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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".
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.
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
Thing is, there's a difference between the expected maturity of a representative of a company to not behave like someone trying to win an argument on the internet. The complaint that was made was a valid one and shouldn't have been dismissed as one belonging to a child. I think if the argument went any further that guy from the company would have brought out a Nazi comparison at some point.
Apparently N-Control decided to stick with this guy even when they were told not to:
http://kotaku.com/5871400/cut-paul-oceanmarketting-christoforo-a-breakhe-probably-just-has-roid-rage/
To explain the pre-amble, in the article, Paul pretends he's Brandon in an email earlier on:
Hi Joel,
I have been following this story since this morning when someone notified me about what was going on. I did not write that response to you.
Yes, in the past I received email at brandon@avengercontroller.com but even then we were an outsourced marketing agency for N-Control. I no longer receive email at that address because we fired N-Control as a client about 8 months ago due to constant shipping delays (which we had to deal with) and their association with Paul Cristoforo who is a street thug masquerading as a self proclaimed "Marketing Professional". This guy is a complete fool and somehow strong armed his way into working with the company so we walked away. I am not surprised in the slightest bit by what's going on right now. In fact, we told the owners of the company on many occasions that this would eventually happen.
I wasn't going to chime in but since he is replying as me, I can't resist. I personally can't stand him.
Brandon
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
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.
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
Revenge? This guy fronted his cash for two months, won't have his product in time for Christmas, and then this low life spit in his face to top it off. As a customer, he's well within his rights to raise a stink. As to agreeing or disagreeing with his actions, that's up for you and I to decide, but it doesn't change the fact that he's entitled to some sort of recourse in this situation. All the PR guy had to do was give him a simple, courteous answer. "I'm sorry, I don't know", "They will ship by.." "They have shipped..", etc. Never in my darkest days of doing phone support would I ever have considered what this assclown did as acceptable. No matter how rude or combative the customer is (and as far as upset customers go, Dave was a gem), somebody is paying you to do a job, so you damn well better do it. If you want to run your own business into the ground, have at, but this guy has now messed with someone else's money.
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).
That's the thing I can't wrap my mind around; no matter how stupid you think the customer's complaint is, you treat them with respect. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained by being an asshole to a paying customer. There can be no positive outcome...at the very least, you just lost potential sales, and at worst, you just cost yourself a job. No matter what happens, you lose.
This isn't even really a customer service thing necessarily. It's simple logic. Even the most patronizing, insincere apology from a major company without a death wish is at least polite. I've gotten some politely worded 'Go Fuck Yourself' responses in the past, but I have never seen something so outright hostile, nor stupid, on behalf of an employee for a professional marketing firm in my life. Typically you have to get your hands on leaked internal emails to see retarded shit like this as regards a customer.
I've worked in Customer Service for many years, including a stint providing computer tech support to people that, if not for the accent, could have convincingly passed themselves off as recent immigrants from the Brazilian Rain Forest where electricity is wizard shit, and I have never seen or heard an exchange like that. We all think it, but we never say it.
What a fucking idiot this Paul guy is.
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,
Interesting portfolio... So he went to college for 2 years, leaving in 1992, then vanished for 18 years. Now suddenly he works for this other company. It's almost like he doesn't want people to know what he did during that time...
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
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.
When Mike said he would cancel the dude's booth at Pax if he had one, the customer e-mailed Mike saying that wouldn't be necessary. It doesn't sound like revenge to me. The customer wrote polite e-mails asking for an order status update on something he had already paid for and received a completely unprofessional response. This is actually one of the best uses for the press. When the big guys don't value your two controller purchases, you spread the story to the press so that they can stand to lose a lot more than a two controller order. That ensures every customer is respected.
I should also mention that at this point, boycotting the product is not the correct response. This was a representative for a PR firm which has already been fired by the guys actually selling the project. Mission accomplished, no more punishment is warranted.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
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!