Does anyone else think that the company is being run by a bunch of whiny teenagers from their parents’ garage?

I’ve been writing reviews for 10 years and I can only recall twice being threatened with legal action for a negative review. In both case, as far as I know, neither company exists anymore.

There is truth in that the blogosphere does influence purchasing decisions but if you make a questionable product, well, that’s the breaks now ain’t it?

Though before leveling vague legal broadsides, it’d be best for the manufacturer to be sure their own ducks are in a row, lest they be liable for false advertising or running afoul of recent FTC changes/guidelines for product reviewing.

It really ought to be a simple test. Box shot shows a case with a very visible image. User receives case. Case either shows the advertised image clearly or it doesn’t. For any review it is Larry’s (or anyone else) job to accurately and fairly portray the product and his opinion of said product. In this instance the bone of contention isn’t really subjective, such as “I think the color should be green, not red”, it falls into the realm of a tangible, demonstrable fact, supported by Larry’s pictures. The end user perception in seeing product shots is that the product received will appear as depicted, especially since the selling point of the product is in fact its design visibility. This boils down to “does the product work as claimed?” observation. Larry did in fact write that he “e-mailed Rebel Scholar again just to make sure they’d seen the pictures I’d sent, and if they had seen them I wanted to offer the suggestion that they might want to consider changing the image they’re using for the Door Gods case to one which more properly represented what the case looks like.”

And there is the crux of the matter. If I have to throw the case in a lightbox with bright lamps and an overhead chimera to reproduce the product depiction as shown by the images, that’s not exactly fair to me consumer to satisfy my expectations, is it? One wonders if the site product shot could be construed as a deceptive marketing practice (again, Larry brought faithful image reproduction to Rebel Scholar’s attention via email).

If reviewers have to be inordinately wary of defamation suits, well then they may as well close up shop.

I’ve had long discussions with some of those folks, and needless to say they weren’t thrilled about them, but I have never seen anything like this. Heck, I’ve even gotten into a discussion based on a review here and found it pretty productive rather than combative – which made me think ‘hey these guys care’ rather than ‘they are just trying to bully out a positive review.

They actually want honest feedback. Sure they love it when it’s a good review but if it’s not a good review they understand that that’s part of what happens

In this case, when an iPhone case costs $100 and doesn’t include anything but the case and a packaging box which can be used to hold other cases, in other words it doesn’t even include a screen protector, it SHOULD be criticized as being a poor value. And if a case costs $100 and the hole for the camera lens is a little bit off and there is still some plastic dust from the manufacturing process that will scratch the iPhone (as was the case in another review), it should be criticized.

It doesn’t mean that someone is out to destroy the company. All it means is that someone is doing an honest job of reviewing a case, sharing the good and sharing the bad. To threaten legal action for such things??? Outrageous. How about putting the energy into making the products better??

So the question is this… with so many good companies and so many case options out there why in the world whould I ever choose to do business with a company like this???

The answer is simple… I don’t.

Sent from my iPhone

—Ellen