Seth reports today that Anbesol conned him into thinking that it would ease the pain when his tooth fell out. His dentist said it actually makes the pain worse! They cheated to make a sale.
A friend of mine just told me that when she tried to scan something with her multi-purpose fax/printer/scanner, she found that HP doesn’t support scanning on the latest Mac OS. They’re cheating to try to get her to shell out hundreds of dollars for a new machine (when the old one works perfectly).
Cheating may get you a quick sale, but it will annoy your customers, who will spread the word (as Seth, my friend, and I just did) that you’re more interested in a quick profit than a long-term happy customer.
It’s an old rule that one dissatisfied customer will tell 10 people about their experience. Instead of cheating, why not provide support or products so remarkable that your customers will be eager to talk about them (and encourage their friends to use them)?