Say Bad Things and Get Sued
If polishing a turd is an art form then Skullcandy is the Rembrandt of marketing. The brand that’s synonymous with making overly flashy sub par products is now suing one of their Ebay resellers after he promptly got a little too butt hurt with the brand. Here’s the full story from the Salt Lake City Tribune.
Skullcandy, the Park City-based manufacturer of audio accessories and extreme-sports apparel, has filed a suit against an Orem man, claiming he maliciously posted libelous, negative reviews of the company’s products on the Internet.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, alleges Nathan Rees of Orem trashed Skullcandy on the company’s eBay Web page after eBay shut down his own auctions of their products earlier this year.
“He signed up as several different people so he could leave negative feedback under different names,” said Matthew Barlow, attorney for Skullcandy. “Skullcandy has collected the evidence necessary proving it was him leaving the negative comments.”
The whole things rather humorous as the guy is reselling their product and used a photo of theirs to promote it. So while yes he is competing with Skullcandy and numerous other vendors it’s still helping to get their product to the masses. Granted it’s wrong to just swipe a photo and in this day and age who doesn’t have a digital camera to snap a photo of what they’re selling? The way the story reads though is that he’s not an official dealer for Skullcandy and that could be the real issue that’s at hand. Which if that’s the case awesome for cracking down on a gray marketing, but wouldn’t you dig deeper as a company to find out where he attained the product?
Now like any mature individual the guy being sued goes and leaves comments saying their product is crap. Well honestly if you’ve ever owned Skullcandy’s stuff you know it is shit. Wait are they going to sue me for saying that? Probably, but it’s my opinion their product is pure and utter shit. It falls apart fast, it’s designed to break, and generally there’s more spent on the packaging than what you get. Still is it wrong to voice your opinion on a product? Hell no speak up and use what ever liberties you have left to speak the truth the world needs more people that will do that. But use some common sense it’s not that hard to make fake accounts for anything and not get caught. Seriously ask the trolls that spout off on this site at me they’re real swarthy.
As far as damages go I bet the fact that the story of this lawsuit is getting out is doing more damage than good for the brand. Then again it’s just fun to pick on companies that will spend more on a lawsuit than fixing their product from being crap. So where do you weigh in on this?
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I’ve had a many pair of Skullcandy’s break on me, but it’s kinda my own fault… ’cause,I’m the ass that keeps buying new ones and then promptly falling on them whilst trying to be “cool” on whatever board I’m riding that day. All-in-all the product looks good, doesn’t sound bad, and they support some good people in the industry, I just wished they were made tough like a Timex.
My question is, why would the guy diss a product that he’s trying to sell? Wouldn’t it make more sense to trash on the competition (Areial 7, Beats x Dre, Sony, Frends) and hype up the garbage you’re trying to pawn off? It’s all fishy to me, but you’re right about one thing… The underlining question is: if “dude” isn’t a licensed dealer, How’d he score the product?
My guess is Skullcandy flowed it to him to promote the brand, and he tried to pocket profits. One bad apple ruins the bunch and $#*% like this is just going to make it harder for people, events, and contest to score product support… Even if it’s crappy.
Their stuff breaks easy BUT at least here in SLC you can go to the HQ and they will without question swap product out for you… dunno how their warranty is if you live elsewhere. Actually Im rocking the $10 jib buds and they are the best ear buds if ever had especially for 10 bucks but I had some Smokin Buds that crapped out just by water splashing on them WTF. If they crap out Im not too pissed about tossing another 10 bucks their way every 6 months or so. What I htink Skull Candies problem was with the dude was that he created multiple accounts to leave negative feedbacks on their sale site. Thats pretty lame and its lame that Skull Candy has to sue them to stop it….. more money more problems haha
Bought the ink’d at the local mountain because I left my sonys at home. The skull crapdys lasted three days of spring groomers before they started crackling. Lame. I brought some $20 Phillips elcheapos and the lasted the rest of the season and more
you’re definitely right that they need to spend their time finding out how he got the product. I know with eBay that after certain level of negative feedback ratio it actually hurts your ability to sell on the site and restricts your account, but why not just go directly to eBay and have that negative feedback removed and the account adjusted? this is all just a bunch of bull from all parties. I hate Skullcandy with a passion, most dollar store earbuds sound better. But then again, im just a cheapass that would rather use my in box blackberry or ipod headphones.
They have no legal reason to sue him he voiced his opinion, last time i checked that wasnt illegal.