Miscellaneous Entries
I Am Honoured to Be Famous
By Craig W. Walsh
Apr 5, 2005 - 2:40:00 AM

Out of curiosity, I just did a Google search under Coutts Sucks.  I was curious to see what was out there in cyberspace.  I was surprised to find a link to the Pierce Law IP News Blog of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire.

The article, about the sucks.com phenomenon crossing the Atlantic from the United States, said (in part), "Originally this phenomenon was found mostly in America. Many companies in the U.S. have a ...sucks.com website ran by an angry consumer who has created a website and message board to complain. In the U.K., this is more rare.

"The two most famous examples [emphasis added] of this include btsucks.com (British Telecom is one of the largest phone companies in all of Great Britain) and couttssucks.com (Coutts being a well-known bank). Couttssucks.com was started by an angry farmer who claims that the bank overcharged him 18,000 pounds. The Royal Bank of Scotland is so afraid of the threat that it is buying all deviations of royalbankofscotlandsucks.com. Is this really a threat? Usually these web sites don't last long because they take a great deal of energy and anger to maintain. However in some cases, there is enough anger."

I am honoured to be cross-Atlantic famous.  And I know what Marilee Owens, the author, means about the "energy and anger" to maintain the site.  The cathartic part, at least for me, was the actual creation of the site, and the initial minor skirmish when Coutts & Co. made an attempt (I'm told) to close the site down. 

I never saw the Coutts correspondence that allegedly went to our internet host at the time, and Coutts never contacted me.  We moved hositng companies, and have heard nothing further.  Do I have the "energy and anger" to keep this going?  I don't know about the anger, but it doesn't take a tremendous amount of energy.