Legal letters sent to me on behalf of Sky Handling Partners
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my site using a feedreader or email. Thanks for visiting - Damien.
I just got emailed a pdf scan of a letter that has been posted to me via a legal firm on behalf of Sky Handling Partners. They have requested I take down the two posts about Sky Handling Partners.
Note: They have not threatened litigation and have not asked for an apology.
It seems Sky Handling Partners have called the Gardai too. They also chastised me on my use of bad language. Yes, really! How many people have ever seen a solicitor’s letter than contains the word cunt at least three times? ME! I’m sorry but I can’t post the letter on my blog, thus why I’m giving you all the highlights.
I will not be taking the blog posts down.
This is my first takedown notice. I’m framing it and replacing my framed copy of Joan Burton in her pink suit with that on the shrine. Sorry Joan, the fickle tastes of bloggers. It was nice though. Really.
Digg it! |
Reddit |
Del.icio.us |
Stumble Upon |
Google
June 21st, 2007 at 5:35 pm
[…] UPDATE: Legal letters sent to me demanding I take this post down. […]
June 21st, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Come on, we all want to see that letter…
June 21st, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Can I have the photo of Joan so?
June 21st, 2007 at 5:41 pm
What the hell? THEY are asking YOU for something…. really! Is that the only contact???
June 21st, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Hah. Do they have any idea at the legal trouble they’re in?? Utterly clueless. Someone in the company has basically committed identity theft from the IP evidence and they have the cheek to do that??!
Sue them, make them pay. You can threaten them with litigation in reply to their legal letter.
It would be interesting to hear what the Guards told them.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Do you think they realise just how many other blog posts have been posted about them in the last 24 hours?
June 21st, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Do them Damien!
June 21st, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I am an Irish lawyer working in this area - I feel strongly about this sort of thing> if you want free advice on this email me
June 21st, 2007 at 6:23 pm
There is some phrase about when you’re in a hole and that there is something you should stop doing but I can’t for the life of me think what it is.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:26 pm
My god. If this wasn’t so shocking it’d be funny.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Mental Damian, stick to your guns and don’t let those Sky Handling fuckers mishandle your [genuine] reasons for complaining. There’s way too much of this auto-litigation stuff doing the rounds now online and they need to be told where to get off. Freedom of speech is not going to be poured down the www cyberpipe.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Oh dear oh dear oh dear… are they actively attempting to make this worse?
June 21st, 2007 at 7:23 pm
What
a
bunch
of
nimrods
June 21st, 2007 at 7:27 pm
If I was working for this particular company, I might be tempted to try and lead this off into a cul-de-sac. I’d feel desperate to find a red-herring onto which I could deflect things. I’d try hard to muddy the water and put a lot of emphasis on the crude language.
If I was working for them, I’d be hoping there will be a change of management and direction, to get us out of this hole.
Considering the gravity of the assault on Damien’s identity and reputation, my view is that anger is entirely appropriate. When people are rightly angry, it is reasonable for them to express their feelings loudly.
Thanks for keeping the community posted.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:39 pm
What in the name of Jaysus do these lads have stuffed between their ears instead of brains?
June 21st, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Nearly 34,000 visitors ! Fluck me…go for it laddie
June 21st, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Something tells me that this company is royally screwed. Can’t wait for the Sunday papers this week.
On another note, it sounds like they’re in the preliminary stages of seeking legal advice. If I were you I’d cut them off at the pass and have your case heard first.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Yep, really looking forward to the Sunday papers this week
June 21st, 2007 at 8:24 pm
/headdesk. Well, this explains nicely why they couldn’t control your luggage…they were too busy trolling dating sites! /snorfle I mean, come on. If they had a clue, they would have backed down. And since when does Damien step *back* from anything resembling a fight? /makes popcorn
June 21st, 2007 at 8:32 pm
The Sky Handling Partners Team Song
Hi hey, hi ho, it’s off to court we go,
Our reputation’s f***ed
But our brief is booked
So it’s hi hey, hi hey, hi hey, hi ho
June 21st, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Quick, get these people more rope!
June 21st, 2007 at 9:03 pm
When all this is over you can make money from it in a variety of ways
Firstly, you can charge SHP for teaching them two key customer care lessons [1] How not to handle customer complaints, and [2] The awesome power of word-of-mouth.
Secondly, you can write all this up as a classic customer case study.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:32 pm
You do realise though, right and all as you are, that next time you fly out of or into Ireland your bags will most probably end up in Kathmandu? Or worse still, Cork.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Ha ha! Best comment there out of the whole litiginous lot Matt!
June 21st, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Damien - how much incoming traffic are you getting from the Sky Handling Partners servers? I’m sure they’re all over the comments here…just curious…
June 21st, 2007 at 9:59 pm
[…] Not content with the current shitstorm boiling around them (see previous post), Sky Handling Partners have issued Damien Mulley with a lawyerific take down notice. Has anyone noticed how these are becoming a badge of honour among bloggers now? It’s like earning your bones. You’re no one until your Citizen Journo antics have enraged the corporate greedheads. […]
June 21st, 2007 at 10:24 pm
[…] After some less than fruitful conversations with the folks at Sky Handling Partners, Mulley posted again about his issues, only to receive an e-mail from a law firm telling him to take down the posts. […]
June 21st, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I’m predicting that Sky Handling Partners are about to change their name.
I mean, how thick are these people?
Damien started a lobby group because he couldn’t get decent internet access. What the hell did they think he was going to do when they made it personal?
Jesus, the only thing that might save them now is an apology, an explanation and a gift of some sort.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Gets the candyfloss out to join with Elana’s popcorn.
Maybe we could run a conference for them to teach Sky Handling Partners and their legal representatives about blogging and how it works? And how there are lawyers who think that they can scare off someone behind a PC
And then there are bloggers with lawyers and legal academics, marketing and communications professionals, IT experts, journalists, and customers of every airline that Sky Handling Partner deals with riding shotgun on this matter now.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Go get em champ. Grrrrrrrrrrrr
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 am
[…] UPDATE: Damien writes that what Sky Handling Partner decided to do was get its lawyers to write to him asking that his post be taken down. The story, which had around 1,200 Diggs when I wrote this post is now approaching 3,000 Diggs. Sky Handing Partner needs communications skills, not legal skills right now. […]
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:52 am
What if we all agreed to reprint the original post word for word on our blogs, would we all then get such letters?
One to think about….
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:59 am
[…] Sky Handling Partners have got the lawyers involved and sent Damien a letter requesting that he take down the post. […]
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:14 am
Wow.
Fairly unbelievable really.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:26 am
Hi, in case any of Sky Handling Partners are reading this, you lot lost my luggage in December 2004 and I think you are cunts too.
Luv,
Jonathan
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:57 am
[…] log on to this link and enjoy the ride. (The full story includes another link and this link too. This is far from over.) […]
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:24 am
My god, they are really trying to dig themselves out of a hole. Publish the letter dude! They wont send another one if they know its going to end up on the internet. In all fairness the word ‘cunt’ is pretty crude and should not be used by anyone according to my girlfriend. But when a company whom you paid (indirectly) to handle your luggage signs you up for gay dating websites when you complain about them losing your luggage well… I cant really think of a better word to call them!
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:44 am
Re. the name change, I’d say Shy Handling Partners might work for a while.
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:11 am
Damien, fair play to you, you said what everyone who has travelled through Dublin airport thinks as they wait at the lottery machine that is baggage reclaim but I hope to god you are talking to a solicitor before they take the initiative and drag you to court first in an attempt to shift the focus onto your earlier posts.
Interesting that they set the lawyers on you instead of taking the sensible approach of saying that it was a junior member of staff acting without the knowledge of management and in severe breach of company regulations so the person responsible had been fired. Instead they decided to dig in and stick by their man and claim it’s all your fault no matter what happens to the company reputation? Crazy.
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:14 am
[…] OMFG - this will make case studies for MBAs in the future: “How NOT to handle negative publicity via Social Media” […]
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:00 am
[…] Can Sky Handling Partners or their lawyers tell the world - through their (prehistoric!) website or maybe start their own blog - what exactly are you doing to investigate who signed Damien up for the dating sites with the lurid ads from the IP address registered to your company and it’s predecessors? Now we know at the moment you are sending take down letters but that really isn’t good enough, you know it and the blogging world and all those who read blogs (47 thousand on Damien’s yesterday and then every one else who blogged about it.) […]
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:32 am
ahhh… hahahaha! What the hell are these guys thinking?
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:41 am
@Declan - I’d guess they don’t even know what all this is about. They probably presume that this is a customer service issue, and that Damien has been over-zealous with his commentary. From all accounts how very wrong they are.
Good God are they going to need some reputation management after all this.
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:52 am
That settles it… boat and train all the way on the summer holidays for me and the missus so these muppets don’t lose me bags, sign me up for stuff and then set the legal beagles on me when I get shirty about it.
Well, at least I’d get shirty if I had a shirt. It would probably be in the bags they lost on me. Feckers.
Then again, given the grasp they have on geography and efficiency (quickest way from Cork to Dublin is via Birmingham???) we shouldn’t be too shocked at the tenuous relationship they seem to have with the reality of the situation. By putting the boot in like this they’ve pretty much shut the door on the “it was poor timmy’s first and last day with us” defence.
But next time I stab someone to death remind me to get the lawyers to send them a stern letter berating them for blunting my knife. (the logic is similar).
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:57 am
also i think galwaywegian left a few letters out of the new name…
I’ll take a T and an E please and then we can all play the countdown conundrum together.
Also, I’m confused after re-reading Damien’s post… they’ve called the gardai? What offence pray tell has the bould Damien committed?
June 22nd, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Nils carborundum desperandum, and all that. Would love to be a fly on the walls of Sky Handling right about now…
June 22nd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I think that’s a very good idea. If the contents of the post are mirrored on lots of sites around the world, even if they try to force Damien to take his copy down, there will be several hundred more - no way they can supress it, and the more they try, the more they’ll actually draw attention to it!
The behaviour of this company is nothing short of unbelievable.
June 22nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
OK you got me, this is some sort of a joke right?
Un-fuck-ing-bel-iev-able, take up the offer of free legal advice and nail them to the wall.
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Tell them you’d like to take it down, but you just can’t locate it.
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Liking URQUHART’s above suggestion a lot!
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
More importantly, have you made any plans for the wad of cash you’re going to get from this in the court settlement?
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:19 pm
[…] With the saga of bad customer service that is Skygate still raging, I thought I would post an example of how to do it right: […]
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Did you ever get your bag back?!
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Any chance Irish law will admit the precedent of the celebrated reply in Arkell v. Pressdram (1971)?
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Anyone travelling with Air Arann on Monday, or thinking of using them in future should look at this link
“http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0612/aerarann.html?rss”
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Also, I’m confused after re-reading Damien’s post… they’ve called the gardai? What offence pray tell has the bould Damien committed?
It might be that they have lodged a complaint to the Gardaí that they believe that an employee committed a criminal act using their equipment.
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Not going the ‘one (easily disposable) bad egg’ route implies someone further up the ladder is responsible for this mess. Who’s up for a good conspiracy theory?
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Just reading Sky Handling website about employment opportunities, on the basis that there may be some vacancies soon:
“Employees at all levels are given as much responsibility and authority as possible.
We promote a culture of dynamism and innovation, which allows employees to be creative and inspired to excel. Employee input is always valued.”
So signing customers up to gay dating sites could be within the job remit…using my innovative creatism…to excel…after all there is no such thing as bad publicity…is there?
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:25 am
[…] 1. No doubt you have read about the sorry tale of one company by the name of Sky Handling Partner, who have made threats against our own Damien Mulley. I guess it is much easier to send a nasty legal letter than to apologise or simply to do the decent thing, whatever that may be. This is a storm, and it has caused no amount of negative publicity (not to mention Google juice) for said company. I hope Damien kicks their sorry asses around the airport. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? (As it happens, the Tom Raftery, Tim O’Reilly and Web 2.0 story was around this time last year. Lesson: don’t mess with Irish bloggers) […]
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Damian, I’m sure it’s in the Tribune already but I hope other newspapers follow up on it tomorrow. There have been a few prosecutions in Ireland relating to cases like this.
There was a guy who took his revenge on a woman by writing her name and telephone number in phone booths and claiming she was a prostitute.
While the medium is slightly different, the motivation is similar. Whoever is responsible for this should be brought to book.
June 24th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
[…] My one hope is that I don’t end up in the same situation as Damien Mulley and his wandering baggage. He is so pissed off that he’s resorted to a potty mouth post that made even this hardened traveller wince. But I understand why. Damien’s attracted the attention of some legal eagles. But sometimes there are worse things than either I or Damien have endured. As Bernie Goldbach writes: Shortly after leaving Shannon, passengers noticed “a tidal wave of sewage” spilling from under the toilet doors. […]
June 24th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
[…] En irländsk bloggare, Damien Mulley, flög med SAS från Köpenhamn tillbaka till Irland. Tyvärr blev han av med sitt bagage och skrev, efter att ha väntat några dagar på bagaget, ett inte så glatt blogginlägg om saken. Någon på det företag som sköter bagagehanteringen, Sky Handling Partner, läste inlägget och kom på den kreativa idén att registrera Damien Mulley på några datingsidor. Och sedan ville, förstås, företaget att Damien Mulley skulle ta bort blogginläggen. […]
June 24th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
hey, read about your story in the Sunday Times today. Great to see that you are “standin up to the man”.
June 24th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
[…] One of the confirmation emails included the IP address that the registration had been received from - and a quick reverse DNS revealed that the IP belonged to ‘City Jet Handing Dublin’. So he phoned them up, complained about it, said he felt libelled, quoted parts of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001 to a quivering phone rep from SHP… and then that evening got a rather stunning letter asking him to remove the blog. […]
June 25th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Thanks Tipster, I suspected that was the case but everything else they’ve done has made such little sense, and given the context, I just wasn’t too sure.
It does beg the question though - if they’ve called the peelers on one of their staff why the threatening letter to Damien? Why no “oops we’ve buggered up but are fixing it and would like you to post that on your blog kind sir”?
And now they’re in the papers. I’d hate to be sitting in their canteen this morning.
June 26th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Wow. Hard to belive. Looks like you’ve got teh internets behind you anyway
June 27th, 2007 at 2:08 am
[…] Well, what happened next, you might be wondering? Did Sky Handling Partners come out with their hands up and confess? Did they fuck. The next thing Mulley saw was a letter from a lawyer, threatening him. […]
June 27th, 2007 at 2:22 am
It’s ludicrous. It’s on my site. I hope everybody else repeats it too. And don’t forget to DIGG it and Delicious it and every other thing you can think of.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
[…] Now the story descends into farce. Then he got a solicitors letter. A letter which requested that he remove his posts about Sky Handling Partners. So yet again, as any sane, normal person would do, he blogged about it again. Oh, and he refused to remove the posts. His hosting provider, Blacknight Solutions, sided with him. In fact, they even moved his site to a higher capacity server to handle the load. […]
June 28th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Having read this and all the previous related posts, and most of the comments, I can’t believe how they are handling this (pardon the unintentional pun). In fairness to them, it was probably just some youngfella on his lunch break who decided it would be hilarious to create false profiles of you on those websites. Still they’re response — or lack thereof — is what surprises me. They’re not a small company, they should know better how to react.
As for the lost bags, and your understandably frustrating dealings with SAS, Sky, Aer Lingus etc… Sky Handling are one of a few main handling companies in Dublin airport, but their presence in Cork airport is recent and they only handle some cargo and charter flights (and thus don’t have a regular cutsomer-facing presence in the terminal). Aer Lingus in Cork do their own handling, and Servisair has the contracts for all the other scheduled airlines. That could explain why it might seem like the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing when you encounter baggage hassle in either airport, and also why it can be hard to contact anyone responsible.
Now, obviously if your bag was in Dublin it would ideally be flown direct to Cork as soon as possible. But since Aer Lingus then had your bag, and they no longer fly Cork/Dublin, the quickest way for them to get the bag to Cork would be through a nearby airport that Aer Lingus fly to from both Cork and Dublin, presumably that’s why they said it was going to Bermingham. I can only hazard a guess as to why it came on a BMI Baby flight — they fly the route more frequently than Aer Lingus so it might have been another effort to get the bag to you as quick as possible.
Anyway, it’s good to hear that someone was able to help in the end. Now we wait in anticipation to see the outcome of your dealings with Sky Handling.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
[…] I got involved and commented several times on Damien’s blog. I also wrote about it here. I noticed lots of people, like me, jumping on the bandwagon condemning the company. […]
July 16th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Would someone please let me know what happened next?
July 29th, 2007 at 1:28 am
so what happened next?
December 28th, 2007 at 2:44 am
So where are we at with this? You still getting email from gay dating services why this company gets away with it? Update us please.