Friday, September 28, 2007

Lowe's sues owner of Lowes-sucks.com







The site in question proclaims boldly that Lowe’s Home Improvements Sucks. Lowes-sucks.com was started by a dissatisfied customer. Thecustomer, Allen Harkleroad, had a fence installed by a “professional” from Lowe’s,but later saw that the $3,500 fee got him bad workmanship and an unstable fence. Lowe’s offered to fix the fence, and Harkleroad said he wouldn’t pay his outstanding balance until it was fixed. Lowe’s responded by turning his account over to collections.
How did Lowe’s decide to fight this bad PR? They sued for trademark infringement. How does that work? They accused him of unauthorized use of Lowe’s trademarks on his site, and that his use of the company’s them “…distorts the goodwill of LF’s federally-registered trademarks, and constitutes infringement of LF’s trademark rights.” Ars Technica notes that Harkleroad did not even have any of the company’s logos on his site, but merely used the company’s name to identify who he was complaining about.


Management Training 101 teaches us that there is no better way to generate goodwill than to sue the pants off of people who malign what goodwill you have left.

Look it up, it's right there next to using armed goons to bust the heads of union agitators.


Oops. I was looking at my copy of Principles of Applied Corporate Management that was printed in 1886. Sorry for the mix up!

Oh look, there's a Lowe's logo right above this text! What's the matter Lowe's, is the big bad blogger picking on you? Try not to alienate too many people with your 19th Century approach to corporate PR or your parking lots may end up looking like this:


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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good will and reputation - a lifetime to create - an instant to destroy.

Memo to the Lowe's shareholders - at the next meeting it's time to set fire to that ivory tower your management group has barricaded themselves into.

The greatest thing about the internet is that it allows so many more people to discover what an idiot some folks are who couldn't do that through standard media.

This is better than an episode of "The Equalizer".

'Nuff said!