OzBargain Received First Legal Threat
OzBargain has just received its very first legal threat! This is what happened.
Yesterday (23 April) at around mid-day I received an email from a “Senior Project Administrator” of a construction company (that shall remain nameless for now). The subject says “Your posters on our <construction site>” (somewhere in Sydney CBD). To paraphrase the email and turn it to point form:
- “your company” has placed “your poster” on “our construction hoarding” without authority.
- “your company” has discarded “our notice” of unauthorised usage, and is subjected to prosecution.
- “your company” needs to remove the posters immediately by the end of business day today.
- failing to do so, “this company” will take action to prosecute “your company” for all the cost and damages, plus recovering the legal cost.
Wow wow wow. Wait a minute — what’s that “your company” and “this company” and “your poster” — I am actually quoting literally from the email. I have no idea who the sender was, nor what the offence was. I presume “your company” is OzBargain here as that’s where I received the email, but has anyone seen the OzBargain poster around?! Anyone?! I am so cheap and I won’t even spend a cent on advertisement these days and someone is accusing me for pasting posters all over their construction site?
So I replied him an email basically saying “WTF?” but in a much nicer tone. I then grabbed his IP address from his email header, and scanned through the web server log searching for hints. It turns out that 20 minutes prior to sending me the email, he searched for the term rockstargames.com on Google Australia, and OzBargain came up at #3 on the result page! He clicked through, browsed to the About page, then the Contact page and finally fired me that threatening email (obviously he did not read our about page).
Worse, the day before from the same office IP address, another colleague of his came to OzBargain searching for Dell coupons (probably a senior colleague as this guy used Windows XP whereas the first guy used Windows 2000). Please guys! Tell your colleagues about OzBargain and they will definitely thank you for it. Not only will they find the latest sales, promotions and coupon codes here, they will also not embarrass themselves thinking OzBargain is actually an authorised representative for so and so companies (I have personally replied 20+ emails this week from those who thought OzBargain is Everyday Rewards, argh!!!).
Anyway. The same guy wrote back 5:15pm yesterday (still thinking I was from RockstarGames.com), asking me to “get on with those posters” + provide proofs that I will refrain from doing the same in the future. He then attached a few photos, which proved to be extremely helpful resolving this false accusation.
The construction site is actually just 100 metres from my office so I could have gone and checked out myself. However what has happened is now pretty obvious. Someone — presumably GTA4’s Australian distributor or some local game retailer — has pasted their posters all over constructions sites in Sydney CBD. Another person, who saw the web site adress “rockstargames.com” on the poster, googled it, landed on OzBargain, and then threatened me with suit.
So I replied back with “YOU ARE AN IDIOT”, explaining what OzBargain is, how he came across OzBargain, and declared absolutely no affiliation with the said game developers.
Now, anyone knows who is the distributor for GTA4 in Australia? Anyone knows who has been putting up posters of GTA4 in Sydney? Anyone wants to help out that poor guy from the construction company?
It’s absolutely amazing how *some* people rise to where they are in a company. This person [who sued you] needs to have a serious look at their ‘investigative’ skills. If I were the CEO of their company I’d be crazy relying on this person’s *analytical* skills.
I hope they have the grace to apologise to you for this gross misconduct in business etiquette.
As much as I’m against people over using law suites, I’m also irritated by [*****]’s that make threats like that before committing to just a little bit more research.
I think such threat slinging [*****]’s need a taste of there own medicine, I’m sure they should be made accountable for the distress caused to you!
I wouldn’t have been so kind.
I’d looooooove to have him go through all the legal mumbo jumbo, shell out the cash for legal fees, only to have a judge tell them that they are a moron for not looking before leaping.
Ps, pass on his details… just in case they end up in the job hunting market, I want to make sure I don’t hire them.
Thanks for the comments.
Yes his analytical skill is a bit lacking. However I am actually sympathetic towards him. When you woke up one morning, arrived at your construction site and saw some posters all over the place — wouldn’t you be mad?!
However I am not sure what kind of rock has he lived under over the last few years that he has not heard of Grand Theft Auto (it’s covered in main stream media all over the place). So the poor guy thought OzBargain was associated with GTA and filed the threat (note — he has never sued me but just a threat).
@jrj — I sent him the response email Wednesday evening and I still have not received any reply from him.
@Mal — well I was distressed — for the first 1 minute maybe. His initial email just does not make sense and after digging though logs with his IP address, distress soon turned into annoyance. But then I am getting at least 2-3 emails a day from people thinking OzBargain is responsible for processing their cashback rewards/fixing up their receipts/notifying their deliveries/etc so I am getting used to it.
@Jon — I have never been sued (yet) but I think it will be even more stressful. Sorry to protect the not-so-innocent but-surely-lacks-common-sense, I won’t release names + companies here.
or he could just’ve smeared it.. write something like “dont buy these” or “get these video games for free” on top of the poster. Especially that it’s coming out later this week, I would have a blast doing that! =P
Well, if I were the Project Manager - I wouldn’t be making threats to “persecute” anyone. Prosecute, maybe :-)
Maybe a return letter from your solicitor to cease and desist, or else legal action will be taken :-)
Way to go Scotty. LOL, great post. Keep us updated on what the guy said to your emails.
Or is that’s why he is still using Win 2000, because he is a bit on the ’stupid’ side. While the smarter one, gets the advantage of Ozbargain. :)
Wow Scott that’s a pretty weird story!
It seems people love using the internet to make random threats.
Haha, that’s gold. You really gotta love lawyers/solicitors!
If they actually just took a little more than 2 seconds, they would have noticed you had nothing to do with the website in question. All they need to do is a little research and they would find 2kgames is the distributor here in Australia…
@Raja — guess what. The communication ceased after I replied him explaining who we are. I should have CC’ed his two colleagues (as he did with his initial threatening email).
@John — I’ll see whether I can get some commission if I pass his email address to Dell or Acer :)
@Jonk — I thought it only happens in America. Obviously I was wrong.
@Aaron — I actually didn’t know that 2kgames is the distributor (I haven’t played games for a looooong time). Should I send him a follow up email asking how’s going with catching those putting up posters?
Scott, I wouldn’t bother telling them. I think they realise its not you, and they should be able to figure out who it is :P
Hey Scott how do you search the logs to find out what search terms they were searching for? (never knew that was possible!)
Great post btw :)