{"id":7111,"date":"2016-03-04T09:40:55","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T16:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therealdaily.com\/?p=7111"},"modified":"2016-03-04T09:40:55","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T16:40:55","slug":"fighting-good-fight-supporting-legislation-customer-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/real-estate-brokers\/fighting-good-fight-supporting-legislation-customer-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting the good fight: Supporting legislation on customer reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If I\u2019m a business owner, obviously I want to get glowing reviews. Positive feedback spreads good word-of-mouth which is good for the bottom line. In a perfect world everyone would be happy with whatever is my latest product or service. But the world is not perfect so there is bound to be someone who just doesn\u2019t grasp what I\u2019m promoting.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><i class=\"icon-bookmark\"><\/i> <strong>Read also: <a href=\"https:\/\/therealdaily.com\/editorials\/a-customer-suffers-a-heart-attack-on-new-years-eve-and-another-patron-gives-the-restaurant-a-bad-review\/\">Customer leaves irate review of a restaurant for another customer suffering a heart attack<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/the-real-daily-news.png\" alt=\"bar\" width=\"100\" height=\"19\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-91813\" \/><br \/>\nThe flip side of this coin is that if I\u2019m a consumer and I just don\u2019t like you\u2019re selling I should be able to voice my opinion <em>in public and online<\/em>. I mean, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/1600\/constitution\">Constitution<\/a> protects me, right? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uscourts.gov\/about-federal-courts\/educational-resources\/about-educational-outreach\/activity-resources\/what-does\">Freedom of Speech<\/a> and all that?<\/p>\n<h2>I\u2019ll teach you\u2026<\/h2>\n<p>Well not exactly and I\u2019ve written about this <a href=\"https:\/\/consumerist.com\/2015\/12\/14\/senate-passes-bill-barring-companies-from-using-gag-clauses-to-block-negative-reviews\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">very thing<\/a>: So-called gag clauses that businesses can place in their terms-of-service that allow them to take legal action against customers who post negative Internet reviews.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately smarter heads have prevailed with the proposal of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.govtrack.us\/congress\/bills\/114\/s2044\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Consumer Review Freedom Act<\/a> (CRFA) which most recently was passed by the Senate in Mid December 2015 and now goes before the House.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t begin to tell you how important this bill is. The bill cracks down on so-called gag clauses that businesses can place in their terms of service that allow them to take legal action against customers who post negative Internet reviews.<\/p>\n<h2>Banning the gag clauses<\/h2>\n<p>More specifically, as pointed out in an online article on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketingprofs.com\/opinions\/2016\/29456\/why-marketers-should-support-legislation-on-customer-reviews\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">marketingprofs.com<\/a>, the CRFA will provide:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>A nationwide ban on the use of &#8220;anti-review,&#8221; &#8220;gag,&#8221; or &#8220;non-disparagement&#8221; clauses<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Empowerment of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and states to take action against businesses that attempt to keep consumers from posting negative reviews<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Important for <em>all<\/em> businesses<\/h2>\n<p>For business owners this proposed legislation will guarantee a number of things that many of us may take for granted:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>Freedom of speech in online reviews<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Access to honest information from customers<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The chance to learn from constructive criticism<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>The chance to turn negative reviews into positive experiences<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>An opportunity to work together against fabricated reviews<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Living and dying by the review<\/h2>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t really matter if you sell hotdogs or you sell real estate because you should stand by the validity of what you sell. Real estate in particular is filled with practitioners that live and die by ratings and reviews of their services, and therefore, in my humble opinion, this legislation needs to be supported by <strong>all<\/strong> industries.<\/p>\n<p>And guess what? If you get negative reviews (as opposed to fake fabricated reviews) then learn from it and use the opportunity as a perfect chance to put everything you\u2019ve ever (hopefully) learned about customer service into practice.<\/p>\n<h3>#CustomerReviewFreedomAct<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Consumer Review Freedom Act bill cracks down on so-called gag clauses that businesses can place in their terms of service that allow them to take legal action against customers who post negative Internet reviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337420,"featured_media":7116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[831,550,806,426,890],"class_list":["post-7111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-brokers","tag-agent","tag-congress","tag-customer","tag-real-estate","tag-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/congress.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337420"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7117,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions\/7117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}