Last year, Lowe’s horribly botched Allen’s $3500 fence installation (see picture, left). When he complained, the installer and Lowes dodged responsibility, but still demanded $3500. Allen refused to pay and they sent his bill to collections. So Allen put up Lowes-sucks.com with pictures, correspondence and phone recordings of his customer service debacle. Instead of fixing Allen’s problem, Lowe’s sent him a cease-and-desist to get him to take down the website, claiming “trademark infringement.” That’s when our site picked it up, along with Ars Technica, Digg, and others, driving lots of traffic to Lowes-sucks.com That was a year ago. Now it seems Allen has won his fight.
free speech
After One Error Too Many Man Places "I Hate Bank Of America" Banner On His House
By 6.26.08
Avi Oslick is obviously a fan of the movie Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” Avi Oslick told NBC 10 in Philadelphia. Rather than going to his window and yelling, Avi has placed a huge banner on the side of his house telling the world how he feels about Bank of America.
Complaint Remover Gets Rid Of "Negative Links," Including LOLCats
By 3.6.08
Complaint Remover is a special service that says it gets rid of “defamatory” and “negative links” on the internet for you:
The immediate goal of our service is to stop defamation by positioning links on the Search Engines and by appeals to law to remove negative information. We send cease and desist letters and if necessary, file legal actions against the perpetrators and Internet service providers contributing to the unjust defamation of our members.
Their site has an online chat function with a customer service rep and we decided to ask if they could help us take a crap all over free speech, and how much that would cost…
InfomercialScams.com Gets Sued Constantly
By 12.19.07
Over at the Consumer Law & Policy blog there is a post about the legal troubles of Justin Leonard, the owner of InfomercialScams.com, a site that posts unedited reviews of various infomercial products.
Donning Copyright Cloak, DirectBuy Forbids Posting Of Cease And Desist Letter Sent To Consumer Opinion Site
By 10.9.07
DirectBuy got more pushback than they expected after sending a cease-and-desist to InfomercialScams.com over the site’s users calling the direct to consumer seller of furniture and home supplies a “scam” and a “nightmare.” Absurdly, DirectBuy even tried to threaten legal action if their cease and desist was published, saying it was copyrighted!
Lowes Resorts To Legal Bullying Instead Fixing Their Horrible $3500 Fence Job
By 9.21.07
UPDATE: Allen writes to say, “The issue between Lowe’s, their attorney and I was settled amicably and in a timely manner…” He couldn’t say more, but his website has been taken down.
Target Targets Blogger
By 9.18.06
It seems our buddy Target Corp. doesn’t like it when bloggers post store policies on the Internets. Their rational response? Duh, lawsuit.
Blogs Get Whited-Out by Bic
By 3.7.06
The Ad-Rag advertising blog got white-out slathered on it for posting unauthorized Bic ads.
