MonaVie Employee Calls Me an “Annoying Douche” |
35 Comments |
If you've been a regular reader over the last month you probably know that MonaVie is threatening to sue me to hopes of preventing you from reading my article where I asked if MonaVie is a Scam. (It's really the information in the 3000 comments that they don't want you to read.)
The threat of threat of law suit lead Tracy of Fraud Files to do some investigation of MonaVie. She found that MonaVie was editing their own WikiPedia posts to hide the Income Disclosure Statement on their own corporate site. Tracy also points out that Wikipedia doesn't approve when companies edit that kind of objective, factual information out of their own Wikipedia article.
In that Fraud Files post, Tracy notes that the IP address of 65.44.117.2 is registered to MonaVie.. That made me think... has anyone from that IP address ever commented on my site? I should run a quick search to find out.
The answer is yes, someone from within the walls of MonaVie corporate headquarters has commented on my site. Here is what they said (with a link to the source):
Lazy man really is lazy. I can’t believe you even waste your time with this. Do you have a real job or do you just sit at home on the computer getting fatter and fatter. My guess…. the fat part. Why waste time bagging on any company that you haven’t trie. I haven’t tried this but if I had chance to, I am not going to listen to the fat, lazy, sit on computer with no lover Lazy man. You’re annoying douche
Don't believe that's a MonaVie employee? Here's a screen grab from my Wordpress administration page (click for larger image):
Click for Larger Image
There are three lessons to learned here:
- If you have a company, cherish all criticism as an opportunity. If the criticism is based on unfounded information politely respond to that criticism and explain where the criticism misses the mark. If the criticism is logical, be very, very happy. You just stumbled on something I like to call "feedback." Use it to make your product or your business practices better. Some companies pay a lot of money in the form of focus groups to get this valuable feedback. The wrong way to deal with criticism is to go through litigation to try to get it removed and through name calling..
- If you are in the business of sending out threatening emails, you may want to educate your employees how the "Intertubes" work. You don't necessarily have to spend time on teaching them the details of IP addresses. Keep it simple and say "Don't use company resources to make yourself look like an immature idiot. Please save for your home computer."
- It sure seems that MonaVie is a scam.
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WOW! I think it still amazes me that people think they can talk to other people that way (whether on a blog or in person).
If this company had just done nothing about your original post, everyone would have forgot by now…but instead they chose to make a stink about it (I actually look forward to these posts to see updates…lol). Then to send a message like that to you, that just makes them look so much worse…I will always remember the name of that company and I will tell people to BEWARE!
Thanks for the update! I, for one, love your blog (and no, I don’t work for Lazy Man…this comment is legit…check my IP)
Jen
Highly disturbing stuff Lazy Man. I’m not sure what’s worse… hyping your product on Amazon.com with false reviews, or verbal attacks on consumer advocates who question your business.
Guess we’ll know in a few months. Good luck!
Wow I can’t believe that this company gets more and more unprofessional by the day..
Stay classy, MonaVie.
Oh, by the way. Your product is a complete scam and nobody should ever sell your stuff. Maybe I’ll go register douchebagemployeesatmonavie.com and have people submit all of the classy comments your horrible company leaves on blogs.
Hey google, here are some keywords for you to pick up: monavie is a scam, acai berries can kill you, monavie doesn’t work, monavie causes cancer
I’m honestly surprised there isn’t more from that IP address.
Enjoy it now monavie…Live it up while you can
That’s hilarious.
Personally, I make a concerted effort to avoid commenting on articles (or writing articles) that involve my company, and tend to not even comment on the industry very often … in 270 articles on my blog, my industry is mentioned exactly 6 times (and my company is mentioned zero times). And one of those time was by another writer, who doesn’t realize that I work in this industry. The other times are mostly passing references where it would be extremely awkward to avoid mentioning the industry.
(Now there’s a fun game … read through all 270 articles and try to guess my industry :)
The downside (getting fired or lectured for statements I make about the company) far outweighs any upside.
I also try to avoid calling people annoying douches. I prefer other terms – such as [bleep], [bleep], and [bleep]
Nice mention on The Consumerist:
http://consumerist.com/5356665/monavie-hits-blogger-over-trademarks-in-metadata?skyline=true&s=x
That’s awesome. I especially like the “I haven’t tried, but…” shtick. I’ve seen that from other commenters that I’m sure are shills for something or other (though the IP addresses weren’t registered to the company).
And I guess this person doesn’t know about Energy Gal? I mean, she’s kind of the whole reason you started looking into Monavie. Ah, blind, uneducated rage–it apparently sustains Monavie’s top-of-the-line employees. :)
Wow, classy stuff. Tracy at Fraud Files also ID’d and I noticed the same IP comment behavior from company IPs for articles we did on Haverhill Home Staging – which promotes itself incessantly on HGTV but “seemingly” has left tons of suckers in its wake. Comments from a company IP address were rave reviews of the program and questioned the competency of people who had claimed they’d been taken for a ride.
Anyway, saw the article on Consumerist today. Ironic – the attorney says remove the meta tags and cites bogus irrelevant court precedent, yet he also states that meta tags don’t have any benefit any more. So, what’s his point? If they aren’t valuable, why are they threatening to sue you? At least their attorney picked up the phone to talk to Consumerist – but no apology? How does a corporation allow a “mistake” by a “new person in the compliance dept” to go out to threaten another party? Doesn’t legal counsel review such correspondance before it goes out? Or are legal threats that willy-nilly that they’re on autopilot? Complete nonsense.
By the way, I’ll be doing a fun post on this over the weekend – and it will have “MonaVie” written AAALLLLL over it.
Always so pathetic when you catch them in a lie like this. I wonder if they wish they hadn’t messed with you now?
Darwin,
There were two different people there. MonaVie’s person cited the irrelevant court precedent. I doubt MonaVie realizes that search engines don’t use them much anymore.
The attorney from the EFF who typically protects people like me said that my best defense would be just to remove the tags, since they won’t hurt me.
However, I don’t think I’ll take the EFF’s lawyer’s advice. I think his idea is for me to escape a lawsuit. I don’t believe I’ve done anything wrong and look forward to proving it myself if necessary. Either MonaVie will win and set new cyber precedent, or I’ll win and get publicity in the process.
Aside from the horrid netiquette of the commenter, it’s also fascinating to me how the most illiterate comments are the comments coming from “an employee at MonaVie LLC”.
Jacked on the juice, indeed!
What really gets me is that these people are so stupid, they don’t realize that those kinds of comments are seen as a troll anyway. As soon as you see a comment like that, you think “oh, the looneys got out of the bin again.”
You don’t even assume the commenter believes his or her comments, or that they read the article.
All I can say is that, “I love you, Lazy Man.” You know why… because others would not be brave enough to post what you did, keep it up and actually continue the discussion.
Bravo!
BTW, can you see the Barbara Streisand Effect happening now… I can. I mean… over 3,000 comments… and you’re now at position #8 on Google when I search for MonaVie… and really, you’re at position 6 or so, because everybody knows that people skip over the Google Shopping results that come up. :-)
Woot!
I ran a series on a mortgage acceleration scam, the UFirst Money Merge Account. Tracy caught that scam as well. The literacy level of the UF supporters is about the same as that of your shill poster for MV. One poster goes on for a full page rant, time and time again, with no paragraphs and few full sentences. I don’t know if I find it funny or sad.
“I am not going to listen to the fat, lazy, sit on computer with no lover Lazy man. You’re annoying douche”
Wow, this sure changes my opinion of MV. It must be a great product with a supporter willing to write such an endorsement.
Oh, and btw – if you have the resources, one of the best ways to counter a “slap” suit is to counter sue. Especially if they are leaving harrassing messages on your blog. Also, maybe there is a “class action” – if they are doing this to other bloggers.
(A slap suit is when a big business sues a whistle blower or group to stop them from talking. Developers used to use it against citizens who would speak up at public hearings – but scammers love to threaten it too.)
Toogie might be on to something. If you have a legitimate reason to counter-sue (just consult a law office and they should be able to tell you if there is substantial evidence) you might want to do that.
On a side note – holy crap! I didn’t realize how many comments were on that post. You must have received a BOATLOAD of traffic from that. Just proves the theory – controversial posts are GOOD both for traffic and for truth!
Candace,
Good point, I had been focusing on the act of posting what she posted rather than the fact that likely lied (work at MonaVie and never tried the product?).
Toogie,
I’m so used to the trolls on my other article that one more usually doesn’t get to me… unless that troll is employed by MonaVie.
Lori,
*blush*
I thought about not posting that for a long time because I like commenters to feel that they have a level of anonymity here. I don’t typically go looking at where people are commenting from (I’m much too Lazy). However, if you threaten to slap me with a cease and desist order, the gloves are off. Don’t give me ammo and expect me not to use it.
JoeTaxpayer,
Ugh, I hate mortgage accelerators. Most of them charge big money for something you can do through online banking in about 10 minutes. I’ll have to read up on your post there.
Toogie,
I’m going to let MonaVie continue to push this more before I look into a counter suit. People have told me that it’s an option. However, if some lawyer is reading this and wants to take on a case pro-bono they know where to Contact Me.
JoeTaxpayer and LM -
As far as the literacy goes for these types of comments, it makes me wonder if they are infact illiterate or uneducated, or if they are possibly in a foreign country and do not know perfect English. If they are foreigners (nothing wrong with being a foreigner) then perhaps this is bigger than just a few guys sitting around their mansion in Some City, USA, counting their money and laughing all the way to the bank. This could span the globe, which would make it difficult to put a stop to.
But… I can see you all know more about it than I do. I’m just speculating.
Sarah, in the case of the particular mortgage scam I referenced, it’s US based, and not available outside the US/Canada.
I’ve read enough (let me hope this comes out right)to recognize the difference between an ignorant English-first-language writer and an intelligent English-second-language writer. Observing the difference is quite remarkable.
Sarah, in this case if you click the link I posted (http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx?addr=65.44.117.2&net_whois=true), you’ll see that it’s from MonaVie’s South Jordan Utah headquarters. I can pinpoint it to the office suite unless they are doing some kind of high-tech redirect.
Oh and MonaVie officially sent me a Cease and Desist a few minutes ago: See this article for background information:
http://consumerist.com/5356665/monavie-hits-blogger-over-trademarks-in-metadata
Joe, I guess I was refering to the comment in this article (the “douche” comment) and other similar comments. The first part of it is ok, grammatically correct and no spelling mistakes. In the second part, whole words are ommitted and some of the grammar seems more like English as a second language mistakes to me. Just my opinion. Or maybe the person was just really mad and in a hurry.
I have been reading all of this all day (maybe I should be working…), and it seems everything is in the US, and as I said, you all have obviously done your homework. I am just a conspiracy theorist, I guess :)
this is so awesome and hilarious. you should link to this post from the original monavie scam post. the comment really highlights the idiots that work for them.
Wow. Great sleuthing to link the IP and show the Monavie comment. And I agree with the comment above, you’ve got courage holding your ground here, and you should, since everyone is entitled to report on their experiences and judgment with companies and their products. It’s clearly Monavie’s employee that has engaged in slander with those comments, and not yourself.
If you think MonaVie’s a scam then don”t go to an ATT store. You might come out with extra features you never asked for and this is from a manager. But these big guys at these MLM companies are good at making lots of money for themselves and their executives. But can someone explain how in the world are these type companies making so much money?
bwahahahah!! I try to avoid calling anyone an annoying douche in writing anywhere, but this is hilarious. Way to go, MonaVie.
Although my favorite part is the “with no lover” because that obviously means your opinion doesn’t count. Oh, and you’re married. Morons.
hahahahaha
you must be really cutting their profits lazy.
you should be proud of yourself i wish i could catch a company like this
To continue keep the party goin’, summarize the full situation from a third party’s point of view, and sprinkle in some of my own commentary, I posted this up at
http://everydayfinance.blogspot.com/2009/09/monavie-monavie-monavie-ridiculous.html
I generally don’t drop links on blogs, but so you can find it (and of course I’ve linked back here) I hope you enjoy and the article.
Oh and, the horror – I used “MonaVie” in my title (3 times in a row – oooohh), url and label for the article.
How the “intertubes” work? DUDE – That is just HILARIOUS!
MORE! MORE! MORE!
Never heard of monavie before. I can’t believe people are so gullible as to be scammed by such a ridiculous product as monaivie. Funnier still that their own employee felt the cloak of internet anonymity would allow him to get back at Lazy Man by making pithy comments–yet it clearly has backfired and only makes them look bad. It’s little things like this that can make a big difference in a lawsuit (if it ever comes to that). I imagine the monavie lawyers are pretty ticked at this comment. What a con.
at least they should hire literal people who can speak proper english. Or maybe this is that dude in the legal dept who started all this ;-)
“at least they should hire literal people”
agreed, the metaphorical customer service people piss me off.
(Forgive me, LM, a weak moment)
Hah, thanks for the laugh. Funny how now whenever I read the word “douche” I think of Kanye West.
p.s. You have 440 unmoderated comments?! Thanks for making me feel better about my blog habits. :)
Does MonaVie really hire employees that illiterate?
I work with a number of people for whom English is a second language. Their writing is far better than that in the posting.