Is this in the right forum?

[NewsreadeR]

Originally Posted by adslnation

Well it seems this has opened a whole can of worms, that I wasn't expecting. I simply replied to the initial post suggesting it was in the wrong forum because I monitor this one via RSS and it is the first offer I have seen in here and thought it was a mistake. Seeing as for example Tamar Communications were offering a similar deal of 10% off but that was put in the other forum not this one.

Tamar's offer was emailed to us, not negotiated or initiated by us. On hindsight, yes, I agree, I should have put their offer in the Cabling forum.

Well I guess in a way you are correct, I think that all discounts are advertising gimmicks. I'm sorry that seems to have struck a chord with you. I was simply replying to your suggestion that we made a similar offer making it clear why we don't do such offers. I wouldn't have even mentioned it if you hadn't put in your post the suggestion.

You could have gotten your point across without the direct comparisons in your post, undermining imho the other companies offer / discount.

My point is simply why if I could buy a 500G pack of Kellogg's cornflakes from Tesco for £1.99 or £2.99 from ASDA but get 10% then the ADSA discount offer is nothing but a gimmick as Tesco is the better deal without making a point about it. Of course Tesco could always put their price up to £2.99 and offer a 10% discount, it might seem like a good deal but it would in fact be worse. Hence why I think discounts are a gimmick.

Do you really think I would go to Tesco's just because they offer Cornflakes or any other choice of products a little cheaper?

You make the wrong assumption, cheap is not always best. I personally would not shop with any company on price and price alone. Oh and using ASDA is a great example, because I do use them. Why? because their branding, company ethics, and other convenient things, like open 24 hours, nearer to where I live, friendly, great refund policy etc etc ASDA have given me that impression, not advertising, or word of mouth - I think you get my point.

Yes it would be fair to say that members have bought our products as a result of what people have said in this forum.

Great, I have never had an issue with your products and I am glad that we have also helped our members, to obtain a product and a service from yourselves.

I can confirm that you have never asked for a commission and you have both offered to sell advertising to us and offer your members a discount on at least two occasions that we declined. The comment in your post I took as a suggestion that we should offer such a scheme and I decided to make it clear to all why we don't participate in such promotions. However I would disagree that it is free advertising as you are running a community site here and it is the members of the community who have been sharing their experiences with others, and many products and suppliers have been discussed and received orders such as Solwise and Clarity for example. By your suggestion we are receiving free advertising on many forums and usenet as people are discussing our products there also. What is happening is simply people sharing by word-of-mouth no advertising or promotion is going on.

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising that any company could ever receive, the way that you dismiss that fact so easily, concerns me. People posting positive or negative experiences on any forum, is in fact giving you as a brand free and the best advertising that you could wish for.

Well yes he is a competitor of sorts, the difference being that we are a manufacturer rather than just retailing the Pressac products and therfore our products can be bought from places other than us direct, such as from broadband buyer. So while it is important to keep tabs on competitors If we felt our business was threatened in any way by run-IT-direct our best course of action would be to try and get them to sell our products instead of or in addition to Pressac products not engage in public forum warfare.

Any sale he makes that you do not, proves he is a competitor, simple business sense in my eyes. In your eyes maybe not, but everyone a company sells that you do not, is a lost sale for you in my eyes.

It really seems that this has struck a personal note with you where it wasn't intended. Perhaps I really put my foot in it by suggesting that this sort of discount scheme is a gimmick you don't happen to work in marketing by any chance do you and that has offended you?

The only reason that this may have struck a personal note with me, is the way that you have conducted this conversation.

Does it really matter where we decide to post threads?

If the question had been asked by a normal member, not someone else in direct or indirect competition, perhaps my responses would have been different. It was just too much of a coincidence, or sour grapes, the cynic would say.

[adslnation]

It really does seem there is some misunderstandings here between us in particular these two items.

Originally Posted by NewsreadeR

Do you really think I would go to Tesco's just because they offer Cornflakes or any other choice of products a little cheaper?

You make the wrong assumption, cheap is not always best. I personally would not shop with any company on price and price alone. Oh and using ASDA is a great example, because I do use them. Why? because their branding, company ethics, and other convenient things, like open 24 hours, nearer to where I live, friendly, great refund policy etc etc ASDA have given me that impression, not advertising, or word of mouth - I think you get my point.

Discount promotions are all about price, a shop offering a discount is intended to appeal the the consumers budget consciousness. People shop in M&S for example despite their prices being higher than ADSA because there is some reason other than cost for example a perception of better quality food. It is utterly pointless for ASDA to offer a 10% discount on apples to try and get custom from M&S customers as they are not influenced by price they are generally influenced by quality.

Customers who are cost conscious will go to ADSA over Tesco for example as they are both offering the same products and a similar type of service. If ASDA offers products cheaper than Tesco and they are both easily accessible the majority of consumers will consider buying at the other shop. I don't personally shop in Tesco as Tesco make a big song and dance about how they have reduced strawberries from £2.99 down to £1.99 for example but LIDL next door does strawberries for £1.49 as their normal price and they are just as good leaving me with more money to go and buy something special from M&S.

Originally Posted by NewsreadeR

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising that any company could ever receive, the way that you dismiss that fact so easily, concerns me. People posting positive or negative experiences on any forum, is in fact giving you as a brand free and the best advertising that you could wish for.

I am not dismissing word-of-mouth in the slightest, quite the opposite, it is virtually the only form of promotion we rely on. I am saying that we do not offer discount incentives as a means of marketing and also generally don't engage in on-line advertising other than the occasional google ad as our business ethos is to offer good products at reasonable prices (I never said cheapest) and leave people to tell others about the results they have. It is a core part of our business ethos that we don't engage in aggressive marketing activities. It means we are less well known than say for example speed touch filters, but it means I can sleep at night. What I am dismissing is promotion and I was saying that neither we or you have engaged in promotion of our products of the kind that would normally require paying for. All references to our products in the forums are from people who have used one sharing their experience with others. You describe it as free advertising I'm not quite sure how best to explain myself but I'm trying to say that had you deleted threads that mentioned our products (and those of others) then the forum wouldn't be half as useful as it has been to people. So it isn't that you have let us promote ourselves for free as we don't do that sort of thing you have simply allowed the members of the forum to speak freely and that has been of great advantage to both the users who have found fixes for problems and in orders for us that has helped us earn a living.

Clearly run-IT-Direct is taking a different approach by offering a 10% discount in return for direct promotion in the form of a sticky in the forum with direct links to their shop pages. I have no problem with you doing that with them, it is your forum and can do what you like. I merely wanted to clarify the difference of approach.

So in essence we are both saying the same thing that both we and users have benefited from the forum.

Originally Posted by NewsreadeR

Any sale he makes that you do not, proves he is a competitor, simple business sense in my eyes. In your eyes maybe not, but everyone a company sells that you do not, is a lost sale for you in my eyes.

Well yes it is the case that if he makes a sale or indeed Solwise or Clarity or any number of other suppliers makes a sale then we don't but our most sensible approach would be to offer our products to the other suppliers so we would still get a sale all be it indirectly not try and shoot them down in a forum. Surely if they are successful and we convince them to carry our products that is better for us in terms of increased sales ? As it happens we have not contacted them as we are happy that their offering is significantly different enough from ours for there to be plenty of business for both of us.

Perhaps you should cut this thread from post 4 onward and put it into it's own thread titled "Marketing gimmicks" with a link back to the sticky so that we are not hijacking your discount post with a discussion about business and marketing methods.

[RUNITDIRECT]

Originally Posted by adslnation

Well yes it is the case that if he makes a sale or indeed Solwise or Clarity or any number of other suppliers makes a sale then we don't but our most sensible approach would be to offer our products to the other suppliers so we would still get a sale all be it indirectly not try and shoot them down in a forum. Surely if they are successful and we convince them to carry our products that is better for us in terms of increased sales ? As it happens we have not contacted them as we are happy that their offering is significantly different enough from ours for there to be plenty of business for both of us.

Your comments puzzle me, in my eyes you have indeed tried to shoot us down in a public forum. We found this forum from word of mouth(a customer mentioned it) and decided to contact the site owners to see if members would benefit from our products. Rather than pay the site owner for links to products(direct advertising) both parties decided to offer a discount to forum members. We could have paid the site owner £X and sold the products at full price to members but decided the former was both beneficial to us as a company and also the forums as a community. The 10% offering is sustainable for the numbers we invisage selling, a bit like Asda & Tesco who sell certain products at a LOSS/COST PRICE with the hope that it gets you through the door and purchase other items.

We would be interested in looking at your faceplates to sell-i do not see them as significantly different as the ones we currently sell do the exact same job but are the chosen product of BT/Openreach, how do you see yours as significantly different?

Are they UK manufactured?
Are they made in your own factory or are they screen printed with your logo & made elsewhere?

We have some Austin Taylor versions coming to us this week-we are all about offering the customer choice so if your own versions tick all the boxes & offer something the Pressac/Austin Taylor ones do not we'd be more than happy to resell them.

Incidently we are not just resellers of Pressac products, we manufacture many of our own products(converters & BT over RJ45 patch kits) and our main activity is the installation of data networks and telephone systems.

[fihart]

This is all very interesting, but!
As an ex-advertising creative director on multinational accounts perhaps I could add my two penny worth.

Display Advertising is one thing -- we all know it's a pack of lies though sometimes amusing and occasionally interesting.

Personal recommendations of products by members (or moderators) is another -- you can believe or not but it is likely to be relevant -- I didn't know I could replace a BT faceplate with something better until reading posts here.

But I think Skyuser is starting down a slippery slope if doing what I would call advertorial offers where it links to promotions and posts them as information.

I despise the way Google has gone from being a search engine to being an advertising medium where I have to hack my way through irrelevant sponsored links to find what I'm looking for.

[adslnation]

Originally Posted by RUNITDIRECT

We would be interested in looking at your faceplates to sell-i do not see them as significantly different as the ones we currently sell do the exact same job but are the chosen product of BT/Openreach, how do you see yours as significantly different?

Our filter design is significantly different to the Pressac faceplate. The Pressac filter was designed for the initial roll out of BT ADSL and the design has not been updated since. The XTE-2005 uses our higher quality filter, our filters are generally regarded as the best you can get especially when it comes to an ADSL 2+ installation.

An interesting bit of history for you, the Pressac faceplate (NTE-2000) for a long time used to only be available from clarity.it and it used to only have filtered terminals on the back. Clarity came up with the good idea of adding unfiltered terminals on the back and they started buying them from pressac and literally dismantling them and soldering in an extra connector. We decided we would like to start selling the NTE-2000 but with the modification done at the factory as we were not prepared to modify them. Initially pressac were not interested in making the modification so we offered to make a significant quantity purchase in order to make it worthwhile for them to make the change. As a result we were the first company to start selling a factory modified version of the faceplate and that is how it became available for any company to buy today. In order to differentiate the modified version we named it NTE-2005.

We sold many thousands of those faceplates and they are a good quality faceplate, much better than the one from Austin Taylor. But people found that they could either use the Pressac faceplate or use our XF-1e plug-in filter that achieved better results but didn't have the convenience of a faceplate. Initially we were not keen to invest in the tooling etc to produce our own faceplate but in the end we introduced the XTE-2005 as demand for a faceplate with our filter technology increased.

Eventually the XTE-2005 became so popular outselling the NTE-2005 by a factor of 24 to 1 despite selling the Pressac faceplate at just £9.99 that we decided to discontinue selling the Pressac faceplate the end of last year.

We have a page on our site where we compare the various filters Inside ADSL MicroFilters Yes I know it is on our site and some people will be cynical but basically we have tested all the filters and stripped them down to see how they were designed and given rating for each one.

Originally Posted by RUNITDIRECT

Are they UK manufactured?
Are they made in your own factory or are they screen printed with your logo & made elsewhere?

No virtually nothing is made in the west any more, the Pressac faceplate, amazingly is made in England but it is a rare thing to find these days. We simply design the products in the UK and contract out the manufacture to factories in China, Taiwan & Korea. That is the way everyone works now, huge manufacturers such as Apple don't own any factories any more. Most companies that once had factories in the UK have closed them and simply contract out the physical operation of factory machinery to the East.

Originally Posted by RUNITDIRECT

Incidently we are not just resellers of Pressac products, we manufacture many of our own products(converters & BT over RJ45 patch kits) and our main activity is the installation of data networks and telephone systems.

I had gathered that your main activity was installing networking and telephone systems in a mainly corporate environment.

[NewsreadeR]

But I think Skyuser is starting down a slippery slope if doing what I would call advertorial offers where it links to promotions and posts them as information.

Which is why we put the majority of these in the offers forum, to differentiate between a post and an offer / advertorial. We normally would be able give a cashback to customers by doing so as well as receiving a commission off the relevant agencies. Which in turn allows us to fund the site. However, the take up of these offers is not great. But it still gives our members a benefit.

I take onboard your feelings, but our ultimate aim is to drop as many ads for our members as recognition of them actually becoming members. ie We will allow members to choose the skin for the forum, which is significantly reduced in ads.

However running this site or any of our sites is not cheap, considering, before any other expenses, we are already committed to spending £250 a month on servers alone.

As for Adslnation and RunIT - its nice to see that we have moved on and are having a decent discussion