Is a negative comment about a paid sponsor not allowed? Recently there was a thread in the Retail Brokers section entitled "Done With Amp" by JNL. It piqued my interest and I tried to go back to it and it was gone. However, Google still has a cached part of it. When last I saw it, the criticism seemed honest and constructive and I was awaiting Amp's reply. I read the "Terms and Rules" and I don't see what was wrong. But maybe my skin is a little thicker than Amp's. Are threads that the paid sponsors don't like simply deleted at their request? (I'm guessing that that's what may have been done here; forgive me if I'm wrong.) It would be helpful if I could learn specifically what was so egregious that warranted the deletion of not just a single post but this entire thread. I need to know as I don't want to violate the rules. Thank you.
Aside from the fact that there were posts in the thread that contained racial stereotypes and mischaracterization of AMP staff, I contacted the original poster via private thread and simply asked that he contact AMP because they wanted to verify that he was indeed a customer and that the issues that he alleged in the thread had actually happened. And if they found that there were indeed problems with his statements, etc., they wanted to fix those issues. He told me he refused to do that and then proceeded to bash me because I wouldn't let him hide behind an anonymous username with basically zero post history and slam AMP ad nauseum about all sorts of things that they are more than happy to work out with him. He then asked to have his account closed, so that's exactly what I did.
So just to summarize, you can post a negative experience about a company's product or service, but if your posts get disputed by the company that you are complaining about, then the thread will get removed from public view until you identify yourself and the issues get verified and sorted out. Otherwise, it's just too easy for a competitor to create an account here at ET and then generate negative publicity with absolutely zero accountability.
Sounds fair enough. While we're talking about post censorship though, what's your "policy" on changing what someone posted without informing them? For example, I posted a reply to someone else's post. The post I replied to was deleted, which made my reply a little hard to understand, granted. However someone went in and actually changed the wording in my post to account for the missing post I was replying to. In general deleting my post would have been fine, although it wasn't in any way violating the site rules perhaps the post I was replying to was. However changing it, essentially putting words in my mouth without acknowledging that it wasn't actually my post, seems to go a bit beyond the pale. Is it your policy to do this?
Sig, let it go already. It was over a month ago that an inappropriate post by another member was removed and you quoted him. So that quoted portion was also removed from your post and then a small fragment of your own statement no longer made sense so it was slightly edited. Slightly. You already complained about it here and now, in this thread about criticizing sponsors, you are dragging it along once again and making an off-topic post. I apologize for altering a couple of words in your post without consulting you and getting your approval. Now let's all move on.
@Sig, we take it on a case by case basis. The bottom line is that whenever possible, we try to preserve your post when it's in response to another post that got deleted instead of just outright deleting what you submitted since you did put time and effort into it. So if it takes a little fiddling with your words to preserve the essence of what you posted, we view that as probably a worthwhile task more often than not.
It's his website, his private property -- he can act like evil dictator Kim Jong-un for all I care -- no one is making you hang around here if you don't like it.
You never had the common courtesy to respond to me either in the thread, by PM or email. Hopefully it's not too much to ask that you respond to someone when they respectfully bring up a legitimate issue? When you don't, they're going to keep posting about it because as far as they know you either didn't see it or are ignoring it. Now that you've responded I consider the matter closed, thank you.
Absolutely true. From my interactions with the owner I've gotten the distinct impression that he is anything but an evil dictator and cares what users think. Generally that kind of person appreciates knowing about and having the opportunity to address issues; I'm guessing he doesn't have the chance to read every single post.