Oneswoop.com, the big VC-backed European online new car dealership, turned away potential customers, less than a day after going live. Site's back up and running now. But we have saved its door-shutting tactics for posterity.

Here's the message: "Welcome to OneSwoop. "We are currently experiencing great interest in our site, and are unable to accept you at this time. "Pease visit our site again shortly." Can't these car dealers spell? And why don't these companies spend a bit of their VC-gazillions on things like servers and bandwidth? Where did you want to go to, today Incidentally, Oneswoop.com is - when it works - available only to people accessing the site using Internet Explorer browsers. Interesting, that. Here is a business that is pledged to smash monopolistic practices for car vendors in Europe. And yet here it is, imposing a kind of readership IT monopoly of its own. ®

What the papers say

"OneSwoop's big-gun backers provide credibility previously lacking in the EU car broker sector [...] and the scale of the operation overtakes existing e-commerce players." (Automotive Digest Oct 28, 1999)

"OneSwoop has the best proposition in the market - being much cheaper and delivering right to the consumer's door. It is on a different scale to a lot of the other e-commerce launches, it has great backing." (Campaign Oct 29, 1999)

"Saving money by buying your car abroad is all very well, but the barriers of distance, language and reliable contacts often get in the way. Not anymore. OneSwoop.com promises to take care of all that for you, delivering discount cars straight to your door." (The Express Oct 30, 1999) ®

A reader writes (2.3.00)

"Seems the site works fine if you use Netscape, and disable javascript. Now don't ask me why..." We won't, Frank. We won't.