General Mills has reversed a controversial change to its legal policy that had customers protesting on Facebook this week.

The shift in legal terms appeared to take away a customer's right to sue the company after downloading a coupon or becoming a member of the General Mills website. But the food company has done a quick about-face, completely undoing the policy change, Mashable reported.

While General Mills stated in an update that the changes were "broadly mischaracterized," the backlash was extreme enough that the company opted to go back to the old legal terms.

The move toward arbitration was intended to "streamline" how customer complaints are handled, and General Mills rarely has legal issues with customers, Kirstie Foster, director of external communications, said in an official blog post.

Because customers didn't like it, "we've reverted back to our prior terms," Foster wrote. "There's no mention of arbitration, and the arbitration provisions we had posted were never enforced."

Foster went on to say that the backlash was completely unexpected and added that buying a product or liking General Mills on Facebook never took away a customer's right to sue.

"On behalf of our company and our brands, we would also like to apologize," Foster wrote. "We're sorry we even started down this path. And we do hope you'll accept our apology. We also hope that you'll continue to download product coupons, talk to us on social media, or look for recipes on our websites."

The problem started last week when General Mills added provisions that seemed to protect the company from being sued by customers who have downloaded coupons, entered contests or joined online communities, as reported by The New York Times.

Legal experts term this practice "forced arbitration," which is when customers who have received any kind of benefit have to negotiate with the company or go through arbitration when they have a dispute.

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