What’s Up with the False Advertising?

by Sam on July 9, 2008

Update 1: I was contacted by the CEO of WrapMail who gave me a demo of his product. WrapMail’s choice of wording may be poor but it is not false advertising. I offered to write a post summarizing the service and will link to it once it’s ready to ship.

I ran into two falsely advertised products today. While I was initially excited about both, now that I understand that I cannot use the services in the manner they claimed they have lost me as a potential customer.

I wonder how many potential customers were also lost by this messaging stupidity? No customer wants to feel like they were lied to and/or had their time wasted. Unfortunately that’s exactly how people are feeling right now.

Here are the culprits:

ScanLife

Today’s TechCrunch review has a demo with an iPhone. Awesome!

What’s Up with the False Advertising?

Then go to the website - iPhone is not supported. Yes, maybe it will be come July 11, but nowhere is that disclaimer made.

What’s Up with the False Advertising?

Wrapmail

I saw the CEO’s elevator pitch and loved the concept – especially because it indicates in the press release that Wrapmail can be used with web-based email like Gmail and Yahoo.

What’s Up with the False Advertising?

Upon going to the website I was immediately met with this disclaimer…

What’s Up with the False Advertising?

Fail.

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  • http://www.wrapmail.com wrapman

    WrapMail is indeed compatible with the major web-based solutions as we DELIVER to any of these and anyone with a web-based email account can use WrapMail PROVIDED they use an email client to send such as Outlook/Entourage etc. WrapMail works without anything installed on the desktop so the emails must pass through a WrapServer. Google, Yahoo et al COULD have a WrapServer so that also the emails sent from their respective websites would be wrapped but they currently do not. They do offer IMAP download to an email client and NOW we can Wrap it.

    I am sorry if that was unclear – I'll be happy answer any other questions.

  • http://www.vendorcity.com JC Cameron

    Hi Sam,

    In both cases, I am not certain that the problem is truly false advertising (at least on the part of the company).

    The Tech Crunch article links to a video demo of their software that uses the iPhone so one would think the iPhone is supported right now. However, right below the demo it clearly states that the iPhone version will be upcoming. On their site, they are not hyping it in any significant way. So, whose fault is this and is this false advertising? Perhaps a tad but I don't see it as a major intentional problem because it is not a launch article (ie. saying something is available when it is not) and the fact that it clearly states in that first paragraph that the iPhone version will be available soon.

    In the second, I don't see any problems at all. There two pieces to their solution (sending and receiving) and the two don't need to be the same. They require you to have the ability to change your outgoing SMTP email settings so that your regular mail can be processed by their email servers. So, you need to be able to control that setting so it works with desktop solutions and web-based solutions where you have that ability. This would not include Yahoo mail, Gmail, Hotmail, etc because you cannot control how your outgoing mail is processed.

    As for the press release, it states it supports those free web-based services…on the receiving end. In other words, the way it puts HTML around your message and how it is displayed will work in all email readers that basically support the display of HTML email. And it also clearly states that you need to be able to change the outgoing mail settings so in this case, I think you simply had a bit of a misunderstanding. ;)

    -jc
    http://jccameron.com/

  • http://www.leveragingideas.com Sam Huleatt

    @JC

    I agree it's more a misunderstanding than false advertising — that
    said these guys are launching products so if ever there were a time to
    be clear it would be now.

    As an aide, the iPhone clarification is freshly added — it was not
    there yesterday.

    Sam

  • http://www.leveragingideas.com Sam Huleatt

    Thanks for the clarification Rolv. I'll make an update

  • http://www.wrapmail.com wrapman

    Hi:

    Thanks for taking the time to read my reply and dig deeper. I would be more than happy to give a more detailed overview on how we, without anyone changing any routines, take advantage of the fact that businesses have websites and employees that send emails. WrapMail becomes a complete Marketing tool: Branding, Advertising, cross-selling, up-selling, Research through various “click reports” etc.

    After all, we're all sending these emails every day anyway so why not use them to deliver more people to our only store reachable from anywhere and open 24/7: our website.

  • http://www.leveragingideas.com Sam Huleatt

    Ho Rolv -

    I will take you up on that offer! I think it's a great idea and I am
    happy to write about it if in fact it it is usable with Gmail and
    Yahoo

    You can ping me at: sam dot huleatt at gmail dot com

  • http://www.wrapmail.com wrapman

    ping sent

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    Thanks for the good and useful update information. Actually i also belong from an advertising company which offers world wide advertising. So we should keep it.

    Thanks again
    Manoranjan
    http://www.worldwideadvertisingnetwork.com

  • advertiisng10
  • advertising10

    Thanks for the good and useful update information. Actually i also belong from an advertising company which offers world wide advertising. So we should keep it.

    Thanks again
    Manoranjan
    http://www.worldwideadvertisingnetwork.com

  • advertiisng10
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