Meta point: do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales? It seems strange that we accept deception and manipulation as necessary ingredients in the market, and that its on the buyer when they "get duped".
But couldn't we have a standard where literally anything anyone says to a customer must be true, or was not false to the knowledge of the person saying it? Scammy warranties, timeshares, and other "gotcha" products would be a thing of the past. To make money, providing honest value with a product that matches the expectation of the customer would be required.
In these situations, cruise lines will of course lose money in the short term. But the alternative is that we accept the risk to human life to people taking these cruises, all in the name of short-term capital gain. What if instead we had to either "eat the loss", or invest in true safety (we can take 50% of normal passenger load, add these safety measures, these cleaning routines, etc).
I am of the opinion that the very concept of commissioned sales is cancerous, because of the obvious perverse incentives it sets up. Whenever I am forced to buy form commissioned salespeople (car, furniture/mattress, insurance, interacting with an 'advisor' at my bank), I can never take that salesperson's advice at face value. I always wonder if I'm the mark in some institutionalized or just regular straight-up con. I will (and sometimes do) pay extra to avoid the feeling of needing a shower after such 'interactions'.
Advertising fraud is already illegal. The situations where case law dictates what is illegal are varied and nuanced. As a side note, there are many categories of claims that fall in neither "provably true" nor "provably untrue", and enforcing upon these claims is tricky.
You can google for "advertising fraud precedent" "advertising fraud case law" and "advertising fraud case studies" for more information.
Yeah, OK. But here's what happens if a company gets publicly caught. "At ConCo we take ethics seriously. The statements by the employees in question are not in line with ConCo's policies and practices. Those employees will be burned alive, then put on a personal improvement plan, and then their heads will be displayed on pikes at their respective places of employment."
> Meta point: do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales? It seems strange that we accept deception and manipulation as necessary ingredients in the market, and that its on the buyer when they "get duped".
I guess I would clarify what you mean by deception. One of the key parts of sales, at least when it comes to technical sales, is that an answer to a question or a presentation of capabilities needs to be made in a context. You have to know your audience. When you're talking about how your software does authentication it's absolutely appropriate to describe it as "integrating into your existing investments in authentication" when speaking to the business side of the audience. This is compared to going into detail (e.g. NTLM, Basic, SAML, Kerberos, OIDC, JWT, whatever) when speaking to the technical side of the audience. Is the generic answer to the business side deceptive? I don't see how it is. It's not their role to analyze the technical merits. They just want to know how much extra work will it require, in general, to deploy the software.
Is outright lying necessary? No. I've only been on the sales (technical sales, but nonetheless sales) side of the world for 1.5 years, but no, you don't. I am fortunate that my manager has carved out a team where the _expectation_ is that we are technical stewards of our customers. Obviously our end goal is selling software, but the immediate goal is to make the software work. It's a norm on our team that it's entirely acceptable to join a call and tell the customer that a competitor would be better suited for the use case.
While it's not necessary, it is hard. The incentives for sales aren't aligned with telling the truth. But this is where culture matters quite a bit.
"do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales?" I would like to think "no", but as someone who's worked building a technical product, which is then turned around and sold, it's hard not to feel like portraying your work in the best possible light, combined with moderately effective sales techniques, leaves the buyer with a strictly inaccurate impression of what the products capabilities are.
I'm not okay with saying these situations are unavoidable, but I think they arise pretty naturally out of situations where people are paid to make a sale, and people hear what they want to hear.
> But couldn't we have a standard where literally anything anyone says to a customer must be true, or was not false to the knowledge of the person saying it?
This would be hard to prove beyond existing rules, and what would you do about opinionated statements?
Further, this is one of those standards that cuts both ways but people only see it when they're the ones suing.
I want to prevent consumer pain due to bad sales practices, but I also appreciate that the burden of proof required means that it would be harder for someone to sue me into bankruptcy for speaking my mind at some point.
"Anything anyone says to a customer must be true" is difficult. "Anything the consumer signs must be true" is a much better, and easier to enforce method in my opinion. There's a long way to go on plain language there (and people can and have already tested enforceability) but it's a much clearer standard. (Not a lawyer, just a citizen)
Depending on the target market and customer's place in the sales funnel, a country's sales team is called "ministry of culture", "ministry of foreign affairs" or "army".
First I thought it was the country then the airline. Never the cruise line.
But this is a Miami based news source, so I can forgive the lack of clarity as my impression is that cruise ships are very significant there, so for their audience the cruise line might be what they associate first.
It is not their fault it gets linked to a worldwide audience on HN...
As a Norwegian I want to point out that there are no Norwegian owners of Norwegian Cruise Lines. It is to my knowledge fully American owned. It was Norwegian long time ago.
Sorry just don’t want to get us associated with such extremely unethical behavior.
Frankly it ought to be punishable in the justice system.
That will teach you to sell your business to America/International conglomerates! /s
I wonder if a country can force a multinational to stop using a country name because of misrepresentation. i.e Norway (tourism?) forces Norwegian Cruises to stop using its name.
I read the headline and though 'Norway! Surly they're a decent country' and was relieved to see it's a big corp. Unsurprising to see lying in sales tactics but this is really bad. This must be criminal somehow? Fraud at least?
Sadly you are probably correct.
The Nordics are the perfect cousins the rest of us Europeans keep being unfavourably compared to.
We have to keep digging!
If you’re really looking: Norway makes a significant chunk of money from oil exports, contributing to (and profiting from) what is arguably the greatest threat facing our civilisation today.
That's borderline criminal. To blatantly lie about the risks - especially elderly passengers - people are taking should be actionable in some way. These emails will come back to haunt them if family of future casualties sues them. I sincerely hope they go out of business.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and I am not your lawyer.
Salespeople lying, within certain limits, does not seem to be treated as fraud by most governments, caveat emptor and all.
If they tell you the alcohol on the cruise will be free and you sign a contract saying so, and then it actually isn’t and you have to pay more, that’s one thing. If they tell you it’s going to be sunny and warm when you’re taking a cruise to Alaska in winter, that’s a different thing.
Lying or deceiving during sales about things other than the product is a large part of a salesperson’s job, I believe (including but not limited to making the customer think the salesperson likes and respects them).
Then again, who is stupid enough take medical advice from a vacation salesman? These customers have agency and are ultimately the decision makers. What this company is doing is unethical, but we all need to be responsible for the decisions we make. If I decide to go on a cruise right now, knowing what has been going on, it’s not the company’s fault if I get sick.
Sure, but scamming the gullible is still both criminal and immoral. And similarly intentional dangerous misrepresentation of facts like this should be criminal (and maybe already is, I do not know American law that well) even if you would have to be an idiot to actually believe it.
It's not really medical advice in the sense someone would normally think of it, it's vacation safety advice. While one should probably treat the words of any salesperson with extreme skepticism, a lot of people don't, and those most at risk (the elderly) use the official word of their cruise company as their main source of safety advice (usually of the form "get this vaccination" or "beware this part of town" or "this kind of tour operator on shore is a scam"). And regardless, salespeople are absolutely expected to be responsible for the claims they make, regardless of one's views on how much they should be trusted.
Readit News
But couldn't we have a standard where literally anything anyone says to a customer must be true, or was not false to the knowledge of the person saying it? Scammy warranties, timeshares, and other "gotcha" products would be a thing of the past. To make money, providing honest value with a product that matches the expectation of the customer would be required.
In these situations, cruise lines will of course lose money in the short term. But the alternative is that we accept the risk to human life to people taking these cruises, all in the name of short-term capital gain. What if instead we had to either "eat the loss", or invest in true safety (we can take 50% of normal passenger load, add these safety measures, these cleaning routines, etc).
You can google for "advertising fraud precedent" "advertising fraud case law" and "advertising fraud case studies" for more information.
Yeah, OK. But here's what happens if a company gets publicly caught. "At ConCo we take ethics seriously. The statements by the employees in question are not in line with ConCo's policies and practices. Those employees will be burned alive, then put on a personal improvement plan, and then their heads will be displayed on pikes at their respective places of employment."
There is no such thing as truth in advertising. There is only a Make Lawyers Rich lawsuit..
I guess I would clarify what you mean by deception. One of the key parts of sales, at least when it comes to technical sales, is that an answer to a question or a presentation of capabilities needs to be made in a context. You have to know your audience. When you're talking about how your software does authentication it's absolutely appropriate to describe it as "integrating into your existing investments in authentication" when speaking to the business side of the audience. This is compared to going into detail (e.g. NTLM, Basic, SAML, Kerberos, OIDC, JWT, whatever) when speaking to the technical side of the audience. Is the generic answer to the business side deceptive? I don't see how it is. It's not their role to analyze the technical merits. They just want to know how much extra work will it require, in general, to deploy the software.
Is outright lying necessary? No. I've only been on the sales (technical sales, but nonetheless sales) side of the world for 1.5 years, but no, you don't. I am fortunate that my manager has carved out a team where the _expectation_ is that we are technical stewards of our customers. Obviously our end goal is selling software, but the immediate goal is to make the software work. It's a norm on our team that it's entirely acceptable to join a call and tell the customer that a competitor would be better suited for the use case.
While it's not necessary, it is hard. The incentives for sales aren't aligned with telling the truth. But this is where culture matters quite a bit.
I'm not okay with saying these situations are unavoidable, but I think they arise pretty naturally out of situations where people are paid to make a sale, and people hear what they want to hear.
This would be hard to prove beyond existing rules, and what would you do about opinionated statements?
I want to prevent consumer pain due to bad sales practices, but I also appreciate that the burden of proof required means that it would be harder for someone to sue me into bankruptcy for speaking my mind at some point.
"Anything anyone says to a customer must be true" is difficult. "Anything the consumer signs must be true" is a much better, and easier to enforce method in my opinion. There's a long way to go on plain language there (and people can and have already tested enforceability) but it's a much clearer standard. (Not a lawyer, just a citizen)
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I assumed it was a weirdly worded title about the country... but then I wondered why they had a 'Sales Team'.
But this is a Miami based news source, so I can forgive the lack of clarity as my impression is that cruise ships are very significant there, so for their audience the cruise line might be what they associate first.
It is not their fault it gets linked to a worldwide audience on HN...
Sorry just don’t want to get us associated with such extremely unethical behavior.
Frankly it ought to be punishable in the justice system.
I can add that the name Norwegian is associated with the Airline company here in the nordics. So using just Norwegian in the headline is unfortunate.
I wonder if a country can force a multinational to stop using a country name because of misrepresentation. i.e Norway (tourism?) forces Norwegian Cruises to stop using its name.
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Dead Comment
Finland, on the other hand.. much respect :)
Salespeople lying, within certain limits, does not seem to be treated as fraud by most governments, caveat emptor and all.
If they tell you the alcohol on the cruise will be free and you sign a contract saying so, and then it actually isn’t and you have to pay more, that’s one thing. If they tell you it’s going to be sunny and warm when you’re taking a cruise to Alaska in winter, that’s a different thing.
Lying or deceiving during sales about things other than the product is a large part of a salesperson’s job, I believe (including but not limited to making the customer think the salesperson likes and respects them).
I guess it was owned by Norwegians at one point.
That wasn't a "scientist", that was the President of the US of A.
His lies are going to get people killed.