The Flying Mango
South African Airways (SAA) launched its new low-cost airline, Mango, this week. Today (2 Nov) there were rumours that the site had crashed, and then I came across this amusing article from the Mail & Gaurdian.
Mango has registered a list of derogatory variations on its internet domain name, Flymango.com, in an attempt to ward off websites that could be launched by its competitors.
Domain names such as Mangosucks.co.za, Vrotmango.co.za and Rotten-mango.co.za have been registered by the company.
It even registered Neverflymango.co.za, clearly having learnt from South African Airways’ (SAA) ordeal with an annoyed American passenger, Vernon E Six, who started the now-discontinued Neverflysaa.com in 2002 to air his views on SAA’s alleged poor service.
For why I used the image I did, check this link
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This would be like telkomsucks, sentechsucks and all the other freedom of speech websites that give uphill to badly run companies. They have merit and they have a good place in piss poor Corporate South Africa where business best practices and customer relationship is last on the list of “who pays for the ivory tower”.
Its good preventative measures but where there is a will there is a way when it comes to a seriously angry customer. If you are seriously slighted by a company and you are smart enough you will find a method to bring a large spotlight onto their poor management methods.
Big Business in South Africa tend not to care about your problem when they mess up, its the law of averages, 90/10 and other stats equations… you are but a small drop in their bucket and they know you can seriously do business with someone else and they couldn’t care less. Your small amount of money spent at the competition is not going to stop the CEO getting his Bentley or his villa in Spain. Just as well someone else will spend their money in your stead, there are only 200 odd listed companies that class as Big Business.
They do however listen to Joe Normal when he points the media attention at them and get all the other angry Joe Normal’s to tell their stories (which is the definition of an online community) then suddenly Big Business send legal threats, takedown notices and other threats because they know this could end up costing them large sums of money, unwatned attention, and not just the loss of one Joe Normal as a customer here and there.