I agree, this certainly has been interesting and certainly a hot thread to say the least.
Having been in hot water myself in these forums just recently, I may be pushing my luck a bit with this post so I'll try and remain as constructive as I can even though some are bound to disagree. I have my tin hat ready.
I would like to suggest that it might be better with hindsight (Ah wonderful thing!) not to have taken the strategy you talk of. You say yourself that you are somewhat surprised at the outcome, even with the best intentions.
Perhaps it would be a better policy to simply give us the product, leave us to evaluate it and if it lives upto expectations as consumers we would be happy to continue doing business. If does not, we look elsewhere. This is basically the way any other consumer market works. Even in this day and age people still tend to stick with what they're happy with.
Unfortunately though forums like these do tend to have a certain polarisation about them which means when someone makes a valid and factual remark about some problem or defect etc we end up with a rock fight. Factual remarks can so easily trigger accusations of personal criticism etc, etc.
Eventually the casualty ends up being the forum itself, which is not good for any of us.
In my opinion, and I stress 'my opinion' perhaps it might be better if we are just left alone. I don't see that these threads can be shown to have actually increased sales by any significant amount since most minds are made up one way or the other in any case.
If anything, we have just been 'throwing rocks' at each other. Not good.
Respectfully
Jasper.
::)
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