Due to an article on Slashdot and due to discussions in the past, I try to write a translation of my original german blog entry I did some months ago.
Background
I do work for a small German company called „zeta software„. Beside others, we do ship a product called „zeta producer“ (a Desktop CMS based on Microsoft Windows).
Did you, dear readers, see the things we have in common with ZetaOS? Yes, correct: the word „zeta“ both appears in their names and in ours. Any further relationships? Simply spoken: No! But nevertheless I do have to write a whole article about the odyssee we go through just because of this naming-similarities.
Experiences
Starting nearly a year ago now, yellowTab, the producer of ZetaOS, somehow managed to get their product placed in some of these horrible home shopping TV shows we have in Germany (probably they exist in every country in the world in the same format).
In these shows, they sell their operation system ZetaOS as a „Replacement for Windows“, which can do everything better than Windows, is cheaper than Windows, is faster than Windows and whatever-else-they-compare-it-to-Windows. I only saw some excerpts of those shopping shows, but friends told me about all these buzzwords. Of course what they did not say are some of the following points:
- Few 3rd party software
- Few drivers for common hardware
- Incompatible with many file formats from Windows
So far so good. Why do I care? Why? Because since ZetaOS doesn’t seem to work as told on TV and many many people seem to have the desire to directly communicate with the producers of ZetaOS. Unfortunately those computer-illiterate persons that fail to successfully install ZetaOS on their supermarket-bought PCs have just as much intelligence to manage to find our website and navigate to the contact address page with phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
Then we, instead of yellowTab, get these requests of those „users“, which can roughly be divided into these categories:
- „I have installed ZetaOS, now nothing works any more. Neither my Windows nor my ZetaOS – what should I do?“
- „Please tell me whether my AOL, my Microsoft Word or my Age Of Empires runs under ZetaOS!“
- „I do want to buy ZetaOS, can you tell me details?“
- „I am very discontent with ZetaOS, the promises you made in your home shopping TV show are totally different from the reality!“
Now, every normal human being should be aware that these questions are stupid per se and the idea to contact the office of the producer by phone is more than naive. But it really gets embarrassing for the caller/e-mail sender and annoying for us because of the fact that these requests often are directed to us instead of yellowTab.
Although we put detailed instructions beside every contact address on our website, telling everyone that we are not the producer or distributor of ZetaOS, we do receive an average of 3 phone calls and the same number of e-mail messages daily from these misdirectedly ZetaOS users. Sometimes hell a lot more.
What’s worse, a large number of those people calling us on the phone resist from being convinced that ZetaOS and zeta software have absolutely nothing in common. We experienced that saying something like „We accidentally have the same name“ is one of the better ways to convince them. Nevertheless most people still ask at the end of such a call whether we can give them the correct phone number. Of course we deny – we are not the white pages, are we…?
One of the negative „highlights“ was the guy that clicked through all the pages ouf our CMS „zeta producer Desktop“ online shop and finally even ordered a copy, just to complain 10 days later that „…it is no operation system…“. Wow, we were speechless – ignoring the free test version and still bravely clicking through the online shop. I recall that this happend more than once since then.
The Agency
yellowTab seems to be aware of the problem that many many customers are very discontented with ZetaOS and additionally call all companies that seem to have the word „zeta“ in their name (Which are quite a few), because yellowTab hired a marketing agency (or how you call that in English) that called us some time ago on the phone.
This agency seemed to have the task to call all those zeta-named companies and apologize for the „idiots“ (= ZetaOS customers) calling them. The agency further asked us what the average questions of the ZetaOS customers was and whether they were satisfied with ZetaOS („No!“). You could call that „Indirect surveying“… They finally again appologized for those customers calling us and promised to look after so that we will not be disturbed in the future by those phone calls and e-mail message. Of course this did not happen – how would they manage it, anyway?
Naming Properties
Some time ago, one of the bosses of yellowTab called us on the phone, probably since they now „discovered“ that there is more than one „zeta“ in the word beside ZetaOS.
We committed us to leave each other doing their business, not doing any harm to each other. This was of course all before these huge TV shopping shows waves and the countless number of hours of unnecessary work we had because of those shows. Maybe we must go active, again.
On the other hand, being a 6-person company and fighting against a probably-much-larger company with much more money behind them, it would be a great waste of resources for our company, even if we win. But comments on Slashdot suggest us to get professional help from a lawyer and think of all this, again.
(Temporary) Epilog
Probably, due to the inadequacies of ZetaOS and a huge number of dissatisfied users the problem dissapear by itself some time in the future, soon.
I really whish myself and all zeta-named companies that yellowTab runs out of venture-capital really soon and that they disappear and never ever return again *sigh*.
Appendix
2005-07-20: Some russian guy translated my text to cyrillic. Cool 
.