Fiasco : Humiliating Failure - a total failure, especially a humiliating or ludicrous one

This is to form a summary of what we do know to date, and what has been reported in the comments of the original post about www.realestate.com.au email delivery failure.

Realestate.com.au had a failure to “several of the email servers” and on Thursday they freed the stuck mail queues without any advice to agents which resulted in agencies around Australia being flooded with old email enquiries.

Because the enquiry emails give very little clue as to the date the buyer actually made the enquiry agents reported following up buyers as though they were fresh enquiries. Understandably buyers reactions ranged significantly. If REA had advised of the email problems immediately much of the embarrassment, humiliation and frustration encountered by agents could have been avoided.

Other than releasing the old email enquiries, not one initiative or announcement was undertaken by REA to advise agents of what had happened and to minimise the damage to agents. (more…)

This morning it was reported to me by one of our staff members that enquiries that were made by buyers weeks ago on www.realestate.com.au have just been turning up in the mail.

Now in many offices it is not unusual for salespeople to be handling enquries days and even weeks later but that is not a problem we normally have. At first nobody noticed and we went about handling the enquiries as they came in. Then a couple of buyers complained that it had taken us to long to get back to them, but the problem was we had only had the enquiry turn up in some cases minutes before hand.

Checking the email and in the top left hand corner REA places the date of that enquiry and for the example of this I am going to use, the enquiry was made on  the 8th of May yet was only delivered this morning at 8:01am on the 20th of June.

When this was brought to my attention I checked the email headers (which I will paste in full at the end) which reveals  that the delay appears to be happening inside REA servers. (more…)

Here is a handful of recent stories I thought you’d find of interest:

Real estate is spelled S-E-X in China.

Vodafone to sell the iPhone in Australia.

But, Vodafone might not be the only one (and here).

Suncorp and LJ Hooker launch real estate podcasts.

How to cope when Google dumps you.

First banks in Spain raise mortgage interest rates, then they encourage borrowers to invest in their own stock funds and certificate of deposits–instead of buying a house. Real estate agents are outraged. (in Spanish).

WAN gets realestate.com.au to power its real estate website.

This is a letter from IP Australia in relation to the realestate.com.au trademark application.

April 2008
Statement regarding realestate.com.au‚

There has been considerable interest in the acceptance by IP Australia of the trade mark Œrealestate.com.au‚ for a range of goods and services including real estate affairs and advertising of real estate. The registration has been opposed by at least one party. Other parties have the opportunity to oppose until 17 April 2008.

Background
A trade mark‚s function is to distinguish, in a commercial sense, one person‚s goods or services from the similar goods or services of another.

Applications for trade mark registration are examined. Marks that other traders would ordinarily want to use, including those which are purely descriptive, would not normally be accepted. However, it is possible for an applicant to overcome problems of this nature with substantial evidence of use showing the trade mark has acquired distinctiveness or reputation.

If a trade mark is accepted, whether on the basis of evidence or not, it is advertised to allow others to oppose registration if they wish to do so.

Unlike examination, opposition allows both sides to fully put their case. It typically involves three stages of presentation of evidence which can in total take over 12 months. At the conclusion of the evidence stages, a Hearing Officer will decide whether to register or refuse the trade mark. This decision may be appealed to the Federal Court.

This particular trade mark application went through the normal examination process and as would be expected, evidence of use was required before it was accepted.

As noted above, registration of this trade mark has been opposed. The opposition process will allow opposing parties to express their views about the appropriateness of registration of the mark.

**If the mark were to be registered, registration would provide rights in the mark as a whole and not in specific parts of it. Moreover, where parts of a mark are descriptive, registration would not necessarily stop others from using those terms. The law also provides a range of defences to infringement action, including where the term is used descriptively. This type of conflict would be resolved by determining whether consumers are likely to be confused by the similarity in the respective terms. It would for instance be highly unlikely that the owner could prevent use of the term „real estate‰ by others.

IP Australia has no role in determining infringement matters. These are decided by the courts.

End of letter.

Update: The REA Application has been passed by IP Australia, however this still can be rejected and is under review. There has been objection raised and now it will go to a hearing. The closing date for objections is nearing completion. If the trademark is successful then any legal matters are between the two parties concerned.

Realestate.com.au Limited (REA) has applied to register “realestate.com.au” as a trade mark for a very wide range of services relating to real estate, including ‘Real estate affairs’, ‘financial services’ and ‘advertising of real estate in electronic and printed format’. If this proceeds through it will be registered by the Australian Trade Mark Office.

I have received quite a few emails on this very subject. Here is an excerpt from one of these emails.

The Australian Trade Mark Office usually ignores “.com” or “.com.au” in assessing applications. In practical terms, the application for “realestate.com.au” is effectively an attempt to trade mark “realestate”. I currently control the domain name xxxrealestate.com.au. A lawyer working for REA has sent me a letter requiring me to “cease use of the domain name “xxxrealestate.com.au” (or any other name that includes “realestate.com.au”) and arrange for the transfer of that domain name to REA”. I have not responded to the letter. I know of at least 300 other domain names, perhaps your’s, that includes “realestate.com.au”

The email above has been going around the traps and points to a certain website receiving a notice from REA asking them to cease using this domain. I spoke with IP Australia today and not surprisingly they actually told me that they have had a great deal of response and any media enquiries for this Trademark are directed to one person, who has not returned my calls. However, I did get to have a brief conversation with one of their staff members.
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