The coffee maker I've had - and been happy with - for around 20 years is beginning to show its age, so I thought I'd get a new one. Sadly, the page on its maker's website made no effort to retain a loyal customer.
Now, if a customer went into a shop and said to the assistant, 'I'm looking for a Cafe Mattino Coffee Machine', the assistant would take it that the customer either had one of the devices, or it had been recommended to them. Online, someone putting the exact name into Google [as I had] and arriving on the product's web page is, effectively, saying the same.
In the shop, however, the salesperson would not just say 'it's obsolete' and leave it at that. I'll go further and say that wouldn't use the term 'obsolete' [who does?] they would use a softer term, such as 'it's no longer made', or 'it's no longer available'.
But, and here's the point of this posting, the assistant would follow up - probably in the same sentence - with '... but we do have its replacement'.
Indeed, a good salesperson would be more likely to say something like, 'Oh they were great machines weren't they, very popular - but the technology they used was getting old, so Morphy Richards replaced it with an updated version which has all the old features plus some new ones, and it looks more modern too.'
So why doesn't the website say something similar, with a link to the new product?
I'm going to make the suggestion that it's because no one with a sales background was involved in the development of the website.
