By Eleanor Momberg
A blogger is being sued for defamation by the RCI-affiliated Quality Vacation Club (QVC) for criticising it on his website Insights and Rants.
Donn Edwards was phoned by a telemarketer last year and told that he had won a car. All he would have to do to claim his prize, he was told, was attend a prize-giving ceremony in Midrand, north of Johannesburg.
When he and his wife arrived at the venue, they discovered that the prize-giving ceremony was a QVC marketing presentation at which he and his wife, and the other "guests", were told to choose a key, after the airing of a video, to determine if he had won the car. He had not.
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| 'Now that their secret is out on the web' |
Edwards wrote about his experience, and his unhappiness about being misled, on his blog. He said that the telemarketers - who contacted him again six weeks later with an invitation to attend another prize-giving presentation, despite his name being placed on a list of people not to be called - had emphatically denied that they were marketing or selling any form of timeshare.
He also alleged that QVC and the company it had employed to market its product had violated the Timeshare Institute of Southern Africa's code of conduct by not clearly stating in their fax to his wife that the presentation they were to attend as competition finalists was for any other purpose; that none of the gifts or prizes, or the names of previous winners, were on display at the venue as required by the code; and that the telesales person had not made it clear that the purpose of the contact was to sell timeshare.
He concluded in his blog of September last year that "QVC has deliberately and knowingly set up a business venture with MargetMagix in order to flout or bypass the letter and spirit of the code of conduct, and they clearly think they can do so with impunity".
The blog led to QVC management and Edwards agreeing to a meeting to sort out the problem, but the meeting failed to materialise because of a disagreement over the venue.
Edwards' blog entries continued, with him calling QVC "a scam" and stating that the company's marketing "is clearly misleading and full of lies".
| 'They're trying to bully me into keeping quiet' |
In October last year he criticised Executive Listings for trying to lure him to a similar presentation while denying that it had anything to do with timeshare sales.
In June this year, he detailed "QVC's carefully crafted deception", warning internet users again about the "marketing pitch" aimed at getting people to invest in the holiday timeshare industry.
Earlier this month, QVC, and Paul Edkins and Ian Wilcox, who are trustees of the Quality Vacation Club Trust, and Quality Time Marketing (Pty) Ltd, served summons on Edwards. In the court document listing the particulars of their claim, they argue that Edwards' statements were made "with the intention of defaming the plaintiffs and to injure their reputation".
Each of the plaintiffs had suffered a loss of reputation, and QVC and the trust had suffered patrimonial losses. An addendum to the papers stated that the applicants were claiming a total of R461 500, including legal costs calculated to date.
In the document handed to the court, the applicants asked the Johannesburg high court to interdict Edwards from publishing any defamatory material that would further harm their reputation, and wanted the court to grant payment of R1,525 million in favour of QVC, R100 000 in favour of the two trustees and R154 000 in favour of the trust.
Dave Feldman, QVC's lawyer, confirmed that the amount being sought in damages was R461 500.
"As far as anything else is concerned the matter is sub judice so no comment," his office said.
Edwards filed notice of his intention to defend the action on Wednesday. Speaking to The Sunday Independent this week, Edwards said his concern was that, if the company won its case against him, all bloggers in South Africa would be at the mercy of corporations and institutions that wanted to shut them up.
Edwards, who is defending himself in this case, said all he was doing was expressing a "robust opinion" about a product and something that had happened to him.
"This happens to dozens of people every day, and now that their secret is out on the web they're trying to bully me into keeping quiet," he said.
"They insist that I spend money hiring lawyers who then have to hire an advocate to act on my behalf in the high court. I cannot afford that. This matter is affecting my ability to earn a living and to focus on my job."
He appealed to others who had had similar problems to contact him.
Pamela Stein, a partner at legal firm Webber Wentzel Bowens, said the blogger would be able to defend his actions on the basis of fair comment.
"The right of fair comment, along with truth for the public benefit, is one of the fundamental rights of free speech," said Stein.
"I have no doubt that commentary that is in the consumer's interests is in the public interest."
- This article was originally published on page 2 of Sunday Independent on November 30, 2008
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