Customer threatens to report me to Australia's Federal Prosecution Service šŸ˜‚

Envato Authors Author Hangout
#1

Long story short:

  1. A month ago Customer purchased our WordPress theme
  2. Right from the first day he asked 18 questions
  3. During this month he raised exactly 62 questions/tickets (thatā€™s an average of 2 per day)
  4. I answered all of them, but 99% of them were WordPress related as this person was completely new to the platform
  5. At some point I suggest him to read/watch some tutorials in order to understand how WordPress works first, and then come back only for theme-related questions
  6. Customer started raging and using all kind of bad language
  7. We proposed him a refund but he refused
  8. Customer starts blackmailing us, in case we donā€™t comply heā€™ll leave us a bad review
  9. We donā€™t comply
  10. Customer leaves us a bad review
  11. We respond to the review presenting publicly the whole story
  12. Customer threatens to report us to Australiaā€™s Federal Prosecution Service CDPP and Envato Service for ā€œpublic slanderā€

What should I do? What is Envatoā€™s opinion about this person? :confused:

This is by far one of the most toxic and abusive encounters Iā€™ve had with a customer in 5 years. I am totally perplexed by the whole thing.

#2

Please get in touch with the Envato Support:

#3

You shouldnā€™t offer a refund after the bad language. You can contact Envato support for the removal of the review and simple ignore his threat.

#4

Iā€™d provide him a link to Envato support and then ignore him. Especially seeing that the Federal Prosecution Service donā€™t prosecute, or even deal with, cases of defamation.

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#5

Last time Iā€™ve heard, the policy here had a ā€œliability claimā€ which says that author can be sued for no bigger amount than the item price. That pretty much settles anything.

As for the customer, just ignore him as advised. Weā€™ve had similar situations here too, youā€™re not the only one.

#6

Thatā€™s regarding damages related to the item. For exampleā€¦ you stored your bitcoin wallet address in the code of the theme and an update wiped all the info. You can sue for $59 and not the $59000 you had in your wallet.

Defamation on a public comments board would be entirely unrelated to any limitation of liability clause attached to a product.

However, if the guy was seriously considering suing anyoneā€¦ heā€™d know you donā€™t go to the federal prosecution services (he may as well have said he was going to report him to the CIA), the comment is no longer there, so heā€™d have trouble letting proving that anybody saw it, and Iā€™d be very surprised if the OP actually did defame him based on the account of events provided.

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#7

We had our share of this kind of customers. Best thing to do is to report them to Envato with proof and just ignore the customer. Depending on the severity Envato will either block them right away or give them a first and last warning. You should not offer a refund because words get out quickly.

#8

Yes, while the majority of clients are good people it is impossible to not find some bad apples.
We all got threats of bad reviews here or on social media. You can contact Envato every time you have to deal with this kind of people, everything will be sorted out.
Also you can check here about responding to requests outside of support.

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