unfair trade practices – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "unfair trade practices"

Moving Company That Threatened People With 1,000ADayFeesForNegativeReviewsToPay1,000 A Day Fees For Negative Reviews To Pay 1,000ADayFeesForNegativeReviewsToPay125,000 Settlement

from the something-only-a-terrible-company-would-do dept

If you’re a good company, you try to make customers happy and deal honestly with their complaints. If you’re Liberty Bell Moving and Storage, Inc., you threaten unhappy customers with lawsuits and steadily escalating fees for expressing their displeasure with your service.

It seems only the worst entities insist on tucking non-disparagement clauses into their fine print. We’ve covered several of those, including Roca Labs, KlearGear, and a handful of real estate firms offering both vacation rentals and fine print thuggery. This list also includes political campaigns and entire cities.

This attempt to extort people into silence is now going to cost the Maine-based moving company, as Hannah Laclaire reports for the Portland Press Herald.

The state has settled a lawsuit with a Windham-based moving company that illegally prevented some customers from posting negative reviews online and threatened others into removing existing negative reviews.

An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General found that Liberty Bell Moving and Storage Inc. and its owner, Kevin Finkenaur, violated the federal Consumer Review Fairness Act, the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act and regulations for businesses that engage in interstate moving operations.

As part of the settlement, Finkenaur must pay $125,000 and “refrain from engaging in a number of illegal business practices,” including no longer using a misleading email address posing as Liberty Bell’s attorney.

There was some truly wild stuff going on at Liberty Bell, all apparently ordained, if not directly carried out by the company’s owner. The complaint [PDF] filed last summer provides more details on Liberty Bell’s hellish interpretation of customer service.

The company’s cheapest moving coverage plan (which is no coverage at all as the “No Valuation Protection” name makes clear) forced customers to agree to be punished in multiple ways should they be less than impressed with the moving company’s least expensive package.

Any bad reviews posted against Liberty Bell on any social media platform or other review sites due to alleged damage, or lost items will be deemed false and defamatory. Any such false and defamatory remarks are [sic] made against Liberty Bell Moving & Storage will make the signer of this document liable in court for punitive damages for making these false allegations.

There are numerous reasons a clause like this can’t be enforced. Certainly the company knew it couldn’t actually declare something defamatory without a court weighing in on it. But that would force users to defend themselves against a clearly bogus lawsuit. And while they shelled out for legal help, Liberty Bell would apparently just keep running the credit card it had on file to inflict even more financial pain.

Any bad reviews posted against Liberty Bell Moving & Storage on any social media platform or review sites will be deemed false and defamatory thus making the signer of this document liable in court for punitive damages. Also, a $1000 defamation management fee will be added to the cost of the move if negative reviews are not removed after 3 days from being posted. You will be notified of this from attorney@libertybellmoving.com.

Obviously no actual attorney wrote this. Not only is it riddled with legal errors, it’s riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. The addition of an email address hinting that an attorney was handling Liberty Bell’s (illegal) work undoubtedly made this look a lot scarier. But I have to believe at least a few potential customers found themselves laughing at the horrendously written legal threats contained in the moving company’s contracts.

Liberty Bell is not responsible in ANY WAY for items left behind, not put in proper location or any other issues that arise from not having somebody there to instruct the movers or to do a final walkthru [sic] when they get done. Any bad reviews left on line [sic] when this situation arises, will make the customer or agent of the customer liable defamtion [sic], and for punitive damages in court as the result of the defamation.

If a customer did leave a negative review, an email from the “attorney@libertybellmoving.com” address would arrive, loaded with sloppily written fauxlerplate from a nonexistent member of Liberty Bell’s nonexistent “attorneys office,” threatening to enforce the unenforceable “non-disparagement provision” and charge an obscene amount while doing so. [Emphasis in the inadvertently hilarious original.]

We will seek $2500 per day the review(s) are left up, and will also seek to be reimbursed for lawyer fees upwards of $9500, which you also agreed to pay by digitally signing the OFS. If the review (s ) are not down by 12:00pm on [date], we will file this lawsuit. Once the lawsuit is started, we WILL NOT remove the lawsuit even if the reviews are taken down after the [date] deadline.

Pretty much all of this violated Maine consumer laws in one way or another. (It also violates federal law.) Hence the settlement, which not only takes $125,000 out of Liberty Bell’s pockets, but forces it to play by the state’s rules. The settlement may seem a bit light, but it seems unlikely these poorly written threats ever resulted in substantial payouts from unhappy customers.

Oh, and here’s a fun postscript: this may not be the full extent of the company’s CEO’s legal problems. Here’s earlier reporting from the Portland Press Herald about the founder of Liberty Bell Moving:

His name is Kevin Finkenaur. He runs a local moving and storage company.

He’s also a self-identified insurrectionist.

“Saw first hand today how close the citizens of the US came to overthrowing a corrupt government,” said a Facebook post under Finkenauer’s name following Wednesday’s invasion of the U.S. Capitol by thousands of Donald Trump die-hards.

“I was there…you weren’t,” said another post under Finkenaur’s name. “On the upper level, there was thousand of US citizens (versus) 40 or so riot police.”

Well, Finkenauer’s boy is also a fan of non-disparagement clauses. And, just like Trump, Finkenauer’s post-2020 losing streak doesn’t appear it will end anytime soon.

Filed Under: crfa, kevin fineknaur, maine, negative reviews, non-disparagement clause, reviews, threats, unfair trade practices
Companies: liberty bell moving