Lightake - Misleading advertising on SpeedSolving.com forums

[Parity Case]

***EDIT/UPDATE: I noted in post #8 that Lightake had fixed the problem (i.e., they made a new, correct ad), and had apologized for the confusion. To be fair to them, I thought I should note that at the top of this thread, as my complaint is now out-of-date and a non-issue***
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Lightake is currently advertising "Buy one get one free" in at least two advertisements on the speedsolving.com forums, for the "WitEden & Oskar Mixup", and the "Gangs III". Lightake is engaging in misleading advertising to draw people to their website (even if you don't end up buying the Gangs or WitEden puzzle, you may still make a purchase while there after clicking on the link). It is most likely accidentally misleading, rather than intentional. Here's a screenshot for the Gangs III ad:



"Buy one get one free" has a specific meaning in English - When you purchase item X, you will get another item X (not item Y or Z) for free. Receive two of the same thing, but only pay for one of them: buy a Gangs III, get another free Gangs III.

Unfortunately, Lightake's customer service representative doesn't agree. It turns out that the "one free" refers to the cheapo keychain that you can see in the small hexagon in the ad if you pay close attention before clicking on the link. The ad text makes no reference to it, so it isn't clear that the keychain is what they are actually offering: buy one (Gangs III), get a keychain free. Quite different. In advertisements, stores often include pictures of other items they stock, without relating them to the product on sale, in order to give potential new customers an idea of other things they might find in their store - that is a legitimate practice. But to quote Lightake from my correspondence:

<<Actually “Buy one get one free” means that you order item 34428*1, you'll get a free item 27435*1. The advertising on Speedsolving.com means that as I said.>>​

I have tried explaining (politely) what the ad text means to Lightake's customer service, only to be told that I don't know what "Buy one get one free" means. Funny, as I have a degree in English, and teach. The false advertising may be a language issue on Lightake's part, but be warned that they will insult your own language skills if you try to discuss the matter with them, rather than honour their offer or remove/clarify the ads.


***I realise that the "Please Read Prior to Posting" sticky for the Hardware Forum says this isn't a place to complain about orders. To be clear, my purpose is to warn fellow speedsolving users about Lightake's unethical advertising that appears on speedsolving.com itself, not about my particular order. Were I to post in the Lightake sticky in the Hardware Area Forum (I'm not sure why it isn't in the Puzzle Shops forum with the other stores, where they don't have a sticky), the warning would get lost among other posts in that thread quickly. This seemed the most appropriate way to alert others.***

 

[~Adam~]

Thanks for the info.
I don't think they are being deliberately misleading so I'm OK with it but I'm glad I know.

 

[a small kitten]

I can't say they were being deliberately misleading at first, but once they learn the convention, continuing to label something as "buy one get one free" when it's not becomes deceptive.

I personally think the language barrier reason is weak. The Chinese language has an expression that's the largely the same as "buy one get one free". It's "买一送一" and it implies that when you buy item X, you get another unit of X. The language literally means "buy one, we'll give you one as a gift". This concept is common knowledge, especially for people that do business.

 

[Parity Case]

Yes, I agree - I don't think it is intentionally misleading. I've edited my wording slightly to eliminate that implication. Thank you both for pointing that out.

 

[StachuK1992]

I used to be a huge advocate of stores like DealExtreme, LighTake, etc (all of these huge-seeming Chinese stores).

I stopped bothering; I always got bad customer service, shipping was long, and it was full of 'micommunication' that seemed intentional at times, like this thread suggests.

People can take advantage of a 'language barrier,' so be weary.
Shopping "local" has a number of benefits, especially shipping time!

 

[KongShou]

I do think this is intentional, because they clearly know what buy one get one free means, whether in Chinese or in English. The language barrier is a ridiculously weak excuse. Most people who has finished schooling in china will have learnt enough English to understand the simple phase"BOGOF", never mind a company tat specialise the selling goods aboard. The Chinese of this, as mentioned by a small kitten "买一送一" is near identical and literally means "buy one give one" the give here is the character used to describe the action of giving someone a gift. This is unethical and misleading advertising on their part and I do hope something is done about this. If this was done by a bigger company like apple or Microsoft then the punishment will be a lot more severe I'm sure.

Now I don't want to get in an argument here, if you disagree with something I have written above then I respect your opinion and hope that you respect mine.

 

[Parity Case]

I'm leaning more towards your opinion of it, given the information provided by you and a small kitten regarding the Chinese translation, and the fact that it's a common concept there too. I was being cautious, as I didn't want to mistakenly accuse Lightake of something - I didn't know about those relevant details when I first posted.

The fact that they have not removed/replaced the ads after I have told them what Buy One Get One Free means in English suggests willful dishonesty at this point.

 

[Parity Case]

**UPDATE**

After sending Lightake a link to this thread to show them the damage they were inducing by failing to honour their ad, I got an email from someone with more sense than the first person I was dealing with at Lightake's customer service. They apologized for the rudeness and informed me that they've updated their ads to reflect correctly the actual offer ("Buy One Get One Free Gift") - and I see that the ads have been updated.