The Ultimate Compliment Or Misleading Advertising?

Maybe it’s a bit of both!

Here at Ozzie Off-Road we pride ourselves on building great quality camper trailers and caravans at a reasonable price.

We’re very proud of our reputation and jealously guard it.

When any operator seeks to mislead people into thinking his business is our business, it tends to make us pretty upset.  After all, we haven’t spent years working hard to give great value to have someone else come along and try and deceive our customers.

Is Someone Misleading At The Moment?

Well, decide for yourself.

At the moment (5.16 pm on Wednesday 9 December 2009) if you go to Google and search for “Ozzie Off Road” this is what you’ll see.

Is this a misleading ad?

Is this a misleading ad?

The very first result is an ad with the heading “Ozzie Off Road”.

  • It’s an ad placed by a NSW based camper trailer company
  • It’s an ad that leads to their web site.

Look, I don’t know how other people do business but to bid on the exact phrase “Ozzie Off Road” and then show your ad to people with the heading “Ozzie Off Road” could be seen to be trying real hard to mislead people.

Remember, this is purposely and deliberately done through a paid “sponsored link” to try to make you, wrongly, believe that you are contacting the company of your choice.

And it saddens me that there are businesses out there that seem to be quite happy to confuse people in an effort to get a person to their web site.

Is This Legal?

Is this legal advertising?  I’m not sure.

Does this seem to be morally fair and open?  I’ll leave you to judge that.

If that’s how they do business, fine, but here’s what we’ve done today:

  1. I’ve contacted the company concerned to let them know we’re aware of what they are doing,
  2. We’re in the process of alerting our customers that, despite this other company advertising on our business name and showing ads that make it look like they’re us, they’re not.
  3. I’ve also lodged a complaint with Google to see if misleading advertising is an accepted part of advertising on Google AdWords.  You’d hope not (seems like they do a bit fighting scams).
  4. I’ve lodged a complaint with the NSW Office of Fair Trading.

My hope is that commonsense and courtesy will prevail and that this type of tactic will not be perpetuated by companies doing business in Australia.

Is It Right?

Look, business is tough and competitive.  We all know that.

We know that here at Ozzie Off-Road and we accept good, hard, fair competition.

But when any business tries to mislead people, including our customers, into confusing their business with ours, to benefit from the hard work and great products we build, that doesn’t seem right to me.

So to anyone who might be doing this:

Why don’t you stop the dodgy stuff and compete with good quality products at a decent price?
Is that so hard?

Cheers

Kerry