On another of my blogs, I wrote about a bad experience I had had with an auto dealer. It’s not like I said I had been ripped off or anything. I was just ignored, and insulted. The post had been up for months. I had a couple comments about the post. A couple said they had had similar experiences, or had heard about them. Another comment was defending the dealer. Then I got a comment from someone claiming to work for the dealer, and dropping words like libel, slander, damages, lawyer. I was unnerved, and deleted the post, and related comments. I then got a couple more comments, dropping more words like damages, telling me to remove the link (if people clicked through the link to the post that was deleted, it still came to my blog). So I ended up modifying my .htaccess file so that they would get a 404 error if they tried to access that post. The guy kind of insinuated that I posted my gripe to get Adsense dollars. No, I posted my gripe after being reminded of my experience by his commercials. He was still concerned that my post appeared at #2 on one search engine when people searched for his dealership. That SERP has since fallen off. I talked to my lawyer, and he told that I didn’t have anything to worry about. That libel suits are usually just a threat, and are very hard to win. I still lost a lot of sleep over it, and lost about five pounds due to loss of appetite. I had deleted the post, and if the guy was going to try to shake me down for money, I was settling in for a fight. But I haven’t heard back from him. Now when I see the guy’s commercials, I flip off (give the finger to) the TV screen. If the guy had played his cards write, I might had deleted the post, and he might have won a customer. But now I am even more pissed off with his dealership!

Posted by Rob in Whatever on April 9th, 2006 |