> Please whatever you do and no matter how much it may hurt in the short term: completely and utterly ignore these people. Exactly. A bit of game theory. You

> Please whatever you do and no matter how much it may hurt in the short term: completely and utterly ignore these people. Exactly. A bit of game theory. You contact them, workout a deal, pay them off or whatnot, and guess what? You leave them with the incentive to pull this stunt again. It's a never ending cycle that will only stop when they realize that you couldn't care less about the negative reviews that they are flooding you with (at the point you will not give them any reward for stopping). If you won't reward them for stopping then they have no reason to continue wasting time and money flooding your business with negative reviews. There is no incentive for them to continue.