Just to address the wider issue: As discussed before, we have no issue with people posting complaints of what they perceive to be shoddy service or products on the forum. As far as that goes, your posts are your responsibility. As with any public forum, if you are prepared to make a statement or proffer an opinion, you must be prepared to back it up and accept others may have dissenting views. Beyond a few basic rules, we provide the tools for your free speech, but the responsibility for what you say remains yours.
Furthermore, in making any comments you must be personally prepared to accept any consequences from an irate supplier or manufacturer if they feel your comments are slanderous. If they choose to take legal action against you, the onus is on you to prove in a court of law the factual basis for your comments.
To be fair, it is not easy for a manufacturer/dealer to respond as they might wish to on the forum because of the rules barring what could be deemed as advertising or promotional. Having said that, they do have a right to respond to any criticism and I'll merely make sure any such post to make sure it falls within the rules.
Of course, the other (simpler, safer) option is to do what the Gearpage does and ban all such discussion completely:
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/announcement.php?f=20&a=70
After all, there are other forums better suited to that kind of consumer action (e.g. www.hellopeter.com) ...but we would rather not do that unless we really have no other option. Just to be clear - it is also within our rights to delete anything and everything we want to without notice or explanation (a la another forum specifically for users of one major US brand), but that is also not how we want to run GFSA. As a matter of fact, the rules state that any query on moderation should be done via PM rather than on forum, so I could have deleted this thread too. However, these things are judged on a case-by-case basis (and the rules are constantly subject to revision) and I thought the interests of the forum better suited by leaving it and responding.
