Thread: Whirlpool court case

Originally Posted by dullbird

how do magazines get away with advising against products ??? or is it a case of if you have critisim you must also have constructive or positive comments too

They don't! If you notice they never actually say that the product is a pile of rubbish etc, they only go as far as saying it doesn't offer as good a ... as other vendors products do.

Originally Posted by jik22

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With regards to the Whirlpool case, I can never understand vendors doing this...it's hardly going to gain them sales going forward is it?

No, it is difficult to see the plaintiff ever recovering from this, even if they withdrew the case now. They have gone from adverse comments in two threads on an internet forum to worldwide publicity including articles in major Australian newspapers - and almost none of the publicity has been favourable. I read the relevant thread in the slashdot forum - out of hundreds of posts, there was exactly one critical of Whirlpool.

As a matter of interest, apparently Whirlpool was founded as a forum for discussion among disgruntled Bigpond users, but has expanded way beyond that. It is apparently looked at regularly by the majority of IT professionals in Australia, so suing them would seem to be almost certain to alienate the very people who would be making or advising on decisions to purchase the sort of software sold by the plaintiff. One has to wonder if the company lawyer who proposed this action really had any idea of the situation.

John

Originally Posted by dullbird

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i red some but not all as there was sooooooo many pages does anyone know what page the acutal comments were on save me trauling through the whole lot of woo hoo's simon will win!!!
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No, I haven't been through the actual pages, but some of the news reports summarise what was said. Without going into it, it was pretty much the sort of thing that is regularly said in this forum, for example, about some retailers or dealers. That is why this case is important.

John

Originally Posted by JDNSW

It is apparently looked at regularly by the majority of IT professionals in Australia, so suing them would seem to be almost certain to alienate the very people who would be making or advising on decisions to purchase the sort of software sold by the plaintiff. One has to wonder if the company lawyer who proposed this action really had any idea of the situation.

John

I've worked for a couple of vendors now, in the IT/comms space, and this thing is far better handled by the marketing dept than the legal one.

Imagine if they were daft enough to let it get to court, and the accused started explaining the supposed faults (Or whatever they were claiming) with the products to prove the accuracy of whatever their alleged statements were...it's never going to end well. A bit of marketing spin on the other hand, and it's all soon forgotten or made light of.