Why doesn't TGP allow discussion of "deals gone bad"?

[Brian Scherzer]

I have addressed this multiple times, but it keep coming up. I'll state it again, however, in the form of an announcement. There is more than one reason why we try our hardest to keep this stuff off of the board. Possible legal issues are only one reason, but it is the one that people keep bringing up. Let's discuss this for a moment before I go on to the main reasons we don't allow this stuff on TGP.

Discussion sites like TGP are pretty well protected by law from being successfully sued by someone for what members write in their posts. The odds of a lawsuit are small and we WOULD likely win....if we can afford to hang in there financially through the lawsuit, the counter lawsuit, and then the appeals process. Prior to any appeal, we're already talking about $50,000 as a rough estimate. Most rational people would not sue if they knew that they were going to lose. Not all people are "rational"! Remember the Washington D.C. lawsuit by a judge vs a dry cleaner.......who wanted 64 million dollars for a lost pair of pants? All you need to do is talk to lawyers who will happily tell you that frivolous lawsuits happen all of the time. As an administrator of TGP my main duty is to protect the website and make sure that it continues forward. I would be failing in my duties, in my opinion, if I don't consider the general welfare of the website and make that my primary duty.

Very simply put, we do not have the time or personnel to investigate the legitimacy of a complaint posted by a member about another person or company. If contacted by the company with a request to delete the posted complaint, we are obligated to either delete the post or to investigate the truth and facts in that post. Yes, we want to protect our members, but we are not set up to do the work for an agency like the Better Business Bureau (BBB). If you feel that a company has not carried through with their end of a transaction we urge you to contact the BBB that is located nearest to where the company does business. Their job is to try to help consumers avoid being hurt by businesses......and they do it better than we can. We STRONGLY advocate that you research businesses via the BBB BEFORE sending money! You are free to post a link to a BBB site page about a company on TGP, but MAY NOT comment on any negative issues with companies on TGP. That relieves us of a heavy liability burden.