Page 1 of 2

False advertising?

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 11:51 am
by oliverfischer
OK, I feel a little betrayed . I just upgraded to the Telo with two handsets and the Bluetooth adapter. I am one of the very early ooma customers and did subscribe to premier for a couple of years until late last years. i had no use for the premium features. When I got the upgrade offer (I resisted the prior offers for many months). The feature that finally won me over was the Bluetooth adapter as I always 'loose' my cell in my 3 story house and liked the idea of picking up calls on my Telo handsets. Nowhere in the offer was mentioned that I would need the premium to use the Bluetooth. I am sure about that because I feared that this would be the case, but I did not find anything that said something like 'you need premium to use this feature' it just said you can pair your cell phone with your Telo with this adapter.

Not a lawyer myself but involved in consumer protection law, I can see grounds for a class action lawsuit here as this is clearly false advertising and I was enticed to buy a product with a feature that was advertised that then needs an additional subscription.

I am a big ooma fan (as I mentioned I was a very early adaptor and have brought in many of my friends and family as customers), but this is not right and ooma would do good in helping their fan base and customers instead of trying to squeeze a bug out of them like all the other telcos. This is in the end what brings most of us to ooma in the first place.

Oliver

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 11:59 am
by murphy
You apparently didn't do enough reading.
Bluetooth is listed under Premier Features.

https://www.ooma.com/premier/features

Also if you go to the Add-Ons page in your account and click on Bluetooth the following paragraph appears.

IMPORTANT: Please see the setup guide for usage instructions. Use of the Bluetooth Adapter requires an active Ooma Premier subscription. The Ooma Bluetooth Adapter has been confirmed to work with a set of mobile phones and headsets. See the compatibility matrix for a list of supported devices. If your Bluetooth device is not listed, you can still try using your Bluetooth device with the Ooma Bluetooth Adapter.

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:07 pm
by Groundhound
oliverfischer wrote: Not a lawyer myself but involved in consumer protection law, I can see grounds for a class action lawsuit here as this is clearly false advertising and I was enticed to buy a product with a feature that was advertised that then needs an additional subscription.
No need to make threats, since you just bought your Telo recently (within 30 days) you can just return it for refund. Not being able to see the offer you were enticed by I won't comment about whether it was sufficiently clear about the need for Premier, but all of the verbiage that appears on Ooma's site AFAIK makes it clear that it is a Premier feature.

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:23 pm
by Jerald
murphy wrote:You apparently didn't do enough reading.
Bluetooth is listed under Premier Features.

https://www.ooma.com/premier/features

Also if you go to the Add-Ons page in your account and click on Bluetooth the following paragraph appears.

IMPORTANT: Please see the setup guide for usage instructions. Use of the Bluetooth Adapter requires an active Ooma Premier subscription. The Ooma Bluetooth Adapter has been confirmed to work with a set of mobile phones and headsets. See the compatibility matrix for a list of supported devices. If your Bluetooth device is not listed, you can still try using your Bluetooth device with the Ooma Bluetooth Adapter.
I read that too when I placed my order about needing premium service and I'm a bit “dyslectic.” I do have premium service, but feel the price is fare compared to $80 a month I was paying with AT&T.

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 3:26 am
by oliverfischer
It is not my job as a consumer to do 'research'! If I get an offer by email from ooma and I need an extra service to use an advertised feature than this is a misleading advertising. And money back is good, but i also bought an extra handset that I had to buy from a 3rd part as I could not buy it onooma.com. Do I get that money back too?

I have not threatened anyone I merely stated facts and pointed to a potential legal issue. This forum is useless if anyone who post here gets "shouted" down and insulted if it is not a preaching of the ooma gospel.

Again I am a big fan of ooma, which makes me even more frustrated then if I would have been misled by some other bohemian company, because from them I am used to that!

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:02 am
by murphy
oliverfischer wrote:It is not my job as a consumer to do 'research'!
I guess if I was independently wealthy I could take that approach.
Since I'm not independently wealthy I investigate every item, that I have never purchased before, to be sure that it does exactly what I want before I turn loose of the cash to purchase it.

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:43 am
by MWPollard
oliverfischer wrote:If ... I need an extra service to use an advertised feature than this is a misleading advertising.
Not if the ad specified that the feature requires Ooma Premier.
oliverfischer wrote:but i also bought an extra handset that I had to buy from a 3rd part as I could not buy it onooma.com. Do I get that money back too?
Depends on the policies of the company where you bought it.

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:54 am
by VicMatson
In the offer there need to be a disclaimer about a lot of things, one of them is conditions. So, if there is no language explaining what's needed the OP is right! Also any collateral damages(costs to change service etc.) would probably be awarded in court.

In our courts you can't hide.

Btw, there is no threat from the OP about him suing in the topic so when that happen and is met with defenders using that as a point, it makes me sad!

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 8:45 am
by Groundhound
VicMatson wrote:Btw, there is no threat from the OP about him suing in the topic so when that happen and is met with defenders using that as a point, it makes me sad!
oliverfischer wrote:Not a lawyer myself but involved in consumer protection law, I can see grounds for a class action lawsuit here as this is clearly false advertising ...
Certainly not a direct threat. But if someone expressed dissatisfaction with me and then in the next breath said something about how my house looks like it could accidentally catch on fire, I'd consider that at least a veiled threat. My point was to state that it was not necessary, veiled or otherwise, since Ooma has a no question return policy for 30 days - plenty of time to figure out that Premier was needed for Bluetooth if you purchased without reading about it first.

Re: False advertising?

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:02 am
by VicMatson
You have a point, but Ooma could have handled it better by having a disclaimer as required when advertising something. If anything they are guilty of relying on a return policy. I think it took me 20 minutes to drive to BestBuy and another 20 minutes in line to make a return the last time I returned something. Then on top of that I had to keep an eye on my credit card bill till it was applied. Mind you, I was not compensated for my time and the product was defective. After that debachle all recipts go on the fridge with a note.