Welcome to The Farming Forum (TFF). This is a meeting place for discussion and the exchange of information on subjects (broadly) relating to agriculture and farming / rural matters.
As a forum member, you can post messages in the forums. It's a very useful resource for any agriculture related questions as there are plenty of helpful members who know a lot about the subjects and are prepared to give advice. And maybe you can help other people by sharing your valuable experiences, too.
We try to maintain a friendly and relaxed atmosphere which is suitable for a wide audience. To this end, we ask that all members read and adhere to the following rules.
The providers ("we", "us", "our") of the service provided by this web site ("Service") are not responsible for any user-generated content and accounts ("Content"). Content submitted express the views of their author only.
You agree to not use the Service to submit or link to any Content which is defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, contains adult or objectionable content, contains personal information of others, risks copyright infringement, encourages unlawful activity, or otherwise violates any laws.
All Content you submit or upload may be reviewed by staff members. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). Do not submit any Content that you consider to be private or confidential. Do not submit any content that you may want to make private again in the future. We do not review any content unless alerted to it.
We reserve the rights to remove or modify any Content submitted for any reason without explanation. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be undertaken only at our discretion. We reserve the right to take action against any account with the Service at any time. By registering with TFF you consent that all the content you create on the TFF Forums is free of copyright at the point of submission to the TFF Forums and becomes property of Agri Web Media Limited (the owners of the TFF Forums) upon submission to the TFF Forums.
We reserve the right to release any information held about you to a third party should a court order require us to do so.
You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service.
These terms may be changed at any time without notice.
If you do not agree with these terms, please do not register or continue to use this Service.
All views expressed on this forum are those of the individual authors and do not represent those of the website or it's operators.
Now in the interest of clarity, let us be a little more specific. If someone has had what they feel to be unsatisfactory service from a supplier - or as often happens, someone is completely mad as hell about the lack of service from a retailer, then what should they do?
Often people feel that 'naming and shaming' in a public forum will force the supplier to react more favourably. TFF is a relatively busy website, and we Google exceptionally well. A thread will normally be on the front page of Google for the relevant search terms within a few days of posting.
"I am customer and am making a potentially damaging post about a supplier"First of all, if anyone is going to make serious accusations about any supplier, they must be ready to give their full name and address to the forums administrators. If requested, this information will be kept in the strictest confidence and not, of course, revealed to the public. We need this information simply to ensure that you are not an unscrupulous competitor of the organisation you are criticising. We will not release this information in any circumstances unless required to do so by a UK Court Order.
Rule 1: Be ready to provide personally identifying information to TFF Administrators.
This information will rarely be requested, but if the thread or post looks to be heading towards legal territory, and we are fending off solicitors letters, we will contact you.
Rule 2: Do not use libellous language within your thread.
Nowhere in the thread must you use language that is libellous. No matter how angry you are, you absolutely must not use language like 'cowboys' or 'robbing xxxx' as this is language is based on emotion and not fact. It is, of course, illegal and we will not tolerate it.
Rule 3: Use appropriate language and tell the truth.
If the post could be damaging to the supplier (and these types of posts almost always are), the accuser must be able, upon request, to provide proof of the accusations. Because if the case goes to court, this proof will be needed. It's easy to exaggerate the events to favour your side of the story, but ultimately this is not the truth.
Rule 3: Be able to backup your statements and accusations with proof.
If a supplier chooses to respond to an accusation, we may decide to close a thread at our discretion once that reply has been published in order to avoid threads descending into arguments. The idea here is that an allegation has been made, a reply has been made, and we've heard both sides of the story - end of story. And lastly if a supplier later resolves the problem to the accuser's satisfaction, then the accuser is obliged to post a follow up message in the same thread to that effect. This is only fair.
Rule 4: Post follow up details in the interests of fairness.
Hopefully people will appreciate where we're coming from in asking you all to follow the above rules. If these were insignificant forums read by just a few people, it wouldn't matter what the hell people posted. But one person can make a lot of noise in these forums and so we have to ensure that damaging remarks about anyone are truthful, justified and substantiated.