JY's Weblog

 vendredi 19 juillet 2002

Le manifeste Cluetrain : "Nous ne sommes pas des sièges ou des yeux ou des utilisateurs finaux ou des consommateurs". "Nous sommes des êtres humains et vous n'avez pas les moyens de nos ambitions". Disponible chez votre libraire préféré, vous pouvez pas le louper c'est un bouquin orange.
  

Here is an unbelievable (but true!) unCluetrain story:

A French online store (I won't tell the name, I don't have 100.000 $, wait..) which is even on the French stock market, is very known for having suspect practices, like .. your product never arrives, but your credit card is charged, an you cannot contact the store (no responses to emails, 1000 hours waiting time on the $$$ customer phone number). There has been several papers in the press and online about that.

I even have one of my colleagues who had the same experience 2 months ago. He bought a digital camcorder (about 1000 euro/$), its credit card has been charged, but he never got the digital camcorder. He is still waiting some news after sending an official mail to the online store to have his money back. By the way he bought the digital camcorder online because he wanted to have it on time before he left for his honeymoon in Tahiti. :-)

Well, a lot of people began to talk about their similar problems with this particular company in online bulletin boards. One man who had problems with an order too, opened a website where disappointed customers could go and talk about that.

Guess what: The online store attacked the man and his webmaster partner in court for the talks found in the bulletin boards. (like "company xxx are thieves" and so on). Justice sentenced them to pay a 100000euro/$ fine to the online store!!!!!

Now these 2 people are in deep trouble (their cars have been taken), and they don't have the money.

Sentenced because they opened a bulletin board to help angry customers of a supposedly not so clear online store....

Unbelievable !

A website has been opened to help them:
http://www.franz-et-emma.org/

They appealed in court, helped by a big consumer association.

Help Doc, Cluetrain god, what do you think?! Is such a sentence possible in the USA?? It sucks.