Hello,

Recently my support forum had a person posted negative remarks about my services. Now here is the interesting part :)

After he posted, he signed up for another account and than replied with another account created at almost the same time as the first and also posted a thread less than 10 minutes back to back with the complain thread. :emlaugh:

Whats worse... he even replied and recommended another site where they provide the same service..... My moderators were confused for a few minutes and then after I analysed the situation and then found it fishy....

The Moderators checked his IP and both the posters had the same IP address even :stickout: Also he found another similiar thread posted on another company's support forum.

Should I send a complain to the site that he advertised or should I just leave it be for people to read the thread and be amused by how the ways people try to take competition?

Suggestions or advice on the course of action?

really strange

Hello Galacnet,

People using your forums should refrain from posting competiting URLs on your forums. I would remove it, however, it's your call.

Originally posted by UniServe Hosting
. . . I would remove it . . . So would I.

Well, by making it look like *************

Censors are :cool:

Originally posted by UniServe Hosting
People using your forums should refrain from posting competiting URLs on your forums. I would remove it, however, it's your call.
I would remove it too. :eek3:

You should immediately remove him; otherwise he will create more self promotions and will generate fake reviews & other nuisance.

Yes that was what I thought, until the following post by people started pointing out what the user is doing.
Then the next remaining threads I see other users starting to return post of why the thread sounds funny and pointing out his loop holes.

I had this kind of threads before but normally its only 1 user trying to be funny and postuing negative threads, never one that actually post a negative thread and sign up for another account to promote another site.

But should I alert the other site?

I did a Whois on that domain and found that it has been running since 2003.....

Do you have warned him?
I think simply remove it and forget it, but don't forget his IP.

Nope, pointless, because those emails he used are hotmail addresses and I suspect that its also created for the purpose of mere verification of the accounts.

how did I know? because he was "dumb" enough to mis-spell one of the account emails that he entered and created 3 accounts with 2 accounts holding similiar emails.

I am still thinking if I should get to the main site about it. Could be someone flaming them though.... but this has happened on another forum as well which is not mine and one of the other users pointed this out as well.

Delete the thread, ban his IP and let the other site handle this on their own.

my 2cents.

I would ban the user, edit out the URL he added but leave the thread there, lock it and respond to it saying that the two users are the same person.
By leaving it there you are doing two things:
1. For those who DID see it, they dont think you have something to hide. If you did delete it, it will lessen the value of the 'lack of complaint' threads in your forum because they will just think you delete anything thats bad and thats why you are squeaky clean.
2. People are going to be interested in it, and its good for them to see that people who post like this are just trouble makers and it isnt a real complaint.

Looks like you took most of the advice already posted in this thread about THAT thread. Last thing you should do is put a note at the top of the thread (edit the original post) noting the first and second poster are in fact the same person. That way people don't have to scroll down to read the comments.

If the moron comes back again, lock future threads and point back to the original thread. Sometimes keeping a thread around can be useful for highlighting the abusiveness of certain members to all other members.

Why not name and shame the company that was trying to steal customers? (i skim read this thread, I wasn't really following your post, so i hope i'm on the right wavelength).

Thanks for the advice :) I will keep that thread and lock it.
Shows how some people try to promote their services and in a way that is unethical and damaging to others.

Well as for discolosure, I wouldn't want to do that, because I am not sure that if its a prank or the actual person.

As I said this site has been in operation for quite sometime and is not a startup site.