Posted 11 July 2011 - 04:47 AM
I read at least a couple of the posts by him and it seems to be addressing a completelly unrelated topic about who owns what domains and why someone would be devoting efforts to expose them. That makes for interesting reading but they don't seem to be discussing the issue of using seriously modified and even completely unrelated images to sell things. We're not talking about 'sample' images, a practice that I count as absurd with even moderatly high priced goods, we're talking about ads where the item in the picture is simply NOT of the item being sold or where it's been photoshopped beyond recognition. We're also not talking about a claim few isolated incidents where someone screwed up or even where a former employee has sabotaged something. There are hundreds of examples. It's apparently been going on for years, it's apparently STILL going on, and it's still going on in a big way. Has he addressed THAT? I'm not unsympathetic of his problems with employees/contractors and I hope both sides can work it out, but all of that seems completely unrelated to the issues for consumers. Is the natural sapphire company misrepresenting merchandise in their advertising? A complelling case has been made and the silence of the rebuttal speaks volumes. The're obviously aware of the claims, they're surely aware of the seriousness of them, and they've had YEARS to prepare a response and to at least suspend the practice. None of this has occured and their 'defense', if you can call it that, is completely unrelated.
I"m going to shut up since this is a diamond forum and that's a company that, as far as I can tell, doesn't sell diamonds, but it's a serious enough matter that I think it deserves a bit of space. Problems like this happen in diamond ads as well and it's increasingly common on ebay in particular. Watch out for altered and unrelated images. Just because they've got a pretty picture doesn't mean they have a pretty stone.