Two large Yekaterinburg-based car dealers that sell premium class cars have recently waged an information war against each other. This summer, the Internet has been flooded by some negative references to the two companies (namely, Autoland and Krasnolesye), both of which compete in terms of selling Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover cars. A number of information resources and online car forums have featured materials that could be damaging to one or the other company, and car dealers have said off the record that this could be the rivals’ attempts to outstrip each other.

Early in August 2007, a new website www.rfblog.ru was set up and is regularly updated with some blackening news about Krasnolesye. The articles posted there are critical of the quality of the company’s service and predict its upcoming bankruptcy. In addition, they focus on alleged cases of treating the customers badly and alleged instances of unfair competition. In the meantime, this web portal is more or less anonymous, even though WHOIS.RIPN.NET (RFBLOG.RU domain) does say the site belongs to a Ms Rosa A. Kholodova. The phone number provided belongs to a Saint Petersburg-based company that deals in settling insured events.

The authors of the blog claim that it was actually created as a way of ‘publicly reacting to Krasnolesye’s unscrupulous business practices.’ Moreover, the materials featured there prove that the creation of this blog was brought about by an alleged negative publicity campaign targeted at Autoland Holding.

'As long as Krasnolesye keeps dealing in negative publicity, it will get truthful but mainly negative reports here, as we want to counterbalance their actions,’ the bloggers say.

Krasnolesye has been operating in Yekaterinburg since September 2005 and is the official dealer of Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo. Autoland Holding has been present on the local market since 1991 (originally known as Yekaterinburg Ford) and offers its customers Ford, Mazda, Land Rover, Volvo, Jaguar, Mitsubishi Motors, and Hyundai cars.

UralBusinessConsulting intends to keep a close eye on the unfolding of the conflict.