rikko

All right, last fire in the hole before everybody is tired of the
thread...


Enforcing something like that on the Internet seems impossible. Are
product testimonials (+ or -) not covered under the American First
Amendment (I am assuming you're American)? "McDonald's sucks" vs. "I
don't like McDonald's" carry different meanings.


Honestly? I'd have to. If the Hiatt folks dropped by and whipped up a
fake name and said that, then they'd certainly have themselves at an advantage.


As above, does Free Speech not protect something like that? Even
anally precise opinions like "I used the product as directed and was
personally unable to distinguish any effect"?

My sentiments exactly. Lack of available tech data makes a scheme
immediately suspicious, but I won't give a knee-jerk damnation of it.

I had hoped that someone here had seen it before, thought "oh what the
hell" and tried it out. Maybe I like to tinker too much, I don't know,
but I've done that with the odd piece of equipment or other supply.

I hadn't expected that it was such an obscure name. Since a few days
have passed since then, I can share what I know. Perhaps I'm damning
myself to an eternal lawsuit, but I'll take my chances...
The rep chose to set up a mini reef for us, rather than providing
samples. It's a 5 gallon salt with a couple of damsels in it. He set
it up and gave the usual sales pitch about it and left. We tested the
water several times a day and found that:
The ammonia quickly rose and then fell. (After one day)
Nitrite rose and dropped a bit. (Second day)
Day four, ammonia started increasing and was holding steady on day
five. I haven't been back in to see what's happened now, but it looked
to me like it "started" to work and then died off.
Crap product? I was beginning to think so, except that the water flow
that the "protocol" calls for needs to be much higher than we have.
It's prohibitive, if nothing else. My 77 gallon at home would require
13 POUNDS of carbon and around 500GPH circulation to follow their
"protocol". My POND doesn't even have that.

In that case, I'm honoured.


A post which I read and which contained a method that I'm well aware
of. It's not feasible (for our market anyways) because people
typically take home a tank and spend 3-4 days setting it up. Given
that a lot of posts here cite a 4-hour "starving" period for
nitrifying bacteria before the filter bed starts dying, it's not
practical. The other option is to sell/give out mature filter seeds (I
saw a store selling very old bits of Bio Max... Talk about
packratting) when customers come back, except that we use UGF in all
tanks so the only option is giving out a handful of gravel. You'd
probably cry if you saw the percentage of pink and multicoloured
gravel that went out the door. Our "ugly natural" gravel "clashes" and so isn't appropriate.


On Usenet, it's also called "staying on topic."

On a nice guy, it's called "determination."
On a jerk, it's called "stubbornness."

I never asked for praise. I asked for peoples' experience with it. You
feel legally obliged to hold off any negative product testimonial - I
don't, and I didn't expect anyone else to, either.

And they really ought to. Nobody should be making false claims that
McDonald's burgers contain meat.


What about "I couldn't see any effect"? Are we just splitting hairs
here?
Also, do you have any links to trade law that goes over these kinds of
specifics? I looked around a wee bit but didn't find anything more
than lawyers trying to get my money or references to commerically
publishing libelous material (ie. Hagen running full-page ads saying
that "Marineland's filters are made from babies").
If stifling public discourse not a direct violation of free speech
principles? How does a magazine like Consumer Reports stay afloat?

bill kirkpatrick

Yea, I agree, it's been nice discussing this with you but we
are falling, um, a bit off topic.


You have my e-mail address. A call to your lawyer, a bit of
paper to Verizon, and you'll have everything you need to beat me silly.

Yes, I'm American. The American First Amendment does not
protect us from much, actually. Actually, I can say both
things about McDonald's, as both are opinion and not fact
based.

"Doesn't work" is fact based. Even if the lawsuit would
fail, ultimately, we have it so arranged for us here that it
is the legal process itself that does most of the damage.


Our Constitution is pretty much a joke. Here, you can be
called to demonstrate you actually did use the product, for
example. Prove it. Show a receipt. Chucked it? Well,
then the lawsuit is then not "without merit", and as I
mentioned above, win or lose, it is our legal process that does the work.

I do. There are so very many alternatives out there. It is
only the market pressure of our collective will to Just Say
No in the face of this tactic that gives a vendor pause to play that game.

Hey, if you aren't a marketer, I'm there. Unfortunately,
this media just makes it impossible to tell, and is also so
utterly abused by the marketing droids.

There was absolutely nothing wrong in your question, or
posting it, IMHO. You can get a good bit of related, and
on-topic, feedback. People don't always know how to
approach something other than bringing a Brand into it.

Some feedback will be "category based" and some may, or may
not, be specific to that exact Brand. You only start to
"smell" like a marketer when you try to keep it focused on
the Brand rather than the function.


Give 'em a coupon. Maybe at the bottom of a page
explaining, take it home, set it up, fill with water, make
sure everything is working, then come get your free
bio-seed. Maybe include an offer for a "free fish in two
weeks" when they collect up their bio-seed. Heck put the
"free fish" coupon on a page check-listing stock you might
like to sell 'em. Don't waste their trip, help 'em walk
around your stockroom and drool on YOUR checklist. Lead 'em
on by helping them, dude.

Use this as a "Marketing opportunity". Be creative.

Handle the sponge/seed like a fish. A bag, good bit of the
Ammonia dosed water. Tell 'em to dump the entire contents
into the tank when they get home, squeeze the sponge a few
times, and discard when they come get their fish.


Yea, there are all kinds of issues in the way people try to
do this. Some leave you stuck buying a gallon of bio-balls,
some just have remarkably poor taste in gravel color.
Disease transfer is an issue, unless customer buys fish there too.

Agreed. I stand corrected.

No, good law is kind of hard to find on the Internet. It's
a guild profession, and they know exactly how their bread gets buttered.

Yea, a business using false claims against another is a
bigger deal than an individual. Maybe Marineland will get
treble damages from Hagen. But, the likes of me will get
hit for single damages - and, more importantly, the legal
bill (win or lose).

Not really. You are free to speak, but you really shouldn't
be (and are not in the US) free to state wrong "fact"
against others, unless you can prove that "fact".


They buy, test, and document everything they do. They are,
in fact, faced with legal action every now and again. The
Mag always describes the product as a matter of fact,
describe what horrors they subjected it to, and how they
came to their ratings conclusions. All true, verifiable, fact.

BTW, CR lam-blasted the Isuzu Trooper. Legal Action
followed. Isuzu lost. I now own a Trooper because of it
all, and no longer subscribe to CR. I was lucky that they
describe their tests it as fully as they do. CR's
methodologies can be imperfect and arbitrary, IMHO, even if
they are defensible. I personally found their determination
on rollover was without merit, based on their own
descriptions. Their opinion seriously depressed the price of
an otherwise fantastic vehicle. My gain.