79 comments

Durham Clean Air Company Threatening to Sue Me. What’s my position here?

Posted by & filed under Announcements.

I got an email from the pres­i­dent of Durham Clean Air Com­pany ear­lier today:

There is a blog on your site read­ing “SCAM ALERT (MAYBE) DURHAM REGION AIR QUALITY TESTING”. There are now legal doc­u­ments and voice record­ings on your site from my com­pany and employ­ees. I demand that you remove this or I will be pro­ceed­ing with legal action. This is not legal or accept­able. If you have any ques­tions please con­tact me at: <email removed>

I wasn’t sure what she was refer­ring to so I ask her for links and she emails me:

http://forum.smartcanucks.ca/124667-scam-alert-maybe-durham-region-air-quality-test-canada-3/

this spe­cific page has my company’s paper work, pic­tures  and voice recordings.

http://forum.smartcanucks.ca/124667-scam-alert-maybe-durham-region-air-quality-test-canada-6/

This forum needs to be removed. It is all very false and dan­ger­ous infor­ma­tion. I am seri­ously con­sid­er­ing tak­ing very pow­er­ful legal action against your site for the dam­ages you have caused us by hav­ing this ille­gal infor­ma­tion on there.

So I go through the thread which starts here and I can see it’s basi­cally peo­ple writ­ing about their expe­ri­ence with the com­pany. It seems like many peo­ple didn’t have such a good expe­ri­ence though so I can see why she’s concerned.

Now I’m won­der­ing what my posi­tion here is? Should I just delete the thread? I don’t want to cause her com­pany any harm if it runs a legit­i­mate non-scammy busi­ness. I also don’t want to get sued obvi­ously. Any­one with legal expe­ri­ence know what I can do here?

79 Responses to “Durham Clean Air Company Threatening to Sue Me. What’s my position here?”

  2. Eeyah

    Leave it up. Some hot head try­ing to bully you into doing what he wants. As oth­ers have said IF it was legit then his lawyer would have been the one con­tact­ing you. I chalk it up to a man who has poor busi­ness prac­tice and even worse cus­tomer rela­tions, and is try­ing to save face. Keep the thread up.

  3. TallNFunny

    Boo, don’t let com­pa­nies bully you into chang­ing your aim of pro­tect­ing the pub­lic and sav­ing peo­ple money in the long run. Power to the people!

  4. emily

    I think you should remove the thread. They prob­a­bly want to scare you but if you don’t want to enter in a law suit just remove every­thing. They should work on their com­pany and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion instead of attack­ing your web­site / forum. They’re stupid.

  5. lecale

    Ten years ago I hired a lawyer to write and send a one-page “threat­en­ing let­ter”. It cost me $400 back then to do so (plus GST). Talk, on the other hand, is cheap. This thread: priceless.

  6. silverlining

    I am a prac­tis­ing lawyer; I can­not give you legal advice but I can say that there is no rea­son to be con­cerned. No action nec­es­sary on your part. After all, it is a pub­lic forum and if they are con­cerned with their pub­lic image, they are free to offer their side of each neg­a­tive account.

  7. Caseyscoupons

    just throw up a dis­claimer stat­ing that Smart­Canucks may not share the opin­ions of indi­vid­ual users, and is not liable for posts or com­ments made by oth­ers on forums. Prob­lem solved.

  8. Cathy

    I dunno Boo, these posts you put up ask­ing people’s advise on your site issues are becom­ing tire­some. You’re ask­ing peo­ple that use your site to do your leg­work for you. Per­haps you should get a lawyer and pay the one time legal fee to find out FOR SURE what your rights are? You had a post up about 6 months ago ask­ing peo­ple their opin­ions on a sim­i­lar threat. These are clearly YOUR legal issues and if you are unsure of what you can and can­not do. GO FIND OUT!

    I just want to come here for coupons and deal info. I real­ize it sounds cal­lous, but I don’t really want to read your posts about your legal issues.

  9. Moll

    They are threat­en­ing you hop­ing you would get scared and remove the thread so peo­ple can­not be warned. This is a scammy com­pany that tar­gets weak peo­ple that don’t have expe­ri­ence with this kind of stuff. They know that if peo­ple know how shady their busi­ness is, they will not be sign­ing up. They are basi­cally steal­ing from peo­ple, and its no dif­fer­ent from other scams on Craigslist and such. They can­not do any­thing to you, unless they will hire and pay expen­sive lawyer, which they are not going to do, so don’t take the post down. And I am glad that you posted about this ! Also, peo­ple talk about all kind of busi­ness, includ­ing the legit­i­mate ones. Has any­one came to you with a sim­i­lar threat, or have they instead looked into the com­plaints to see what they can improve to make their cus­tomers more satisfied?

  10. J

    Cathy, it was a sim­ple ques­tion that has obvi­ously gen­er­ated a lot of answers. If you don’t feel it has a place here then sim­ply do not read the post nor do you really need to post a com­ment telling Boo how to run his own site. Can’t we have at least one thread where every­one has some­thing pos­i­tive to say?… Guess not.

  11. escher7

    My guess is that the threats to sue are with­out merit. As long as the opin­ions expressed are the poster’s per­sonal expe­ri­ence and rep­re­sent fair com­ment no suit would suc­ceed. I note that they are “seri­ously con­sid­er­ing” suing. This is legal speak for “I am not going to sue you, but I am try­ing to scare you with the threat of a law­suit”. If the posts are fair and based on per­sonal expe­ri­ence there is no prob­lem. Any­thing that comes right out and says “these peo­ple are crooks” is cross­ing the line unless it can be proven true. It is defam­a­tory to pub­licly accuse some­one of a crime if it is not true.

    You will also notice the words “very pow­er­ful legal action”. What is pow­er­ful legal action? They either sue or they don’t. This is ama­teur word­ing which did not come from their lawyers.

    Finally, I Googled the company’s prod­ucts and noticed a Res­pi­rAide 200T for sale at $600.00. The seller says they paid $2,700.00! It would be a frosty day in Hell before I would pay that kind of money for any free stand­ing air cleaner. Another estate sale claimed the orig­i­nal price on the 200T was “over $3500″, even worse. I was not able to find a retail site.There doesn’t seem to be any pri­ce­ing on the Res­pi­rAide site — another red flag.

    Bot­tom line: Any air cleaner priced at $3,500 is not likely worth it. Con­sumer sites show prices of the very best rated clean­ers at $895. Oth­ers are con­sid­er­ably less. I can’t say if they are crooks, but it is clear they sell to the poorly informed and vul­ner­a­ble — there is no way informed con­sumers would buy their product.

    I would not dis­con­tinue the forum. It seems to con­tain valid warn­ings to the con­sumer. If you are cau­tious, remove those posts that out­right call them crooks with­out sup­port­ing evi­dence. You will know the com­pany is seri­ous if and when they file a suit. Then you can con­sider whether to defend or dis­con­tinue. I doubt very much that any lawyer would advise them to sue.

  12. escher7

    Follow-up. I noticed the post from Sil­ver­lin­ing. He is a “prac­tis­ing” lawyer — maybe if he prac­tices long enough he’ll get it right! (Just kid­ding.) His post is accurate.

  13. Fedup

    I agree with Cathy, if he wants legal advice, a blog on a coupon­ing site is not the best place to ask. You get what you pay for usu­ally. This is a coupon­ing site, not an ask the lawyer site. Most peo­ple don’t give a damn about what is hap­pen­ing in the back­ground of a for­mum site, they just want to par­tic­i­pate in the activit the forum was meant for. Per­haps he should change is name from Boo to Boo Hoo.

  14. nisiepie

    again???

    you have had quite a few com­pa­nies threaten you with law­suits over the years. get used to it.

    each time you pub­licly post about on the blog hop­ing to get ppl to feel sorry for you, and pub­licly embar­rass the com­pany who is com­ing after you.

    you are obvi­ously mak­ing money from Smart Canucks, use some of that money to hire a lawyer and stop using the blog to manip­u­late people.

    you are not a vic­tim. you are some­one who uses the site to make money and then tries to hide and ignore any real issues. as long as it’s rolling in, who cares, right?

    go deal with your legal issues like a grown boy.

  15. Cathy

    yeah J, because ask­ing legal advice and com­ment­ing about being sued is a pos­i­tive thing? This isn’t a pos­i­tive thread. Unless you mean it’s sup­posed to be a “poor boo, let me help you out so you don’t actu­ally have to do any­thing” thread? This is cer­tainly that kind of thread.

    Again, keep to coupons and deals. No one really needs to know about behind the scenes issues. I’d be hap­pier if there was a request to send more deals and coupons instead.

    But legal advice? No.

    No com­ment Boo? Yeah…

  16. anisa

    i apol­o­gize for leav­ing the above com­ment as ‘nisiepie’
    i actu­ally meant to use my name.
    don’t want any­one to think i’m hid­ing behind a pseudo.
    doh!

  17. Watcher

    You are mak­ing money from this web­site, so hire a lawyer already! Why would you take legal advice from ran­doms post­ing on your website?

    I come here to read the deals and shop­ping tips, not to give legal advice. Hire a lawyer.

  18. supermandy

    If you don’t want to read these posts — skip them — or don’t come to the site any­more. I dont get the com­plain­ing. But over­all I think the back and forth ban­ter is so funny — hence why I always read these posts that have tons of comments…

  19. Anon

    If post­ing reviews and pic­tures as proof is ille­gal, how does the web­site Tri­pAd­vi­sor work? It has reviews, neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive, of hotels around the world with pic­tures of any­thing, rats, bed­bugs, you name it. How does any review site work, really? You def­i­nitely aren’t doing any­thing wrong.

  20. Charlie

    Nobody cares what you have to say any­ways Anisa, youre just a mis­er­able and nasty piece of work.

  21. anisa

    Char­lie, i know you actu­ally love me. stop being so silly! *giggle*

    ;D

  22. Fedup

    Char­lie, sounds like you’re just a mis­er­able prick yourself.

  23. Angie

    Is there any way you can change the title of the thread to “Clean Air Review” and remove the “Scam Alert” part? No one can charge you or any­one else for giv­ing a review or expe­ri­ence with a com­pany or service.

  24. Angie

    Also, Boo (cute name) please feel free to ask any ques­tions. This is your site. I seen some­one say that these types of post are tire­some. All they need to do is delete it and move on, and they cer­tainly dont need to waste more of their pre­cious time writ­ing nasty com­ments if its not help­ful. This site offers a great ser­vice, and you do a lot for a lot of peo­ple, so dont be leery on ask­ing us for help or ideas. If the shoe was on the other foot, and they had actu­ally been saved from spend­ing their hard earned money of a ser­vice like this by you, it would be a dif­fer­ent story. Peo­ple only seem to think about them­selves these days! So once again, if you find it “tire­some”, theres a lit­tle but­ton on your mouse, you just move the lit­tle arrow up the the delete but­ton on the email or feed and click “delete”. Takes like 2 sec­onds. What really con­fuses me is if you find these annoy­ing, why do you read them all the way through, and then keep com­ment­ing on them.

    Boo, keep up the good work.

  25. Fedup

    Angie, every­one has a right to their opin­ion, good or bad. Delet­ing them is called censoring.

  26. sam

    dont worry he/she cant sue u.. it is not easy.

    if u would have used thier info in a lets say a movie, or adver­tise­ment with­out thier per­mis­sion, then yes they would have a great rea­son to sue u. but if this web­site is just for shar­ing ideas or the whole pur­pose was for peo­ple to share their bad/good expe­ri­ences then u shouldnt worry…

  27. Charlie

    Well it gets a lit­tle annoy­ing when all some­one does is put down the site and com­plain. They are free to leave.

  28. Mark X

    Wow that just wors­ens their rep­u­ta­tion. It is like they have some­thing to hide. What ever hap­pened to free­dom of speech? Appar­ently it is slan­der­ous to expose com­pa­nies that are not on the ‘up and up’.. What­ever hap­pened to con­sumer pro­tec­tion? The peo­ple have a right to know!

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