Quarantine/Vetting by Admin prior to allowing "Company Is Dead" Threads to go live

The internet is a completely different animal. Our company sign blew down during Dorian. Someone driving by may infer we are out of business, but hopefully the cars in the parking lot would dissuade them of such an assumption. A company's internet server goes down along with their phones....how does anyone know? It is not responsible to post "are they out of business?" More responsible to post "it appears XYZ is having technical issues..can someone pm me a cell number or dealer info regarding XYZ?"

I'm brand new here and can vouch for the SEO and google hits that brought me (as I've been researching my dream mid 90's system that I can now afford to put together).  Although I don't like heavy handed forum moderation, I abhor clickbait titles even more so.  So I agree with david_ten.  As I see it, that's what threads asking if a company is dead or out of business are doing, using clickbait tactics.  Kind of like the fad on facebook of posing a question with a random picture "pic for attention".

Not stereo, but in a similar hobby where there are many small companies producing high end product, I watched a similar thing - someone posted that they couldn't get hold of the company and that it must have crashed.

Turns out that the owner had just taken a 3 week holiday and his answering machine had died on him while he was away.  Untold customer grief over a total non-issue.  Maybe some sort of moderation would be in order.

Like a query about whether anyone else has been in contact with the business if you call, email and mail with no response for over a month (people today are notoriously impatient and want instant gratification - if they don't get a call back in a day they go postal sometimes).

With today's technology, no matter how big or small the company, there is absolutely no excuse for a customer not to get an out-of-office email, an appropriate phone recording, or a website splash page informing the customer about their status i.e. holidays/moving/maintenance etc.