How should one deal with abusers who try to tarnish your reputation?

vpsgeek

A friend owns a hosting company which he started recently. He first warns the abusers a couple of times then terminates them on third offense. First guy he terminated because of outbound DDoS wrote a negative review on a hosting review website accusing of scam, bad service and similar things. The second guy he recently terminated for hosting U-18 porn despite warning has also written a negative review on a hosting forum

He has logs, complaints & all necessary proof of what those abusers have been doing. How should a professional host deal with such situations?

WSS

I find a meld of between how AnthonySmith and Jarland handle them. It's a stern "I've refunded you for abuse of services for the last period.. and I'll be seeking damages for what you cost me if you don't go away."

Chievo

@vpsgeek said:
A friend owns a hosting company which he started recently. He first warns the abusers a couple of times then terminates them on third offense. First guy he terminated because of outbound DDoS wrote a negative review on a hosting review website accusing of scam, bad service and similar things. The second guy he recently terminated for hosting U-18 porn despite warning has also written a negative review on a hosting forum

He has logs, complaints & all necessary proof of what those abusers have been doing. How should a professional host deal with such situations?

I have had bad experiences (not into the hosting business) but the very best that you could do is be polite , explain what has happened in your response making it crystal clear and move on . I have lot of 5 stars some 1 star of someone who blackmail me or someone who seeks a discount for giving me 5 stars etc. I have had the case of an influencer seeking me free orthodontic treatment for 1 photo so...people is like it is. There are lot of different sort of people which are going To find if you are working with people at daily basis. so this is my personal opinión about how To treat such cases.

MikeA

Considering I've dealt with this on a weekly basis for nearly two years from the same group of people, there is nothing you can really do except ignore them and report the false reviews. If you have information on the person or something to link them to their real information sue them or report them to the authorities if they were sending DDoS/hosting CP.

If people keep making new accounts, I keep their payment and terminate/ban them. I win many of the disputes simply because they get tired of replying to the disputes over a 1-2 month period and ignore it.

Lee

I can understand his position in that he is a new host and wants to protect his reputation early on from abusers who post negative reviews. Depending on the review site he should try and contact them and ask either for the review to be removed or allow him to respond, I assume he cannot simply do that (write a reply to the client on the site)?

However, he is doing something to attract abusers, what is that? Something is giving them the confidence to host U18 Porn and carry out DoS attacks from the service. The reality is that unless that is dealt with, more abusers will come and do the same thing.

tgl

ignore and report to the site admins, most of the times they wont do anything about it, but having comment fights with them is not professional, so at most he should put a polite reply saying he is sorry that he terminated but unfortunately they violated their terms of service and the other users were suffering or were in danger of their service being terminated

if he does a good job, in time the good reviews will be more than the bad ones

another important thing is to ignore the offender, because if you feed the troll, he will enjoy the circus and will continue to attack your company, on other websites, with fake accounts

i remembered now a guy he got a bad review on Facebook and he searched for the customer and gave back the review, then they had some comment fights there something like:

Manager: Its not ok to post bad reviews without telling your website or account number
Customer: You already know it because you gave us 1 star on Google

it was pretty funny

deank

Something you have to learn as you grow into adulthood is this.

You cannot please everyone and not everyone is going to like your method.
So, the best way to do is stick to your own principle and hope for the better. Just do not go PMSing just cuz things aren't going your way and you will be fine.

MichaelCee

I used to be very "You're (doing) wrong, fuck you" but now I would like to think I am more like "You're wrong, thank you"

vpsgeek

@Lee said:
However, he is doing something to attract abusers, what is that? Something is giving them the confidence to host U18 Porn and carry out DoS attacks from the service. The reality is that unless that is dealt with, more abusers will come and do the same thing.

After your comment I have tried to dig into it more deeply & found that offer thread that he made on that board had such horrible mistakes that it made him appear absolute noob & stupid person which he actually is not. Furthermore he has told me that he was relying only on FraudRecord which I feel is not enough for a newbie host. You should also use common sense & may be something like MaxMind as well.

Lee

vpsgeek said: After your comment I have tried to dig into it more deeply & found that offer thread that he made on that board had such horrible mistakes that it made him appear absolute noob & stupid person which he actually is not. Furthermore he has told me that he was relying only on FraudRecord which I feel is not enough for a newbie host. You should also use common sense & may be something like MaxMind as well.

And that is likely it, abusers are smart, they feed on inexperience, lack of controls and so on.

seriesn

Depending on the severity, Warning, Power off, Suspend, Terminate. No refund.
Or Warning, Terminate, Refund
Or Terminate and Refund.

At this point , 90% of the time, I can tell the difference between genuine fraud vs oops I made an error vs a fake complaint.

Don't be a dick policy is something I picked up from Aldryic, Ant and the rest of the veterans.

Abuse is not welcome and your friend should make that clear.

Also manual verification.

uptime

Lee

Whoever selected or does select "Make it public what those abusers have been doing" you need to get out of that LE* mentality that as a business owner you can do that. Don't be a dick, be professional if you have any chance of making it.

With social media these days, every company has to deal with negative comments, only stupid people retaliate in public due to a negative review.

WSS

@Lee said:
only stupid interesting people retaliate in public due to a negative review.

AutoBoot, AutoBoot, AutoBoot!

seriesn

@Lee said:
Whoever selected or does select "Make it public what those abusers have been doing" you need to get out of that LE* mentality that as a business owner you can do that. Don't be a dick, be professional if you have any chance of making it.

With social media these days, every company has to deal with negative comments, only stupid people retaliate in public due to a negative review.

Exactly!
Keep calm, be professional. Despite how hard it is. Imagine that customer is trying to argue with you, in a store, infront of you. Retail 101. Don't cause drama, don't create chaos. Call cops if you can't handle. But don't start fighting.

vpsgeek

@WSS said:

@Lee said:
only stupid interesting people retaliate in public due to a negative review.

AutoBoot, AutoBoot, AutoBoot!

Dewlance?

terrorgen

I think whoever hosting u-18 porn should just get referred to law enforcement, no?

poisson

I don't have anything more to add except that if you own a business, there is no point using your business identity to fight the abusers (if you have credible supporters they are a good proxy for that but I digress). There is a very good chance you look like an unfriendly provider.

Keep calm and answer professionally along these lines:

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused to XXX but they have violated our TOS and we have no choice but to terminate his services after giving them three reminders to comply with our TOS.

We have to act in the best interests of other users using our services and obey the laws governing our business. We will not make public the full evidence of XXX's TOS violations, but they are available for inspection upon request by interested parties (personally identifiable details will be redacted to protect his privacy).

Once again, we apologise for the inconvenience caused to XXX. We have nothing against him. We take compliance to our TOS very seriously so as to provide an excellent experience for all our customers. If XXX promises to abide by our TOS, we will consider reinstating his account at our discretion."

Of course you should not reinstate that idiot's account but publicly, you need to turn the tables on that asshole by appearing reasonable and painting him as the unreasonable one in a professional way.

deank

Someone on LET exposed his client's personal data because he was pissed at him. I am sure those on LET know who I am talking about.

Just don't be like him.

cybertech

Do it the Chinese way:

poisson

@cybertech said:
Do it the Chinese way:

This meme never gets old.

PureVoltage

Dealing with all different types of clients from game servers to large businesses you always get some weird issues to deal with.

It's always best to try and deal with things in a professional way so that it doesn't look bad on you. Telling a customer to eat a bag of ... doesn't always look good on you.
Disputes services are suspended, customers contacted to try and resolve it if not their service goes away after screenshots taken to show use of service or that service was delivered.

Abuse depends on the type.

uptime

They are send @SmallWeb to prison for 25-to-life for illegal TOS

Deal with it!

vpsgeek

@terrorgen said:
I think whoever hosting u-18 porn should just get referred to law enforcement, no?

The abuser belongs to such a country that reporting to law enforcement would be a useless exercise unfortunately

somik

The best way is, warn, refund & terminate.

If you don't refund, then they'll call you a scam.

If you don't warn, they'll be bitchy.

I think if the host care that much about their status, they should be asking for personal details and verifying it before activating service.