that part we can't have a logical debate because our premises can only be based on assumption. Besides, OP only begs the question:

I fully agree and that is great advice to the OP, however I only need to defend my point that OP is only asking about the SEO and legalities of stealing traffic rather than legalities of the content involved.

I would stand down if in fact the review was misleading and biased, but it feel more confident that the accuser did a search for his/her sites name and found that a competitor was #2 in the search with a lower price displaying in the result. The fact that a competitor even showed up with the accusers' sites name search is probably more concerning then the actual content because who cares if the content is a review or a comparison, "a competitor is sealing my traffic!"