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PR Firm Unwisely Tangles With Penny Arcade
New submitter FSWKU writes "Courtesy of Penny-Arcade, Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing provides a perfect example of what not to do when interacting with customers, especially if you are doing so on behalf of another company. There's name dropping, an ego trip worthy of Charlie Sheen, and even what appears to be a promise to commit libel. Other outlets are already picking up the story and running with it, and an examination of Ocean Marketing's website has generated accusations of plagiarism."
At least Charlie Sheen's ego has some success to support it, what has this guy done other than troll the entire internet?
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
of how not to do your job. I have been laughing all day at this debacle, and will continue to do so. This is a comedy goldmine.
I'd like to propose a new Internet meme: "Dave with a V".
From the article:
"You placed a pre order just like any software title the gets a date moved due to the tweaks and bugs not being worked out and GameStop or any other place holds your cash and im sure you don’t complain to activision or epic games so put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else."
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Well, now your little tirade has been Slashdotted. I hope you take your pwning like a big boy.
their servers need to put on their "big boy pants"
with people who buy ink by the barrel. That's an old saying about fighting newspapers. What's the best way to update that for the internet? "Don't pick a fight with people who have huge daily unique views." "Don't pick a fight with people whose backlinks beat 5 digits." Help me out here.
I was one of the lucky customers to order an Avenger PS3 on Dec 5th via Amazon. There were only about a dozen reviews on amazon, and mostly positive, so I placed the order. I waited for about a week after the amazon estimated shipping date, and asked why my status was only "Shipping soon". Their first reply was that it was a pre-order, and that Amazon got the date wrong. I never saw anything on the product page to indicate it was a pre-order. They said that the product would be shipping Dec 17th. I waited 9 more days, and asked why it was still "shipping soon". At this point, I suggested that they do the right thing, and contact all the amazon customers and let them know the status. They pointed me to their order page (not through amazon) which had an update, but no specific date on it.
Today, I saw all the posts and reviews at amazon, and canceled my order. I commented that the reviews on amazon had bottomed out, and that I had lost all confidence in the product and company. The reply I got was simply "It's spam". Yeah, 128 1-star reviews from different people, and it's spam. This guy is already living in his own universe.
Now maybe if just N-Control had there own Marketing maybe they would not end up as part of this mess.
Seriously. Re-read the e-mails and ask yourself, "Does this sound like something a sociopath would say?"
If you don't know what a sociopath is, then read Snakes in Suits.
Go Penny Arcade! Not only do they run one of the oldest and kickass web comics for games, they run their own gaming convention, their own charity called child's play (its mentioned in the email thread) and they've featured jack thompson on the comic a bunch of times along with the modest video game proposal thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Video_Game_Proposal
Thank you for your email. Due to the overwhelming customer feedback we're getting from the situation with Ocean Marketing we are asking those with specific product related concerns to send emails to customerservice@avengercontroller.co Please know that Ocean Marketing is no longer handling any PR or customer service for our company. We apologize to our customers for Ocean Marketing's remark to one of our customers. We at Kotkin Enterprises know that it's our customers are the true arbiters of our products success and we would never intentionally jeopardize what we see as a relationship between us and our customers. We hope that this incident hasn't put you off of purchasing a truly revolutionary controller. Thank you for expressing your concerns and we hope for your continued support in the future. Kotkin Enterprises Avenger Controller Customer Service Team
These aren't personal e-mails. This is akin to Microsoft telling you to fuck off. One bad employee shouldn't ruin it for the whole company, but who allowed this guy to be part of the team in the first place?
The reply I got was simply "It's spam"
Here's the problem: I'd bet money that at least 1/2 of those *are* spam. Vindictive pricks who bomb the shit out of product review scores are becoming more common. They'll negatively review products they've never seen from companies or people they've never spoken to because of the author/companies political views, PR gaffs, a nerd-o-sphere uproar like this, etc. They'll organize campaigns to bomb the reviews of every single book from an author or every product from an entire corporation for purely political or vengeful reasons. We've discussed this problem on slashdot many times before.
These self-righteous bastards view it as some kind of justice, when in fact they're just polluting the review ecosystem with lies, hearsay, and crappy manifestos. If the product or company is that bad it will become clear, from the legitimate reviews, quite quickly. No need to break out your weird brand of street justice and fuck up the system for everyone.
This time the people at Ocean Marketing are arrogant, mismanaging pricks; most of the time you can't be so certain when you see this kind of event unfolding.
Honestly, when I was reading the Penny-Arcade post I started wondering whether this was really just a vengeful ex-employee, or even corporate espionage from another vendor. It wasn't until I read multiple older reviews and forum posts corroborating this story that I became convinced otherwise.
Beware internet justice: you never really know who's behind the keyboard or just what kind of destructive, ignorant campaign they're running.
Seems to me the customer has a right to be pissed off if the company is screwing him around and then insulting him on top of it.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-christoforo/1/295/835
Feel free to use his LinkedIn page to contact those he knows to bring attention to this situation.
This should be entertaining to me; it is a pretty sweet burn to someone that appears to deserve his fate. Yet I can't laugh at the exchange; it's like taking joy in reality television. Many people do, but I just feel dirty watching the downward trajectory of humanity. Is the customer that less of a dick? Is his motivation at making this exchange public to help other frustrated gamers or to make revenge so sweet and cold? The motive is probably somewhere closer to revenge than help.
Penny Arcade told the guy it was going to be published in an article about the events, and the Ocean Marketing response was, "Great !! Love PR".
He shot himself in the foot, emptied the clip and then reloaded.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Don't post negative product reviews to "punish" Paul. It won't (directly, anyhow). It will directly punish the manufacturers of the product, for which Paul is merely a third-party marketing arm. As Dave points out in his emails - the product is great and he truly feels the public should have access to the product. Trying to drive the company which manufactures it into the ground isn't going to help anyone.
Avenger has indicated they'll no longer use OceanMarketing after the events of the past day. This guy should be going down in flames on his own, not taking a great product with him. Sure N-Control, etc, made mistakes working with this guy. Sure, like most companies they saw only the $$$ but this is nothing new or unique to that particular organisation.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
I really don't understand your logic here. So because the merchandise in question was a "toy" and the shipping deadline was "Christmas", the customer is a child and had no right to be upset that the advertised shipping dates were being grossly missed after he paid full price?
Read the whole exchange again. Dave was being a saint for most of the exchange (much more than I would have been were I in his shoes). He only exploded after the PR guy insulted him.
And the PA dude only kept reminding him that he was one half of Penny Arcade because PR dude was bragging that he knew the guys behind PAX (which he did not).
The Federal Trade Commission's Mail Order Rule applies here. It's real simple:
Staples paid a big fine for this. So did the Beanie Baby people. In the early days of the Internet, a lot of companies were hit by this, because they had web sites accepting orders at high speed, but the back end fulfillment operation was manual and couldn't keep up. Now, most serious online merchants have the ordering system tied to the inventory system, so they stop taking orders when the inventory is used up,
A few months back, TheBloggess got a generic PR Pitch, completely disconnected from what she blogs about. She responded in her usual fashion, by directing them to a page that, in part, had a photo of Wil Wheaton collating papers. (See: http://thebloggess.com/heres-a-picture-of-wil-wheaton-collating-papers/ ) Usually, the PR companies that get this response don't reply or send back a polite response. A VP at this PR firm decided to reply to call her a "bitch". Did I say Reply? I meant Reply All. Including TheBloggess. An e-mail tiff ensued with VP claiming that the TheBloggess should be grateful that they sent her the pitch as their sending pitches to her was what gave her relevancy. She ended the exchange with "Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy." Then, she blogged and tweeted about it.
Now, if you don't know, TheBloggess is big in the blogging world. She has almost 200,000 followers on Twitter and has a HUGE blog following. Her followers went berserk and inundated the company's Twitter account. Wil Wheaton who had posed for that photo on TheBloggess' site and who has almost 2 million Twitter followers tweeted about it. The PR company was forced to backpedal big time.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Internet dick-waving contest extraordinaire. I was with Dave until he wrote this:
In my book this puts Dave in the same douchey category as the Ocean Marketing guy.
Yeah, Dave is leaving this huge mess out there on the internet. If he ever is looking to do work that requires any kind of tact or delicacy, a five minute Google search will get him turned down for it.
If this is "not all that bad", I really need to see an example that fits your definition of "that bad".
Clearly it is bad...but there is worse: Gerald Ratner's after dinner speech. Ratner's used to be a high street jewelry store in the UK. This one speech wiped ~500 million pounds (possibly over $1 billion dollars with the 1991 exchange rate - even more in today's money allowing for inflation) off the value of the company, almost causing it to collapse.
...so even when it comes to disasters this guy is still not all that great!
The FTC "Mail Order Rule" (http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus02-business-guide-mail-and-telephone-order-merchandise-rule) does apply to phone and internet sales as well.
If you don't have an implied shipping time ("Most orders ship within 48 hours!"), you get a default period of 30 days. That sounds like forever these days, but remember that it has its roots in mail order.
If you can't meet that deadline, you must notify the customer "reasonably quickly", no later than by the promised ship date. You must tell them a revised shipping date or tell them you don't know when it will ship (including the reason for the unknown delay and a statement that the order can be cancelled at any time before it ships). If the delay is less than 30 days, non-response can be considered consent to the delay (which also must be stated).
If you still can't hit that revised shipment date, you need to notify the customer again. With this notice, you must provide a reason for the delay and a new ship date, or a statement that you don't know when it'll ship. With this notice, you must cancel the order if the customer doesn't respond. If the customer agrees to an indefinite wait on any proper notification, you do not need to notify them further.
At any point before the item actually ships, the customer has the right to cancel the order and receive a full and prompt refund, and the company has the right to cancel the order and issue a full refund. If the company believes it won't be able to ship the item, they are required to cancel and refund the order. Any violation is subject to a fine of up to $16,000 from the FTC, as well as mail fraud charges if the Postal Service is involved, and state consumer protection laws.
I'm not sure how the "early December" ship date that Dave got is handled by this. Regardless, I'd say that the 16th is past the "early" part of the month, so he legally should've been notified. Based on the November 3 order date, "early December" might fall under the default 30 days, meaning he should've been notified by December 3. I'd say the seller is definitely in legal hot water regarding the failure to ship, and it could've been avoided with a simple email about the delay.
I saw in comments elsewhere that the Visa and Mastercard agreements don't allow you to charge for an order before it ships, but I don't have any experience to verify that. I would think that it wouldn't be completely outlawed for the purpose of preorders and minor unexpected delays.
Like a lot of others, I think this product seems kind of cool (even if I wouldn't buy one myself). I actually saw it on Microcenter's site while browsing the 12/26 sales. I couldn't really tell what it was based on the thumbnail pic, so I took a little time to check it out. I'm a fan of David Kotkin's original idea behind this, and it could be nice for ubergamers (I had the NES controller snap-on joystick things back in the day). It seems like a good idea and something that a number of people actually seem to really like, so I'd hate to see it die off just because of one jerk.
Paul Christoforo, on the other hand, sounds like a total tool. As others have pointed out, he seems to be sorry only that he got caught and it's now an inconvenience for him. I wonder how many non-Dave customers had similar email exchanges with him. He's constantly acting like a tough guy and dropping names, until he realizes there's someone bigger and he turns into a pathetic little whiner. I don't wish any physical harm upon him or anything, but I hope this totally destroys any hope of a future in PR. Maybe he could get a job in a call center or something...