I have a page wherein I ranted about Carphone Warehouse. It attracted lots and lots of comments, most of which were just randomly obscene for the sake of it. Eventually, Carphone Warehouse themselves contacted me and asked if I’d remove comments that they found offensive, and I said I would. They sent me the following missive:
I refer our discussion over the phone a week ago in regards to the webpage of your website www.kryogenix.org which is/was about The Carphone Warehouse (CPW). Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying.
As discussed, we believe that numerous comments posted on this page are defamatory. These statements are not true and are not supported by any facts. The fact that they are posted by alleged CPW employees or former employees makes the matter even more dangerous, and readers of these statements may believe that they are a true reflection of CPW’s workplace, and more importantly, CPW’s work ethic.
We noted for instance comments implying that if your face does not fit you cannot progress at CPW. Other statements implied that CPW was only driven by money with no concern for its customers or employees.
These statements are intolerable and we would appreciate your willingness to withdraw them from the webpage. The webpage contains 246 comments, which are numerated. For convenience I will only refer to the numbers appearing in front of each statement. For clarity, the statement number one is the one that was posted on 25 February 2005 at 11.05am.
Please remove the following statements:
7/ 18/ 10/ 15/ 17/ 20/ 21/ 23/ 25/ 26/ 35/ 36/ 37/ 41/ 107/ 121/ 130/ 134/ 151/ 153/ 156/ 157/ 158/ 163/ 165/ 170/ 177/ 178/ 179/ 183/ 184/ 188/ 198/ 209/ 213.
Furthermore, we have also noted statements that were insulting and degrading. It is totally unacceptable that our employees’ names are disclosed in the comments. We therefore, demand that you remove these statements as well:
13/ 18/ 28/ 29/ 31/ 38/ 120/ 161/ 162/ 166/ 185/ 186/ 187/ 217/ 219/ 222/ 232/ 235.
As explained on the phone, we accept that people are entitled to express their views about CPW. However, there are limits to this freedom. Certain comments are extremely insulting and degrading and have caused shock amongst some of our employees. We would prefer to see the entire webpage closed.
I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you for your help in this matter.
I’ve redacted practically all the comments on the page. On the one hand, there is the voice in my head telling me that I should fight the power and that this is an abrogation of free speech. On the other hand, I just don’t care enough to be bothered about defending a group of people who are clearly just looking for a place to vent.
A brief history:
I closed off comments on the post some time back, after it got up to 250 comments. Someone emailed me and left a comment on another post asking me to open it back up so conversation there could continue, because it “was helping a lot of people”. I took, and still take, the view that this site is mine, and I run it for my benefit; it’s not here to provide people with a general discussion forum. There’s other examples of that here too; I’ve closed off commenting on a post I made being amused about Schroedinger’s Cat because it became a discussion forum for people whose cats had died, and on my how to be rich and famous post after it became a place for people to post their phone numbers looking for talent agents. So, I said that if the Carphone Warehouse employees set themselves up another place to talk about this, I would add a comment directing people to that new place, which seemed to me to be a reasonable compromise. They did so, and I did so. However, I just checked that forum, and it no longer exists.
I believe that you should fight the power. This has been something of an ethical dilemma for me, primarily because, well, first they came for the people who complained about Carphone Warehouse and I did not speak out because I did not complain about Carphone Warehouse. I don’t mind holding the torch and standing up for my beliefs. I think, though, that my desire to do ethical good ends where I’d be maintaining a fight on behalf of a bunch of people who are clearly not interested in doing it themselves (they created some other forum and let it lapse) and fighting for a position (whether CPW are a good firm internally) about which I have neither information nor interest.
Have I caved in to the Man? Should I have done things differently? Answers in comments, because I have comments on all my posts until they prove to be a liability.
Incidentally, my emailed response to them said:
I’ve removed most of the comments on that page, including all that you specified. I’m a little concerned, though: we seemed to have a reasonable conversation, in which you made a request to which I agreed, and now I receive an email containing phrases like “we therefore, demand that you remove these statements”. Do you not feel that using heavy-handed legal terminology and making demands of people who have already agreed to help you will be counter-productive? It certainly made me consider going back on our agreement because you did not feel you could be gentlemanly about it.
[...] Further updated: nearly all comments redacted. See discussion on this point for why. [...]
Posted by as days pass by » Carphone Warehouse customer service on April 27th, 2006.
I’d have told them that I would remove the offending comments as soon as they could figure out how to ask me politely. There’s no way I would have done it until they apologised for making “demand”s of me. Assholes. Did they email you back, or have they decided to ignore you now that they’ve got what they want?
Posted by Rory Parle on April 27th, 2006.
Rory: interestingly enough, yes, they have mailed back with the following comment:
Which (given the chap’s French name) is, I think, semi-reasonable. I’m glad it got sorted amicably.
Posted by sil on April 27th, 2006.
I think if your group wasn’t technical enough to put up a forum, letting them have a hosted convo here would have been good.
But they could, and didn’t (apparently). The web’s a big place and I don’t think they need to have their protest on your front lawn.
(Hey you crazy kids– get off my lawn!)
And, you know, you’ve given this more thought than most people, so there’s that.
…I do think I would have backed up all the comments so that I could provide a copy if posters had requested on to seed a forum.
Posted by Jeremy Dunck on April 27th, 2006.
I think it is entirely reasonable to not wish to be a forum for anything that any anonymous internet user may wish to publish.
You most likely would lose your hosting if you continued to publish those comments, which is not soemthing that you owe the commentors.
Posted by Andy Smith on April 27th, 2006.
Did you ever get the issue with the car kit fixed?
If they spent less time searching for bad things people are saying about them in pointless weblog comments[1] …
er, I’ll stop now in case I get redacted :)
Honestly, I’d have done the same (and did when a Christiano Ronaldo thread got seriously out of control) whilst it is a strange area to be forced into.
[1] the comments are pointless, not your weblog
Posted by Paul Freeman on April 27th, 2006.
[...] as days pass by » Redaction of comments Stuart has caved into ‘The Man’ and explains why. Looks like the right choice to me. (tags: politics blogging comment) [...]
Posted by Richard@Home » Blog Archive » links for 2006-04-28 on April 28th, 2006.
Haha, I think it’s awesome that on the strength of nothing but the title being indexed by Google you got 999 comments from people who wanted to be rich and famous. That’s genius!
Posted by Mike Hearn on April 28th, 2006.
Congratulation Mike, your trackback on how to be rich and famous is the 1000th comment :)
That must win a prize ;)
Posted by Paul Freeman on April 28th, 2006.
A friend of mine wrote a post about American History X. He got hundreds of comments from stupid people all giving their views on the movies, the skin heads and so on. Actually very few of them actually read the post. The friend left all the comments as a sociological study.
But since you have “legal” implications, you should make sure that the comments posted on your blog are legal, ie that the claims about CPW that could cause it some prejudice are backed up by facts. Then, if you remove a comment and the commentor wants to fight for his writings, then it might be worth putting him in touch with CPW before reactivating the comment.
But in no case should you take the fight of someone else, especially if the parties are not ready to fight it.
I can confirm that the French “demande” really means “ask” without any menace. As a French speaker, I didn’t find the letter agressive in any way. So don’t worry too much about it.
Posted by Merlin on April 29th, 2006.
When I read the first email response, I was kind of appalled that he had written “demand you remove” also. I’m glad he clarified that with you, especially since you went out of your way to assist him.
Posted by mojotek on May 3rd, 2006.
I had a similar experience with a horrible car dealer. My blog post and podcast was spread through the Internet via aggregation feeds. Eventually, it hit #’s 2, 3, and 4 on Google when searching for the dealer’s name. I left that dealer and went to another.
When I had a similarly poor experience at the second dealer (and posted about that as well), I went back to the original dealer. They had improved their service, moved into a nice facility, and I was very pleased. I said as much on the blog and podcast, completely forgetting about my “Google Bomb.”
NINE MONTHS LATER. . .
I get a call from the general manager of the dealership expressing his dismay at my experience and that I had “hacked” the Internet and put up such horrible statements. He asked me to remove them form Google, which I can’t do because they’re in Google’s cache and actually from other sites that just republish my posts.
I told him I’d add a clarification to my post and announce that all was well.
I agree that you should take down abusive comments and comments that are vulgar for the sake of being vulgar. But I applaud you for leaving up the original post.
For your enjoyment, here’s the page. No longer linked on my front page, but reachable through search.
http://thinkinganddriving.com/blog/2005/05/18/do-not-buy-a-car-from-jones-junction-bel-air-md/
Posted by Joel on May 4th, 2006.
AN OPEN LETTER TO CHARLES DUNSTONE
Dear Charlie,
We get told during induction training how great this company is and how employees are treated well. We’ve heard from our ‘board’ many times, of how awful Phones4U are, how they treat their employees terribly, how they demand so much and how they treat their customers with such contempt. Just look around Mr Dunstone because it’s all happening here!
A number of employees have now contacted a union and are now urging our colleagues to join. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is a highly effective union and focuses on the communications industry of which Carphone Warehouse is a part. Colleagues should join forces under the union and let CWU officially represent the workforce in dealing with management. We can only benefit from getting better fairer working conditions, fairer realistic targets, fairer bonus schemes, better health and safety practice, and in some cases coming in line with regulations that are not even bothered with!
Getting busy due to launching Free Broadband deals should not be an excuse for management to become unreasonable and over demanding. It’s okay admitting there is a need for upping staff and that this is ‘ongoing’, but knowing this to be the issue and then turn around and increase workload for existing staff – being stricter on targets and threatening disciplinaries is ridiculous!
Instore Staff had mobiles as their area of expertise and now deal with TalkTalk Landline and Broadband. Contact Centre Staff have silly call targets, how can they adhere to a scheduled break and lunch times when it’s unrealistic to control how long a customer is going to spend wanting help or fixing a problem… for the same reason how is it realistic to expect 3-6 minute calls and getting at least 10 calls an hour considering the nature of customers and the amount of problems this company creates of its own back! Besides what would a customer with his 20 questions think, if we told him “manager says we’ve only got 5 minutes!” – not much ‘First Contact Delight’ is there Charles? (Sorry, did we just here you scratching off those Five Fundamentals with your finger nails?)
Is it fair to lose out on bonus payments because they spent a little more time with our customers or did not take a ‘scheduled’ break on time because they were talking to a customer who had a problem created by the company!
Back to those scheduled breaks, why can’t Contact Centre Staff have more say over when we take them as recommended for Display Screen users or to take 5 mins every hour or 15 mins every two hours… since it can go up to 3 hours or more without a break according to the BP ‘schedule’. In fact why is there no consultation arrangement with staff on any health and safety issue (since it’s the law)?
It’s not surprising after all this (which is just the tip of the iceberg mind) that the HR Director in Warrington is avoiding talks with the Communication Workers Union.
Our glossy Staff Handbooks says the Five Fundamentals apply when we deal with each other too. So just to make it clear Charles this is not the way we would like to be treated. When it was boasted about how great this company is and the way it treats employees it was actually an over promise and under deliver. It’s looking more and more like you’re losing the argument, because if you’re not looking after us the Communication Workers Union will.
“CCCRRAASHH!!!” (That was just Charles taking a sledge hammer to the 5 Fundamentals…)
TakeTake Website http://TakeTake.5u.com
Complete With A New Forum Set Up For Staff!!!
For Communications & Coordination Of Our Efforts Send An E-Mail To:
cwu.list@googlemail.com
Use your own (not works) E-mail address.
Hopefully we will get some Give’n’Take from Charlie and his Mobile Factory
Posted by TakeTake on June 7th, 2006.
My cay died in my arms yesterday on augst 24 and the last wourds i sied to hem was i love hem and i will never forget you and that the only place hes not gone from is my hart and he wong never leave no matter what happends!i will always love hem!}= i miss hem all ready ps i will never b happy again and ill never get another cat to replace hem bye sapphire ill never forget you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by missy on August 25th, 2006.
I would award CARPHONE WAREHOUSE as worst customer service award.. instead they dont do a customer service…. Horrible .. all the mins u get from them u end up calling them back for help..
Once u buy a phone, u r stuck with it for life.. so never buy from carphone warehouse.. there are shit…
Posted by Truepic on October 10th, 2006.
The carphone warehouse ! What can I say !!! ******@@%$££$£ idiots. Never buy a phone from them
Posted by * 1 star on October 14th, 2006.
REALLY DONT BUY A PHONE FROM THEM. I BROUGHT A SAMUNG E370 THE WORST PHONE EVER AND IT DIDNT EVEN LAST 2WEEKS ! AND THEY HAVE THE CHEEK TO TELL ME THAT I HAD DAMAGED IT ! WEAK PIECE OF CRAP. CONSUMER DIRECT TOLD ME TO WRITE A LETTER AND SEND THE HEEP OF JUNK BACK TO THERE HEAD OFFICE ! THAT WAS OVER A WEEK AGO. GUESS WHAT !!!! NO REPLY!!!!! AND WHERES THE HEEP OF JUNK ?? WELL WHO KNOWS. IF I EVEN GET THE PHONE REPLACED IT BE A
MIRACLE !!!!!! LEARN OFF MY MISTAKE ..
Posted by * 1 star on October 14th, 2006.