How embarrassing (for Nintendo). As soon as someone threatens legal you just have to tell them you'll only be engaging via lawyers and you'll be seeking to recover your legal expenses from them once the situation is resolved.
The writer ought to be compensated for his wasted time thanks to their incompetence.
Whether it's Nintendo or a UK-local entity they sub-contract (it's a bit unclear - either way the address is store.nintendo.co.uk and Nintendo-branded), the policies could use some work.
It's infuriating to see big corporations act like bullies behind their lawyers, and equally satisfying to see good people stand up to them.
The best thing Nintendo could do - and their senior managers have a window of opportunity here now - would be to deliver a huge apology to yourself personally, along with a promise to review their entire delivery system processes.
But, at this point, I do recommend engaging counsel. As I understand it, truth is not a defense against slander under UK law.
Edit: I meant "libel", not "slander". Also, I was wrong about truth not being a defense. It's just that you need to prove the claims.
The onus is on the person who said the thing to prove it is true ("guilty until proven innocent," since it's a civil rather than criminal offence), but as long as he has documentation/emails it's all good.
Indeed, I would be astonished if they sued him for this, it would not end well for them.
Disclaimer: not a lawyer, but an election agent.
(I just got a quote this morning for a what I thought would be simply "explain my property deeds", and it came out at £500...)
I really would not recommend getting involved with libel law on a pro-se basis.
It most certainly is. Defence #1, in fact.
Under US law, the burden of proof rests on the plaintiff.
It's really not the same as threatening your neighbor with a "We'll see each other in court", for a parking lot dispute.
I never said that is system is perfect. You can create mechanisms where you look at incomes and look at percentage of fees to be paid to a lawyer. Similar to how fines are calculated in some countries.
The larger point being made was the current system of representation of giving a public counsel definitely doesn't work. We need to move towards better systems.
I'm always amazed at how afraid customers are of companies in the US/UK. Like this article, where they threaten legal action and make the customer responsible for being available to hand off the third Switch. As a customer in a western European country, I'd laugh straight in their face and wouldn't lose a second of sleep over threats like that. I may live in a country that has a weird and at times annoying obsession with rules and regulations, but when it comes to being a consumer, it's great.
Force both parties to pool resources, and hire legal help from that pool and no others. So if a large company sues an individual or small one, it pays a large percentage of the latter's legal costs.
Simply to ban private legal representation and have everyone represent themselves in court?
I'm sure large companies would act a bit more nicely if any court case meant the CEO had to personally leave the office and fight it out in court.
Banning private legal representation would be more likely to hurt everyday citizens, rather than CEOs. Large companies would just start to hire lawyers or equivalent as their CEOs. The law system is incredibly complex because our society is equally complex. This is why we train professionals for so many years, and expect them to take regular classes every year so their knowledge is kept up date.
I think it would be interesting to review outcomes of cases where a regular person or small company challenged a large company, as well as the inverse. Just how much power do large multinational companies have? I'd also expect more leniency to be shown to individuals and smaller companies acting in good faith. As I understand it, intent is a large factor in many cases.
I've never done it, but I observed that contacting customer service on Twitter is usually very effective.
Best way to go is social media, companies have "Social Media Experts" that are employed solely for online damage control.
Another way to get something done is by sending a plain snail mail letter addressed to someone high-up at the company in question. You have to figure that out yourself as if you call the call center, the reps are never allowed to give out that information or they are told to tell you a fake address/fake person or the general C/O Complaints Department. Those go to no one at all and directly to the garbage.
Now if you successfully send a written complaint letter to someone high up, everyone knows about it, cause the internal police come to investigate if anyone at the call center gave out that information (It's a huge deal and grounds to be fired).
Another thing, youtube clips, if you are recording and posting on youtube your conversation with a rep, the company has a team to watch for that stuff. Once they find you doing that, you then become a "Flagged Customer" and we prepare while we leave you on hold, get one of the better reps available and have 2-3 other managers listening in on the line guiding the rep through the call step by step.
Re: youtube clips. I don't do that, but when I call a customer service to complain and ask for a change that I know will not be well received (e.g. cancel cable) I always start the conversation by saying that I am recording the conversation on my side. And to "confirm" what you wrote, it's not unusual that after exposing my problem/demand I'm put on hold for 5/10 minutes while the employee is fetching the "domain expert to help with my problem".
I'd say being able to speak openly about a company is one of the few ways regular people have a chance of standing up to multinational corporations.
In the situation you describe, how would I go about finding a lawyer to receive communication and how much would it cost me out of pocket to simply be allowed to use their name and address when telling nintendo "talk with these guys, their my lawyers"
Have you tried this? What were the results?