Buyii accuses Cudo of bullying over legal letter
The bad tempered battle for Australia’s exploding online group buying marketplace has taken a fresh legal turn with NineMSN’s Cudo threatening to sue aggregator Buyii.
Cudo sent a cease and desist letter to Buyii on Friday. Buyii has accused Cudo boss Billy Tucker of “bullying”. Meanwhile, on Twitter today, Tucker accused Buyii of being unprofessional.
Buyii rounds up daily deals from group buying sites including Cudo, Spreets, ScoopOn, JumpOnIt, Living Social and OurDeal.
The letter from Cudo to Buyii’s boss Zhen Lim demands that Buyii stop using its logo and publishing its offer descriptions.
Buyii has responded by removing the logo and replacing the offer description with the message: “Cudo has threatened Buyii with legal action for publishing their deal descriptions. This is regrettable as it only inconveniences everyone. If you are disappointed as we are, let Cudo know by email!”
Cudo’s daily deal still features on Buyii though.
Lim said: “I find what Cudo is doing goes against the spirit of group buying which has today grown so rapidly thanks to word of mouth and social media. What Cudo is doing does not seem very ‘social’ at all. Group buying started as a way for the community to rally behind businesses and that is what should be encourage. We also suspect Cudo are not pleased with Buyii’s top google rankings for popular search terms such as ‘Daily Deals’, ‘Group Buying’ and even ‘Cudo’.
“It seems Billy Tucker has inherited or been forced to adopt the Microsoft mentality of ‘going alone’ and is attempting to take a strangle hold over the group buying space at all cost, even ones that seem to inconvenience users. He has at his disposal the NineMSN legal team and has sent this Cease and Desist in an attempt to scare away the ‘little guy’. Buyii views this action as bullying and we’ll continue to fight for our users and for the sake of principles, that such information should be readily available for all readers and visitors of daily deal aggregator sites, not just Buyii.com.au.”
Recent weeks have seen US-based GroupOn enter into a spat with Australia’s ScoopOn over claims of domain squatting and a row between Cudo, Spreets, JumpOnIt and Living Social as to which is the number one site.
In a statement Tucker said: “It is critical that Cudo is able to control the use of its brand and the brands of our merchant partners. We made a number of attempts to contact Buyii by email and by phone with no success. We feel that we had no choice but to issue a C&D.”
Earlier today Tucker tweeted:
“4 emails and 3 calls to Buyii, all unanswered; now I’m the bad guy? Time to get professional if you want to play with our Brand!”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Social media/PR fail from Buyii, which is simply a parastic business seeking to profit from the intellectual property and hard work of others. In seeking to employ the community value of openness and sharing it has outed itself as glib and disengenuous – qualities not really valued by anyone, it’s uses included.
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Carefactor = 0.
As long as the deals are good, people will come!
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how does buyli make any money? if it’s profiting from the work of others that would assume they are charging the group buying companies money for referrals.
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Sven, buyii is doing the same thing google does. Basically index.
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Indexing is fine… but take a look at the site. They are iframing and presenting a co-brand… nobody would like that done to their site.
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Cudo haven’t contacted my site, Dealsguide, or another aggregator allthedeals…it seems they just take issue with the way Buyii does things.
Needless to say, I’m watching this story unfold very carefully!
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Wait until the beast enters the room: http://www.brandrepublic.com/b.....ook-deals/
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How do you aggregator sites make money?
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Aggregator sites can make money via search, by creating a well optimised site that then displays Adsense ads.
Given many sites don’t focus on optimisation, they can then outrank the sites they supply traffic to, whilst creating a high-proportion of their downstream client traffic.
ie Cudo could be paying for the traffic from Buyii.
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“Aggregator sites can make money via search, by creating a well optimised site that then displays Adsense ads. ”
Doesn’t sound like a business to me
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@Logic – Being a business doesn’t mean it’s a good business, if indeed this is their model.
Aggregators are well known in travel, where commission and affiliate fees are common. Obviously enough, not all survive.
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I see how it works in travel – don’t see how it’d work for a group buying one, well at least for the group buying sites.
Hasn’t happened in any other similar areas in Oz – ie real estate, auto, jobs etc … basically it’s glorified content stealing/scraping with some SEO tricks. Not at all beneficial for the people doing the heavy lifting.
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Just thought I would say….
I think it is worth noting that the according to his linkedin profile, the founder of All The Deals works for the NineMsn Search Team. Cudo are owned by NineMSN, so seems a little suspicious.
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You guys need to stop looking at things from a business point of view. Think about the CONSUMER – deal aggregation sites are very helpful for CONSUMERS.
And Buyii can eventually make money from online ads (if they decide to feature them).
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10 Phone Calls & 5 email to CUDO with no answer. I still want my money back.
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Had a look at the site … not a great fan of the buyii website anyway… other players are much better in aggregating deals… and it doesn’t looks like legit site. Its funny how its getting compare with Google … hehe…
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@Logic – Agree. That said, it isn’t necessarily ‘passing off’ as the recipient of the traffic still gets the result. Would be an interesting case if it makes it to court.
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“You guys need to stop looking at things from a business point of view”.
Sure. Tell that one to your bank.
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Yeah …. I’m with “Consumers 1st!”. Stop looking at things from a business point of view. Think about the consumer and give your products and services away for free. Come and join in the race to the bottom!
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Big media companies have never been very good at Social and group buying is a social business. Just look at Myspace after it was taken over by NewsLtd. Cudo, being owned by a big media company with very different values to the social/ group/ community mentality that these sites are built on. There may end up being a backlash for them.
Has anyone asked the suppliers of these great coupon deals how it’s been for their business? My wife dropped her car off for the first service at a very reputable company in Roseberry today, oh and what a sh_t fight! Apparently the new service manager was more than pleased to drive her to the airport….needed to get out. The Cudo deal has caused havoc and apparently they wish they had never done it! Will this be the demise of these etailers? Whose controlling the supply side?
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@Daza Some suppliers do very well out of these deals, but some have experienced terrible difficulties, such as the example you gave. The group buying discount providers don’t seem to be vetting their suppliers very carefully in some cases which just causes problems for everybody. Suppliers need to think about whether they are really in a position to profit from the offer they make (long term or short term!). Just because it’s the “Next Big Thing” it doesn’t mean it will work for everybody. Normal business sense must prevail!
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