Guest peter Posted May 12, 2009 Share Posted May 12, 2009 I Note that my two threads relating to the above have been removed because the comments can be made unanimously and cannot be substantiated by the publishers. Well.....what about all the adverse comments that have been made about Fiat and Brownhills on this site. Plus many others. It would seem that somebody doesn't want you to know who are the good and bad dealers. Very sad really and this forum has gone well down in my esteem. So if you get stitched up and get a bad deal, don't publish it on this forum. >:-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robx5 Posted May 12, 2009 Share Posted May 12, 2009 I agree, the good and the bad should be named. There is no law against telling the truth. The problem with the internet is good news travels fast, bad news even faster. Dealers should use these forums for customer feedback & training puposes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MandyAndy Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 And they wonder why other Motorhome forums are more popular than this one, maybe this will explain it to them. Mandy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
symsue Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 We're with you Peter. The good and bad should be reported then customers who fork out thousands of pounds won't be left regretting a purchase that is ignored the moment you drive off the dealer's forecourt. Other industries are regulated and results reported in the national media. Wonder if WATCHDOG would be interested? Sue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rapido-lass Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 It just goes to prove that the dealers are watching and are scared of the truth!!! So much for free speach!! They should use these forums as a free way of getting feedback rather than paying for market research (though doubt they could afford it and they wouldn't want to hear the truth either let alone pay for the priveledge). If dealers were honestly interested in their customers and offering good customer service then they would be grateful of all our comments good and bad. Just to let you know that Brownhills Canterbury have ceased to trade - it just shows how much they want to keep their customers as no-one bothered to let us know!!!!! Come on dealers pull your socks up because at some point customer service is going to be important to you and that will be what the company survives on - ever heard of life going in round in circles??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Jones Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 I understand the problem Warners face here - whatever they allow to stay on the site, they can be held legally responsible for - forever. But if you take that to extremes, surely no-one would ever be allowed to post anything controversial, anywhere, about anything. They should certainly remove generally insulting masterial about named dealers (e.g. "Bloggs' Motorhomes are a buinch of crooks!"), but surely contributors simply describing the experiences they've had can't be actionable, can it? If so, what's the point of the Forum? If there were specific posts which put Warners at risk of legal action those could be removed without pulling the thread. "You have the technology," fellas, USE IT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aljen Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Peter Agreed, we all know dealers look at this forum and they should use it as the same tool as we do. Instead of complaining to the Mods they should identify themselves and ask how can we improve and how can we help. We are after all potential customers spending a lot of money and i am sure they would like more positive press than usually gets aired here, so come on dealers, get yourselves on here and see how you can help, its just as easy to be good as bad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randonneur Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 We had an experience with a well known accessories dealer last year. We were not pleased. On another Forum there were posts saying that they had never heard anyone give a bad report on these people and that was like a red rag to a bull. I posted our experiences and almost immediately the Owner of the Company in question posted and asked me to PM them. This I did and after many emails back and forth there was an apology and an invitation to visit them again. Unfortunately this has soured our dealings with them although they have an excellent reputation. I would ask that any type of Motorhome Dealer/Accessory supplier monitor this Forum to see what the man on the street thinks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly58 Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Warners need advertising income so you cannot blame them for being causious , but it is not Warners that are making the statements regarding bad dealers its us the forun users that are the ones who have been badly let down after paying thousands of very hard earned pounds to be left with big problems and out of pocket , but if people stopped buying motorhomes Warners would not need to publish motorhome mags so its a visious circleI am with Peter on this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordThornber Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 All the legal issues apart, as Tony says, the technology is available to Warners to remove "certain" posts isn't it? If say a "Poor Dealers" thread is a bridge too far for Warners, surely a "Good Dealers" thread must be ok? Even allowing for the odd negative comment which would inevitably creep in (which could be removed), it must be good for Dealers to see their names presented in a positive light. I support Peter in this and urger Warners to allow a "Good Dealers" thread. Martyn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 The 'bad dealer' thread was always likely to be chopped, I have been considering starting a thread which I'm pretty certain will get chopped, we'll see! The 'good dealer' thread I'm guessing someone maybe countered a positive comment with a bad experiance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Whether or not forum members think that praising or slagging off companies is a good idea, it is still the case that this forum is being made freely available by Warners Group Publications and has terms of use that contain the caveat "We reserve the right to remove postings without prior notification". It was 100% predictable that Peter's "Who are the bad dealers?" posting would get the chop and I suppose it was logical to remove his 'good dealers' one to maintain balance. I'm amazed that anyone should be surprised at the 'bad dealers' thread removal - if I had been Moderator I would have acted faster. I believe motorhome-related firms in general take little interest in internet forums. It's a terribly time consuming task to study forums and often extraordinarily hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. ("Less reliable and informed than News of the World articles" was one UK converter's view when I asked if they were aware of comments on forums about the Fiat juddering defect.) Nevertheless, I'm sure a firm could get very peeved if they discovered they were being criticised (justifiably or otherwise) on a forum hosted by a company with which they were spending money on advertising. As Mandy says, there are other forums, with no commercial links to motorhome dealerships, that are more likely to tolerate criticism of the type Peter wished to provoke. If dealership naming and shaming is important to you and you feel this won't be permitted on the Out&AboutLive forums, then the answer is surely obvious - vote with your feet and transfer your allegiance somewhere else. (Out of idle curiosity I searched for earlier forum threads within which Peter had named the dealership that had sold him a 2000-model Hymer motorhome that had, in fact, been manufactured in 1994. I found 8 threads, the first being all sweetness and light and the rest (after Peter had discovered the Hymer was 6 years older than he had believed) being much less complimentary. While it cannot be denied that Peter's experience was very unfortunate, it was also unusual and I note that other forum members said that the dealership in question (that still trades and advertises in MMM) had a good reputation. This exercise suggests that Out&AboutLive Moderators are more tolerant of critical comments than people may give them credit for.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordThornber Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Derek, with the greatest of respect, I absolutely cannot agree with you that removing the "Good Dealers" was done for reasons of balance and where any logic, as you suggest, comes into it, well sorry but I cannot see any logic in removing a thread which praises good service. This surely suggests that no comments, be them good bad or ugly, (sorry Clint), can be made on here. Do I detect a hint of Nannying? Perhaps Warners are fearful of upsetting the "bad" dealers Human Rights and need to be seen to be promoting equal opportunities so they remove "good" comments too? Yes my tongue is firmly in my cheek on that one. Admittedly the "good" thread had sadly been infected by negative comments, (as I fully expected it to), but surely the answer would have been to remove the offending posts rather than the whole thread? Sledgehammer and nut spring to mind. Martyn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tracker Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 I can fully understand the moderators pulling both threads as the legal and commercial implications of allowing unproven views to be expressed is a risk too far for them on a free forum but with commercial connections. I also understand that although many dealers will not admit to forum monitoring - they don't have the time, apparently, when you ask them - some do exactly that on the quiet - I wonder what else they do with their time when their are no customers about. Mind you to say that posts are anonymous from long term and well established members might not have gone down too well with some! That does not stop anyone from posting their own experiences, good and bad, in the future but I guess that we must refrain from doing it collectively? I have always found the moderators to be very fair and helpful and if pulling both threads helps to preserve their advertising revenue and removes any risk of legal ramifications I guess it is a small price to pay for the freedom that we do enjoy on here. Tolerance dear friends, tolerance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeti Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 The answer is use an independent site,there are plenty around. Or set up your own like the fellow did when dissatisfied with IKEA. The owners of this site are afraid of losing advertising revenue for their magazines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhorsf Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 wow peter thats 1 big can of worms Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melvin Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 I can back my comments with written evidence Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordThornber Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Perhaps I'm missing the point here but I'll try again. What better advertising is there for Warners clients, i.e. the dealers, than the free positive publicity generated on a "good dealers thread"? It's been suggested that some praise may not be able to be substantiated and therefore may be inaccurate. Now this puzzles me, apart from the obvious, (well to me anyway), that a poster may have a direct link with a dealer, and a bit of good old fashioned nepotism creeps in, for what possible reason would someone generate good publicity? I can back my comments with the fact that I keep going back to the same dealer. Why gamble when you know you're going to be treated in a civilised professional manner? In case anyone is wondering, I've never had any offer or bribe from the dealer I mentioned to post good comments about them on here. I'll gladly do it for nowt. Right I'm done now. Martyn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 LordThornber - 2009-05-13 10:44 AM Admittedly the "good" thread had sadly been infected by negative comments, (as I fully expected it to), but surely the answer would have been to remove the offending posts rather than the whole thread? Presumably the 'negative comments' resulted in the 'good dealers' thread being removed. I didn't read it and only briefly scanned the 'bad dealers' thread, noting that Peter had again voiced his criticism of a dealership that had treated him shoddily back in May 2006 and wondering how long it would take for the Moderator to react. I'm not sure how much editing capability the Moderator has. Obviously it permits removal of a complete thread and I'm fairly sure it allows the text within an individual posting to be altered. I'm not certain if complete postings can be removed (I don't remember seeing it happen) as it could damage a thread's logical structure and could easily make nonsense of subsequent postings that referred back to the one that had been excised. I recall discussing this once with a Moderator, but I think the answer was that Moderator editing power was (like that of a Rolls-Royce motor) "adequate". I understand that, unlike some motorhome forums where there are battalions of 'amateur' Moderators poised 24/7 to audit every word for correctness, Moderation of the Out&AboutLive forums is very much a part-time office-hours-only task. It's not a job I'd relish and I certainly wouldn't bother attempting to perform reconstructive surgery on a thread that I didn't like if I had the option to get rid of it in its entirety. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Febbie Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 I must have missed the Thread thatstarted all this controversy but i should have thought it was not to dificult to expect a statement from Warner's to clear up any misunderstanding of their position - I have'nt seem one yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Duck Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 The threads were pulled after my post yesterday lunchtime about our particularly bad dealings with our Dealer over the last two months. It was our first Motorhome and my first post on this site. Coincidence perhaps but, although I didn't specifically name them (but gave a significant hint), the Dealer does take a full page ad in MMM every month. I know what I think :-( FD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mel B Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Soooooo ... the duck did it!!! 8-) Welcome Fred! :D Seriously, the problem with criticisms is that they cannot be substantiated by Warners. As we all well know, when people recount instances of events it is very easy to 'embelish' them, even unintentionally and make them appear worse. Even if this is not done and it is the truth, the whole truth, and nowt but t'truth there is no way that anyone can know except the customer and the dealer. If Warners left the comments on here it could be construed that they are supporting the view by doing so. You have to remember that without magazine advertising there wouldn't be a magazine, no magazine, no Warners, no Warners ... no forum. Would you rather they left these 'criticising' types of threads and then end up being sued, possibly going bust and ultimately they have to close down the forum? :-S Instead of thinking of the criticisms being about dealers, change that to the criticism of other forum members ... what if it was about you ... would you expect Warners to leave the comments on view for all to see or would you want them removed? Whether the dealers have asked for the threads to be removed or not is irrelevant, at the end of the day Warners have to protect their OWN interests and if that means pulling some threads which they consider unfair then so be it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest peter Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 So just to sum up then........no comments, good or bad are permitted to be posted about anyone comercially connected to the Motorhome industry. I cannot understand the logic of claiming that Warners are legally liable for the comments of it's forum members. When all that's required is a disclaimer to the effect that all postings made on the forum are purely the responsibility of the posters and are not neccessarily the views of the staff of Warners Group Publications, who accept no responsibility for the accuracy of the content. As I remember there is such a disclaimer somewhere in the magazine itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Febbie - 2009-05-13 7:56 PM I must have missed the Thread thatstarted all this controversy but i should have thought it was not to dificult to expect a statement from Warner's to clear up any misunderstanding of their position - I have'nt seem one yet. It's pinned at top of "motorhome matters" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duetto owner Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 when adverse comments about a dealer are made it would be nice to see a response back from them in reply, would like to see more dealers log in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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