This must be one of the most ridiculous stories I’ve heard today, so thanks to my friends at BlogBaladi for bringing this to our attention.
Most of you know how much I like to review restaurants and sometimes I may even blog about a bad experience. Imagine, getting a comment from the actual restaurant telling me I’m getting sued for simply not liking the food!! Walaw!
Well, that what’s happening to Mark from 2:48AM, a popular blogger in Kuwait, who took his wife to dinner at Benihana’s in Kuwait and gave it an OK review, (although the review irrelative in my opinion) and next thing he knows the folks over at Benihana’s leave this comment on his blog:
Dear Mr. Mark,
We are from Benihana management of Kuwait; my name is Mike Servo the GM of the Company .
Thank You for visiting us in our restaurant and dining in with your wife .I had found your comments and in your web site on Benihana.
I also found it out that our rights and name is being used in a wrong way and broadcasting the video without a proper consent from us is really annoying specially Benihana is just opened up its doors to the public.
We are seeking and consulting our legal dept. on how we can form a type of law suit against your website to be brought up to the Kuwait authorities.
We respect opinion, but we see it in a way that Benihana name have been destroyed and abused on your website.
We are eager to know your name and meet you personally if you don’t have anything to hide.
You mentioned clearly on a detour way on not to go to Benihana and go to Maki or Wasabi or Chocolate Bar and we believe that this is against the law of Kuwait, We respect our rights on not to advertise in your website and if we don’t, this will not mean that we will be hurt by your side and if this done, the court in Kuwait will be in our side to give us our rights. to make this conversation short . We want you to give us your information, your name, your number and your address so our lawyer will take it from there and be sure that you in Kuwait were the jury is
100 % clean and fair.
We also expect that you might be sending people to Benihana to make a play and that is why we have informed the CID about that, In the past we encountered your add in Subway and it is one of our companies franchise, we really didn’t give it any attention, and it very clear now that Subway is an elephant while other competitors are closing down, however this time we will not let it go and we will follow you legally.
This is the last comment from my side and LPRC side; we wish that you will be free to give us your info. BTW are you Lebanese?
Thank for your concern and we have that you are brave to give us your info and we will meet in court soon.
Salute,
Mike Servo
First of all what’s with the “BTW are you Lebanese?” comment. What does that have to do with anything BTW? Do I sense some attempt to single out Lebanese? Pretty random eh?
This Mike guy wasn’t kidding, Marc indeed got served with a court order and has to appear in court in March. They are seeking just under $18,000 dollars from him!!!
So what did we learn today kids? We learned that the next time you go to eat out and blog about it you may just get sued. So you better put a big smile on your face and tell the manager how much you loved the food when he passes by your table. Or Else!!!
This is a big blow to the blogging community because today it’s about food and the next thing you know, we’ll be getting sued for blogging about our feelings.
Restaurants here have two choices: they can either follow suit and basically commit business suicide or do what others have done, and embrace social media as the new interactive tool, where businesses will now have to listen to feedback. Like it or not.
I urge restaurants to take notes from Classic Burger Joint who gracefully placed both my review and Gino’s Blog review up on their website even though they weren’t A++ reviews . So Way To Go Classic Burger Joint. Set the precedent!
Please show your support for Mark by posting the banner I posted from Blog Baladi. We too shall not be silenced! Bisoux