From: roman@cs.ubc.ca (Marc Romanycia)
Subject: Re: *JOHN MACDONALD-REPLY TO THIS POST!*                              
Organization: Computer Science, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 18:41:54 GMT

An open letter to John MacDonald(magundi@gaul.csd.uwo.ca),
John,
  I have no real desire to enter this argument between yourself and
Seenu(PFMJ@VAX5.cit.cornell.edu), except that I think an injustice
has occurred and needs righting.  For the record, let me state
that I have recently had dealings with Seenu and they have been fair and
well conducted.  I have every reason to believe that Seenu is honest.
However, that pleasant experience is not the basis for what I have to
say.
  I am not aware of the exact nature of your dealings with Seenu, but
your suggestion that Seenu might be untrustworthy is a VERY serious
allegation, especially when made over the net, with potentially tens of
thousands of readers.  It is so serious that it would behoove you to
make every attempt to confirm that he did in fact receive your e-mail
and yet refuse to reply.  Net mail is not a guaranteed or even a very
reliable medium of communication.  It is quite within the realm of
possibility that your messages to him were lost, leaving him with no
recourse but to readvertise.
  The net community appreciates knowing who is untrustworthy, but please
be certain that you have proof of such errant behavior before taking the
very serious step of "blowing the whistle".  Had you used a private
telephone call to settle the deal, and then things had turned sour, you
might have a case.  And as for statements like "Well so far I have had
three unsatisfied customers write for every satisfied customer.", they
are irresponsible and tantamount to bad-mouthing since a fair sampling
of all Seenu's customers was not undertaken, not to mention that no
names are given, which would allow us to confirm these alleged complaints.
  There is one last point in which your behavior is questionable.  In
your original article you wrote "I have talked with one other person who
has had dealings with Seenu and the last I heard he thought he had been
ripped off after sending a check and not receiving anything.  It could
be that Seenu is very slow."   These are very serious allegations
indeed.  One would hope that you had reconfirmed with that person before
proceeding to post your message.  Of course, we are relieved to hear that
"I finally heard back from him and he got what he paid for."  Now,
given your earlier allegation, it was imperative that you immediately
post a retraction of that earlier allegation as soon as you heard this
news.  I hope that is what happened.
  In short, when a deal in progress fails to complete it is easy to fall
into the trap of thinking the worst of the other party.  Let us all try
to avoid this.  Remember that E-mail is unreliable and that people
sometimes lose mail, go on vacation, honestly forget, experience
emergencies, confuse customers, and such. Any of these could have
explained your unfortunate experience.  Of course, it could be that
Seenu was greedy, but that is not a crime, and you would have a hard
time proving that a contract did indeed exist at the time communications
were broken off.  So, all in all, it would seem to me that it is unfair
to Seenu to be questioning his integrity in public.  Please realize how
serious such an attack is, and how you just might be wrong!
  Thanks for opportunity to lecture.
Marc Romanycia (roman@cs.ubc.ca)