Chris and I have been marketing our businesses online for over 15+ years now and we have a great reputation for being professional and ethical. We have worked really hard to have that great reputation and to maintain it.
However, a couple of years ago we ran into someone online who was a competitor of ours and this woman had it out for us! She would run around and spy on our web sites, join groups we were in, email nasty things to our advertisers and sponsors and spread nasty untrue things about us to those she met online.
In my professional opinion, this is a form of online stalking and bullying and we didn’t like it at all. It was immature and unprofessional to say the least.
With that said, we pride ourselves on how we handled the entire situation which drug on for almost a year and a half. While this person was out stirring up trouble and saying nasty things about us, we kept our mouths shut. That’s right folks, we did the RIGHT thing by not engaging this person in that type of behavior.
What we learned as we went through that horrible ordeal is that eventually those type of people will hang themselves and others will see who the real victim was. People who act this way will eventually get bored and move on to someone else they can push around and victimize next.
By us keeping it to ourselves, we have kept our good reputation intact and our professionalism continues to shine through. After all, when you are doing business online, your reputation is everything!
Have any of you ever dealt with a jealous competitor online who said and did nasty things towards you? If so, how did you handle it?