LaGarde announces “Discount Lawsuit Month” promotion

LaGarde offers customers discounts on filing lawsuits against the company in October

(Olathe, Kan.) September 30, 2008 - A new promotion from LaGarde is helping a lot of its customers get what they want—their money back. The new promotion tagged as “Suing Us Just Got Easier!” will run the entire month of October, and offers savings on all forms of lawsuits against the company.

"We really don’t see this kind of thing too often." said a local district court judge. "Generally, business owners are seeking to avoid lawsuits against them.” There really isn’t a positive to being sued more often, he noted. “In all my years of practicing law and being on the bench, I’ve never heard of a company operating in such a way that it actively encourages litigation…it’s just not something that you ordinarily see.”

But LaGarde is no ordinary company.

The company has a long history of stunts which seem directly targeted toward attacking its customer base. For years the company has oversold a package of outdated shopping cart scripts, touting it as a complete ecommerce solution. Late last year it announced a series of highly-promoted features and upgrades to its software which never materialized.

More recently it has advertised a brand new ecommerce platform for mid-sized business, but when asked about what was actually delivered, one inside source revealed, “Well, selling software solutions here is like selling snow futures in hell. Even if it does somehow materialize, it won’t be around for very long!”

Others have similar stories from the inside.

One former salesperson noted, “It’s a hard f—ing sell, too, let me tell you. Sometimes you weren’t always able to find those few suckers out there.” During those periods, sales were often made up or counted 2 or 3 times in order to keep the excitement high during company meetings.

A project manager inside the company added, “Look, a fully customized and complete ecommerce solution is just an empty phrase our Sales team uses…it’s insider code we have here for get on the phone and find some cheap-ass f---ing developers in Sri Lanka—and don’t pay them either!”

So are lawsuits really the best action for LaGarde customers? Apparently so. As one current LaGarde Manager told us, “Look, our project managers have several task placeholders specifically related to the lawsuit filing already built into the project template. We consider it an important final step in the project. If we don’t get sued, we feel like the project isn’t complete. I’m dead serious. If you don’t sue us, your project cannot be counted as fully completed on our books.”

In fact, to many in the company, the common visit from the local county sheriff’s deputy to serve summons has become an almost celebratory ritual. “Hey, look, Barney’s back again this week!” an anonymous employee once celebrated. “Somebody go tell Bob to hit the sh-tter again and hide! Ha ha…looks like we’re gonna get another Beer Friday outta this one!”

Apparently, the company regularly holds company-wide celebratory sessions whenever some disaster has occurred. One insider even noted the lockstep correlation between such celebratory events and layoffs in the past.

So will the new discount lawsuit campaign pay off? “We hope so” says Lance, a former marketing lackey, who now holds the title of Chief Marketing Officer for the company. “They say that any press is good press, and besides, I just love watching that cop car zoom in here…what a kick!”

The owner, Bob LaGarde, is excited about the new program which launches October 1.

“I worked all weekend with some Ecstasy—err I mean ec-stat-ic analysis on a new business plan.” he noted. “So this is the best thing I could come up with. These additional lawsuits will help get all these damn refunds off our books. Once they’re tied up in the court system, we don’t have to show the liability."

"I’m totally jazzed!” he added several more times.