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Essential Info About Complaints Board
ComplaintsBoard.com is one of the most well-known online platforms that people are using to rate or post complaints related to a particular business. Consumers are leaving their comments (complaints) to provoke a response from a certain company.
This service is helping people get their complaints answered and receive help through complaints board posts. Customers are also using the Complaints Board to see if there is a negative review and if they can trust a particular business or company.
Services like this can provide you a great benefit if you are a business owner, but can also ruin your reputation if there are a lot of negative comments and reviews about your business.
It also means that some companies can be victims of fake comments or reviews some individuals can post. Some people come specifically to this website with the idea to ruin someone’s reputation for many reasons.
People who are seeing bad reviews are less likely to choose your company over your competition. Because these kinds of comments tend to ruin your hard-earned reputation, it is very important to remove those defamatory and false complaints as soon as possible.
The Online Reputation Myths
Nowadays, having a great and positive reputation both online and offline can bring you a lot of benefits. Like many other people we are always chasing our dreams and dream jobs, however, a simple background check on ComplaintsBoard or any similar website can easily ruin your dream and make you use reputation management services from reputation management companies.
You can get denied for a certain job despite a good interview or your great qualification. If that particular company checks your background and sees some bad complaints board comments or inappropriate complaints board posts about you online, you will probably lose your chance to get that job.
It is understandable because they would not want your bad reputation to have an effect on their business and they might be afraid that you are going to repeat the bad behavior that you have been accused of before.
Because there are plenty of people who are applying for the same job on a daily basis, the limited time and resources will probably force that company to make a fast decision and they are not going to bother with your explanations if the comments about you online are accurate or not.
Another example could be if you wish to start a collaboration with someone or to get a loan from the bank or other financial help. A simple search on Complaints Board for negative content can display that you have defrauded someone of money in the past and will discourage the individual or company from doing business with you or giving you the loan you have been asking for.
Those examples are not restricted to individuals because companies and bigger organizations can also become victims of false or defamatory complaints on complaintsboard.com or any other similar website.
You should know that many organizations and individuals regularly research companies they want to do business with before they decide if they should proceed or not. This is happening because they want to be sure to avoid others’ bad reputations affecting their business.
Having a bad reputation, negative reviews, or negative posts against you or your brand on websites like complainstboard.com can surely affect your collaborators as well.
In this article, we will provide you with detailed information about Complaints Board and how you should manage or remove harmful and false content about your business on this website.
What is ComplaintsBoard and How it is Organized?
As we already mentioned like many other consumer review sites Complaintsboard.com is a website on which individuals can publish rates and complaints. This website is owned and operated by Mediolex Ltd.
This website can sort the reviews posted online by category and offer consumers tips and tricks articles in order to help them understand the service better. They also have a very active social media presence, they are regularly posting on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.
There are a lot of problems that can happen, like a paid product that is not delivered, delivering a different product from what was ordered, late delivery, and so on.
With this service individuals are able to post on the website right away about their experience with the seller he was in contact with and how he was cheated. The service has an instant share which means that your comment will spread right away.
As a result of this instant share, there is also a rapid spread of false content, lies, and malicious attacks that can hurt your online reputation.
In case you or your company have been the subject of a malicious online attack you should not wait for information to spread, but you should react right away and try to protect your business reputation before it causes bigger problems.
Defamatory Law Tip:
If you are leading a business that primarily works with food production and manufacturing, we suggest you read “Food Libel Laws”, better known as “Veggie Libel Laws”. These laws exist in 13 states and are made to assist food producers to sue individuals or organizations who made defamation comments in order to ruin someone’s good reputation.
What is Cyber Libel or Online Defamation
Online defamation is the action when someone is sharing false and poor statements in order to harm someone’s reputation. Defamation can be done via blogs, chatrooms, message boards, e-mail, and websites such as ComplaintsBoard.com.
If we trust in certain research about the impact of bad online reviews, it is mentioned that one bad review can drive customers away by 22%, three negative reviews or comments will drive away by 59.2%, and more than four negative reviews can drive away 70% of potential customers.
As you can see these numbers are really scary and you should always pay attention to such bad reviews about your business. When they happen you should be able to react right away to avoid a big impact on your business.
We would also like to mention that all bad or negative reviews on the internet are not considered defamation or cyber libel, because sometimes customers are simply not satisfied with your products or maybe with the delivery method or time.
If a certain comment or review includes a false statement and harms your business reputation, that comment is qualified as online defamation or cyber libel. There are some websites that allow posting comments about specific persons, not just businesses, and that case is also considered online defamation. The Complaints Board website is mostly focused on services, products, and businesses.
Can Online Defamation Cripple Your Business Reputation and Integrity?
Every small business can be crippled or destroyed by defamation or fake posts and only big companies with a great reputation are able to resist cyber liber easily. Defamation of business and character has the potential to seriously affect your personal life and your ability to earn a living or get employed.
Your business reputation is the most valuable, and important part of your business. Reputation is not something that can be easily gained or recovered because building a reputation is a long process and it also takes a lot of time to recover or restore it in case you are a victim of defamation reviews or comments.
If those fake reviews spread, there is a big chance that your business will suffer together with you as an owner. There are some really bad situations that can occur in case you and your business get targeted.
Some of the consequences that can occur are: Losing your customers (decreasing your customer base), an increase in your negative publicity, harm to your professional business partnerships, potential damage to your future connections and collaborations, and financial loss that can ultimately lead to closing your business.
Can You Remove Negative Reviews From Complaints Board Website?
Yes, you can do a complaints board removal in order to remove complaints, defamatory posts, and wrong information from Complaints Board but you should know right from the start this process is not easy and will be time-consuming.
Most of the people who want such content about them to be removed from the Complaint Board or any similar sites (there are plenty of them) become clients of companies who deal with those things and many of them are requesting to be guided through the removal process.
The reason is very simple, as we already said having negative complaints about your business or you personally on a complaint page like Complaints Board or any similar site is really a drawback. It will damage your reputation and it may cost you a lot of money.
Is It Hard To Remove Content From Complaints Board?
Like many other websites that are working with this kind of stuff, the Complaints Board has also taken the position that is not legally responsible for defamatory or damaging false content that is being posted on its website on daily basis.
In addition, they also put themselves in a position as not responsible for content validity or accuracy because they are not investigating, editing, or censoring posted messages and content.
If the original poster is responsible for his or her false statements you will need to sue that person (many of them are leaving comments while remaining anonymous) and you will need to present a court order to Complaints Board and ask for the removal of the content which will probably give a positive result.
You should be informed this process will probably take a long time until is sorted out and additionally you may require the assistance of a qualified attorney in order to speed up the process and drive it on the right path.
Posts from Complaints Board that involve copyright infringement will be easier to remove because this website provides all their legal information on a page that is easy to find and access and you will also find info about their DMCA agent there.
Using DMCA for Removing Copyrighted Content from Complaints Board
A very useful and effective way to remove copyright content from Complaints Board is to request removal from this website with the explanation that infringes on your copyright.
You will need to use Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and then submit a DMCA notification to the Complaints Board website. This DMCA takedown notification will inform a certain website that they need to remove or takedown a specific content because of copyright infringement.
If you are not familiar with something like this you can always use an online reputation management company or an attorney so they can assist you with filing that DMCA complaint and then submit that complaint to the designated DMCA agent for Complaints Board to be able to remove the necessary content.
As we already mentioned Complaints Board have contact information on their DMCA page so you can contact their designated agent. The DMCA notice that you are going to send needs to have some elements that should be included:
- List of necessary details so they can identify the work you claim to be infringed (if there are multiple reports, you will need to put a list with all details).
- Additional details so they can identify and also locate the material that you claim to be infringing (you can send a link to the page where the infringing material is placed).
- Your contact information: your address, your cellphone number, and your email address.
- A statement where you confirm that the use of the material you reported is not authorized by the copyright owner, the law, or his agent.
- A statement that confirms your report is accurate and you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive right that is reported to be infringed.
- In the end, they will need your electronic or physical signature.
Removing a Post from Complaints Board
This website is not going to remove content just because you requested it from them. They will only remove the content if they receive an official and signed court order or request. The court order that is sent will request filling a lawsuit against the people who posted the content on Complaints Board.
If everything is done successfully the court will affirm the reported content as defamatory and the court will also submit a request to Google and other search engines together with Complaints Board for them to remove the offensive content as soon as possible.
Removing Complaints Board posts and comments from Google Search Results
When it comes to additional methods to counter a complaint posted on ComplaintsBoard.com you can take advantage of a couple of options:
Replying to the comment directly in public
Complaints Board will allow you to reply to certain comments who tried to offend or bring down your business. Once you reply to the complainant he/she has an option to flag that comment as “resolved” and to additionally explain the steps taken by the business owner to sort out the situation.
It all depends on the comment that was left but we think this method is the best way for you to sort out the issue and additionally to show to future or already existing customers that you care about them.
Once you get in touch with the complainant and if they are sincere, the best way is to apologize, explain to them how to overcome that problem, and make them sure that the same problem won’t occur again in the future.
This seems like the best way to deal with an unsatisfied customer, however, you need to know that this situation can easily backfire. While you actively comment on a posted complaint, you actually contribute to its relevance in search results which will help it rank even higher.
Because of this reason, if you see that some complaint is fake or defamatory it would be better if you do not reply to it (so you don’t give him relevance in search results) and approach it with a different method or one of the methods that we explained so far depends on the situation.
If you see that someone’s idea with their comments is only focused to ruin your company’s reputation you should not engage.
First, because you don’t want to give relevance to that comment, also keep in mind that once you apologize to the person they may not accept it but ask for more things that you may not be able to fulfill at the moment. Our advice will be to avoid reacting to inflammatory comments and focus on other ways and methods in order to remove or bury them.
The best outcome for you will be if the person who added the complaint ignores or does nothing, and the worst outcome of the situation for you will be if they start filing more complaints or if they continue to update their original complaint.
Keep all of those scenarios in mind because you need to be ready if a similar situation occurs and you will need to react fast. Wrong steps can really hurt your reputation and you won’t be able to recover that easily.
Submitting a takedown request to Google
We already explained that some content can be removed from Google and other search engines with an officially signed court order. However, if you don’t want to go through this process and you want to contact Google and other search engines directly and on your own, then you should submit a takedown request (https://support.google.com/legal/answer/3110420?hl=en).
Before you submit your request you need to read Google’s guidelines and understand what kind of content they are able to de-index. If you are in the United States you should know that the chances for complaints to be removed are very very low.
However, there is a different treatment for content that expose sensitive information in public like Bank account numbers, social security numbers, or sexually explicit content where one party didn’t agree on filming (this is also protected by the communications decency act).
Wrapping It Up
Since every single complaint can make a different scenario, unfortunately, these methods aren’t 100% guaranteed to work. Here you will find a lot of information so you can use it in different situations and we hope they are going to help you deal with such problems.
With our experience in dealing with similar problems we think that the best method is suppression, when trying to remove unflattering posts from Complaints Board, suppression and personal branding will be your best option.
Want to learn more about companies with a bad reputation? Click here for our top picks for companies to avoid.
