When is it spam?

[Burkey]

Some of us recently made some comments in the exhaust thread, subsequently deleted.
Whilst I understand the forums need to protect its sponsors, it is also fair to say that the members should be offered some protection also....
At what point is a vendor/sponsor allowed to make claims of spurious veracity without any voice of dissent from the members?
If the vendor was making these claims in his/her own section, I would consider that to be fair and reasonable, but constantly reminding people to "buy my stuff" does little other than clog up a thread. You might call it spam.
If however that vendor was able to offer some education to back up the claims, that might constitute information sharing, which is in fact the main purpose of a forum. Simply stating that "Ours is the best quality and value" isn't really an educational tool. In fact, I'd argue that you'd be hard pressed to validate either of those opinions, particularly the latter which is purely subjective.
My point is, if we follow this to its logical conclusion, we'll end up with threads that are bombarded by the vendors, all singing the same song.
Luckily, XForce haven't adopted the same tactic....yet.
We come here to share ideas, not to be told what to buy and from whom.
Rant complete.
Cheers.

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[msweet]

It's also not representative of the behaviour of other sponsors on this forum, who for the most part take the educational route. That's a major factor in my decision to give other sponsors my money rather than our local offering

 

[Hunter]

I have no objection to spending my money with any local sponsors and would prefer to do so. However I sent a message (via Facebook) to that vendor about 6 months ago regarding exhaust and tune and got no response.
My exhaust and tune will be a locally made engine back system with full dyno but given their responses thus far, I can't see it going to them. However, their system does look good quality and I'm sure I'd have no issues with it on my car, but all we seem to get is the sales pitch without the support.

 

[Jarv23]

+1 definitely Spam. Sick of their comments popping up all over the threads in this forum, being force-fed down our throats. They're doing themselves a dis-service, I simply won't even look at what they have because their posts are so annoying. Product recommendations should come from others, not from biased vendors themselves.

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