bikerepairs.com.au and threats of legal action

So you may have noticed that the thread "bad experience at bikerepairs.com.au" has disappeared from the site. As many of you know I have a pretty clear policy around what I will and won't remove from the site so I thought it best I post the events of the last few days.

For the record, I did not delete the thread. The original poster deleted the thread after I alerted her to a threat of legal action made to me by the owner of bikerepairs.com.au. I didn't ask her to delete it either, I made an enquiry whether she had received a similar communication, at which point she felt uncomfortable about the situation and deleted the thread before we could chat further.

The owner of bikerepairs.com.au felt that the original poster's discription of the event, and the discussion that followed was defamatory and damaging to the reputation of his business, and offered me an ultimatum. Delete the thead by close of business on Monday or "we will have no option but to seek legal advice for action against the blogger, website maintainer, and website owner as the post is defamatory against our business." (Sic)

We had a lengthy phone discussion this morning where I expressed my extreme dislike of being personally threatened, my opinion of the entire situation, and whether it is more damaging to have an online record of a bad customer experience, or an online record of threats to remove the online record of a bad customer experience.

We have agreed to disagree on whether this was the appropriate course of action, but we do have an agreement that I needed to post an explaination of what has happened to the thread.

That said, this site is a site to discuss cycling in Sydney, and part of cycling in Sydney is dealing with the bike retail industry in Sydney. I do not want these discussions to end, as I believe they are incredibly valuable. In the past we've had people raise issues that they've had and we've seen them dealt with positively and everyone has benefitted.

We'll have to deal with any future issues as they arise, I've never been one for blanket mandates. I know we are all aware about being careful with what we say online, so as to not defame anyone.

For the record, I didn't see anything in the "bad experience at bikerepairs.com.au" thread that I felt was defamatory, but obviously that's not something either I nor the original poster really want to have to put to the test.


I'm going to close the comments on this thread, as the owner of bikerepairs.com.au does not want another thread descending into negaivity about his business, but if anyone wishes to discuss it with me further, feel free to send me a message.

To the people who've known about these events unfolding over the last week and have sent me messages of support, I want to issue a very public Thank You! You know who you are and it means a lot to me.

Happy Cycling!