Company taking reviews from Steepster
All,
I noticed that Darjeeling TeaXpress has been taking the reviews I wrote from Steepster and posting them on their website under reviews and making up bogus “star” ratings. They did not ask my permission to do this and I consider it to be in very bad taste and extremely rude behavior.
Here’s a great example of how not to treat your customers, I think I will take my money elsewhere in the future.
Oh no! I have never ordered from them but unless this is settled I surely won’t. That is not cool. I could even see forgiving taking the reviews because I know once we put something on the internet its out there pretty much up for grabs without a copyright on it BUT putting fake stars is the last straw for me. Even just taking the reviews without asking is bogus.
I agree! They should do what everyone else does and put a Steepster button on their product page, with permission. According to the terms of use on the site, you retain the copyrights to what you write and Steepster may republish it but that does not mean they are free to copy and paste it to their own webpage!
I hope they just do the right thing and take the bogus reviews down.
That’s pretty… shady. Especially since they could have easily just contacted you and ASKED your permission. Or, even better, just asked you to resubmit the review yourself to their site.
Have you contacted the owner about it? I’m hoping they meant well and didn’t realize it was copyright infringement. Maybe they thought since you rated the tea so highly you wouldn’t care?
Rachel,
Yeah I emailed them about it earlier today and I also notified Jason, we’ll see.
I hope the company makes it right. fingers crossed.
You think that’s bad? I knew a friend of mine who lost a TON of weight, and had a very popular blog about it. Well, one of those weight loss supplement diet pill companies took her before and after photos and used them on their website, without her permission. And the worst part is, she had NO affiliation with this company and never used the product in her life. She actually ended up suing. Geez, what a mess. Nothing is sacred on the internet :(
Wow, that company sure has a lot of nerve to do that. I’ve had 2 separate tea companies (that I know of, could be more I guess) steal product pictures of my tea from my website and use them to sell their own tea. Besides it being completely wrong to me, it is very deceptive to their customers since that is not going to be what they are getting. Completely odd, since my photos aren’t professional.
Amy oh-Good luck, I hope you get things resolved. When I had my issue with one of the companies that didn’t get back to me, I contacted their hosting company and that worked.
For the record – professional or not – your photos are awesome! Very uniform and pretty :)
Yes, they appear to have used some of my reviews without my permission. I have an account on their site and those reviews do not attribute my account there or here. I will be complaining to them again. I had an issue with shipping from them before, this doesn’t make it any better…
Amy, I got your note and will look into the situation. While we certainly want to help companies promote their teas and find new customers, we don’t condone this type of activity. I’ll update as I know more.
Thank you Jason. It’s not like I’m going to lose any sleep thinking about it but I just thought the Steepster community should be aware of it. :)
Heck they could at least send you some free samples for your contribution! Maybe we all need to tag our reviews with something like:
The views expressed in this review are property of (insert user name) and may not be used without permission!
I hope they remove the unauthorized material and apologize soonly.
That does seem wrong to me as well. I don’t have a problem if someone quotes a tasting note that I’ve written, but I do appreciate it if they ask my permission first, but I certainly would not appreciate them implementing some rating system and adding a rating to your review. That’s really poor form, in my opinion. Really wrong. I would certainly think twice before ordering from them based upon this.
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