Slashdot Mirror
World's Worst PR Guy Gives His Side
First time accepted submitter Narnie writes "Follow up to Tuesday's story of a PR rep's lack of professionalism. Kyle Orland provides a follow up interview with Paul Christoforo after a simple email chain escalated into internet infamy. N-Control official response to Paul Chrostoforo's actions can be found here. Kotaku.com even has a whole section devoted to covering the entire ordeal. I for one found myself caught following the news releases and in awe of the combined load forced on penny-arcade's servers from Slashdot, Reddit, Digg, Kotaku, and other news sites covering the story."
"If I had known, I would have treated the situation a little better."
Referring to the email thread that started the whole mess, Christoforo said that he didn't know who he was talking to in his initial, flippant response to Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik.
"I didn't know who that guy at Penny Arcade was," he admitted. "If I had known, I would have treated the situation a little better. PAX is a great show. What he does is what I've been idolizing since I was a kid. It's admirable he's put that together. He has a lot of connections, ones I want too."
He just doesn't get it. You should treat people, especially your customers, good no matter who they are. He still isn't sorry for what happened, he is "sorry" because someone famous caught him.
And he wasn't caught at bad time either like he says now. There's many similar stories about how he treated customers for a long time.
is quite the understatement.
I never would have stolen that car if I knew I was going to get caught so it's not really my fault.
"Looking back, Christoforo is still a little shocked that what he thought would remain a private email conversation got blown into an Internet event the way it did." This show a blinding misunderstanding of the Internet. I always act/write/post/upload and assume anything i send to anyone could end up in the faces of the planet. To not do so invites this kind of idiocy. The measure of the man is that he acted the way he did because he thought he was acting 'in secret'. People who act this way are not the kind of people I trust to work with me reliably.
-- John
Every time this guy opens his mouth to try to defend himself, he makes it worse. He needs to just stop. We all get that he thinks his mistake was not knowing who Mike was and that it would have been perfectly ok to treat him like crap if he was nobody.
His apology can be summed up as "Normally I pride myself on knowing who I need to blow and who I can spit on, I made a mistake Mike (points to zipper), may I?"
(analogy seen on reddit)
Basically his stance is, "I'm sorry I was a d!ck to someone important. I thought he was just another nobody I could abuse at will."
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
Please tell us of all the articles you don't want to read anymore by telling us about them on every article you didn't read to comment on their /. stubs. Do you have a website where like-minded people can find out about all the stories you don't care about so we can not care about them either?
Seriously, ftg. His fifteen minutes are up. He deserves nothing more than to be ignored and live in perpetual ignominy until somebody requires a textbook example of how not to treat anybody.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
[Emphasis added.]
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To stop those monsters 1-2-3,
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free,
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
Guarantee void in Tennessee.
Just don't look! Just don't look!
Just don't look! Just don't look!
Just don't look! Just don't look!
Glad I could help.
Its great, because this guy is getting MASSIVELY screwed right now. I would feel bad for the guy, except that he's a gigantic asshole, and isn't even sincerely apologetic.
Even then though, I start to feel like maybe this all just got out of hand...
Then you read the part where Ocean Marketing's website was DIRECTLY PLAGIARIZED from websites like forbes.com.
Thats it, no more excuses. This man is A CON ARTIST. He has been running a SCAM. He has this coming 100%
Oh, the lulz.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
This guy still diesn't get it. He blames everyone else, they were "being a bully" or acting like a "punk or jerk".
Then there's this gem: "Ultimately, if I was able to control the customer, it never would have happened. I've dealt with thousands and thousands of customers with similar complaints, they were all asking the same question." Control the customer? When has anyone been able to "control the customer"? Where the hell did he learn to provide customer service? Even in Fast Food they're trained better than that...
How fucking clueless can someone be? It boggles the mind that this guy actually worked as a professional in any industry, let alone one that focuses on these sort of interactions.
What an idiot...
Not to be clinical here but a thousand times as many people now know about the Avenger then before.
If the product dose what it is design to, most of its target market (including Dave) won't be put off by a 1 month delay or a poor choice of PR firm. The whole fiasco is almost certainly a net positive for the product's sales.
Someone needs to tell this guy about the First Law of Holes: "When you find yourself in one, stop digging!!"
. Conversely, the guy on the other end was WAY overboard on wanting that controller by Christmas (must be a helluva controller).
Yeah. How dare he want his controller by X-mas when it was advertised to him that it would arrive in early December!? How dare he ask for an update on the ETA. How dare he get upset when the HEAD OF PUBLIC RELATIONS calls him a bitch!?
>>The douchebag loves attention and "connections".
Hey, don't mock his connections, okay?
Turns out he knows the guy at the door of the convention center.
We may want to insult him for the way he treated a customer, as we're all customers are one point or another so it hits a nerve. But let's face it, a lot of people who are disgusted with him aren't any better.
Everyone started to flame him, spam his email accounts, call him and threaten him and his wife? I mean they even brought his two year old son into this.
It's a shame day not only for him and the way he treated a customer, but for the rest of us on the internet as well for the way we responded to him.
This really has been blown way out, people should leave him alone and maybe not use him as a business as punishment, but not threatening phone calls etc.
please, let us continue to enjoy his cretinous existence and villify it further, so that he may enjoy the karma which he still cannot acknowledge.
I'm pretty sure that unless this guy hits rock bottom (which he won't), that he will never learn from this experience. The wholehearted lack of apology and the "I haven't lost clients" part basically shows that he hasn't learn shit from this.
If you knew how to spell brusque, maybe you'd also know why this became so big. It's about class.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just looked up recalcitrant in the dictionary, there was a little picture of this grinning douchebag in shades and a bandana.
Anybody want a peanut?
They connected him to a user id, TheAngryPimp, on a steroid board. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/12/cut-paul-oceanmarketting-christoforo-a-breakhe-might-just-have-roid-rage/
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
The way he responded wouldn't even be appropriate if the customer were directly, personally insulting him to start off with. As a PR guy, you have to hold your tongue, whether the person you're talking to is internet famous or not.
So he is out poorly trying to straighten things out when the real tragedy is that the innocent product maker is getting burned. People were harassing the product maker over this guy's moronic behavior. Let that dumbass change his name if he wants to get back in the biz.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
The whole thing looked way blown out of proportion to me. [...] Conversely, the guy on the other end was WAY overboard on wanting that controller by Christmas (must be a helluva controller). [...] Very unprofessional on Christoforo's part, for sure. But hardly worthy of the massive scorn he's gotten.
The customer hardly went overboard, the company processing the order was in violation of federal regulations (when you place an order online that cannot be fulfilled within 30 days there are regulations that state you must contact the customer notifying them of the issue and providing the option to cancel or alter the order) as well as merchant agreements (both VISA and MasterCard prohibit charging the customer's account prior to shipping merchandise).
As the customer service representative handling the order, not only was Christoforo "unprofessional" in lacking the ability to communicate in English (or, most likely, any other language), he was openly degrading toward the customer when it was pointed out the company he was representing was operating outside of the rules and regulations that governed their operation. This is an offense worthy of immediate termination at EVERY company I've worked for or had a contract with.
I've certainly experienced bad customer service, but this goes so far beyond anything I've ever encountered that it is practically unbelievable ... if it weren't a story sourced from multiple reliable individuals and news services, I wouldn't take it at face value ... as it is, yes, this ought to be taught to every jerk trying to party through school toward their MBA.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
I worked customer service/tech support for seven years. We dealt with good customers, we dealt with bad customers, and we dealt with baaaad customers. Death threats were a weekly occurrence (we worked with people's money). At no point in my career did I ever see or hear anything that even came close to the magnitude of where this guy went with a simple request of 'wheres my stuff?'. This guy took abusing the customer to a new extreme, and he got caught and publicly shamed for it. This case in itself isn't one of those world-changing events, but it's more of a warning to other business people to treat everyone decently and with respect. You never know if the customer you just told to piss up a rope will quietly slink away, or wipe their ass with your reputation for the whole internet to see.
And for those who say the customer is at all in the wrong here, how so? The guy had been very patient up to this point, and now he's fed up, so he spoke his mind. If the business wants his money, then they do what they need to make him happy. If they decide the benefit of this particular sale has become overshadowed by what ever burden he's placed upon them, then they advise him of such, immediately refund his money, and part ways. There's no need for all this drama. It's not as if the company has been trapped in an abusive relationship that only the customer has the power to end...
That's a helluva good point. Maybe this guy is really the most talented "marketter" ever. The product really does look useful, and I never would have heard of it if it weren't for the boing-boing story.
But it sure seems like a one-trick pony. I wouldn't hire this ass-clown to handle customer service complaints at a collection agency. His best bet now is to find a job as a sewer unblocker or ditch digger.
John
"I'm sorry for being a hostile, juvenile ...." is expected, but is impossible to figure out if it's true or not.
Did he ever actually say that (paraphrased I realize!)? If so I certainly missed it. In fact the whole thing did not read like any sort of apology at all.
Conversely, the guy on the other end was WAY overboard on wanting that controller by Christmas (must be a helluva controller).
Or, like many other people buying stuff before Christmas, it was intended as a gift. It is traditional to give Christmas presents at Christmas, so having something turn up in late January is a problem. This is presumably why he checked before ordering that the expected delivery date was early December...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Not to be clinical here but a thousand times as many people now know about the Avenger then before.
If the product dose what it is design to, most of its target market (including Dave) won't be put off by a 1 month delay or a poor choice of PR firm. The whole fiasco is almost certainly a net positive for the product's sales.
And yet, even given all that, N-Control has absolutely nothing to lose by dumping Ocean Marketing, and plenty to lose by keeping them. This Streisand Effect is a one-off for Ocean.
If Ocean is smart, they'll fold up shop, liquidate, and open as some other business somewhere else, with Paul under an alias.
How much does anyone want to bet that Ocean Marketting is a one-man shop? Christoforo is also the president according to LinkedIn.
What people fail to realize here is that this is fairly normal. This is the way marketing people think about the customers of their clients. It's really a job requirement.
Most of the douches that made this story "big" aren't really the kind that would act like they expected this guy to act. I've had my own shop so I "work in retail", face to face, and I'm a short-fused person. I can tell you, people can really get you because they think the "The customer is always right" card is a license to be assholes.
I had a person throw come in to buy stuff, and when he paid he throw the money on the floor and say "come on now, pick it up. the customer's always right" (it had been escalating actually). I don't know what my face looked like at that time but judging from his expression, the guy almost shat his pants. I walked to the door and opened it. I took what he was buying and said "pick up your money and get the fuck out of here, and don't come back ever again". He tried to say it was a joke and stuff but I didn't care anymore.
People need to understand two things:
1) 'The customer is always right' means that a company should look for ways to please the customer. If the customer comes looking for something and you don't have it, you don't tell the customer "oh no X sucks, you need to buy Y". If customer wants X, you get him X. It doesn't mean the customer has a license to treat you like a slave. The salesman/customer service rep/tech support guy/whatever is just another person. And he will give you the same treatment you give him.
2) You can yell and be mad and do all you want at a "customer service" agent. These guys usually can't do anything about your problem, they're just there to "take the heat". When you get mad at one of those guys, all you do is make HIS life miserable, and you get stressed. No one wins.
I can assure you, most slashdotters wouldn't last a week. Hell, not even a day, when working for customer service. They would get violent, or just break down to tears. You need a really thick skin, and if you're whining about who's right and who's wrong in a site like slashdot, it just means you don't have what it takes.
If this hadn't gone viral, who knows where this guy would have gone. Can you imagine this guy in public office? Or leading a real company, or worse yet,being YOUR boss? I wonder if his linked in profile has been updated to indicate he is the biggest DB on the web?
There is a difference between education, or a knack for spelling, and class.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Like the Streisand effect, we need a Christoforo effect.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The maker of the product shouldn't be penalized for what a jackwagon this guy was. They fired him for it. They deserve to be separated from the drama. His other clients that haven't fired him for being abusive, however...
Has he been having a rough spot for over a half of a year? See this website, which contained a post about Paul in June http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service
His interview is a joke. One of his excuses is they caught him on a "bad day". Well, the correspondence that ended up on PA lasted almost two weeks. The guy has a lot of bad days that last weeks/months.
You've not been in customer service, have you? "Call control" is a frequent feedback point when calls start to run long, and I assume that's what he was talking about here.
Keep the customer focused on the issue, don't let them blabber and complain, instead get the problem fixed and the customer back to their day. Some people don't really want the problem solved, they want people to hear about it and point out all of the problems, an "I told you so" kind of rant, or "when I worked for a company like yours this would never have happened" or "I used to respect your brand, now you've let it go into the crapper". They think they are talking to someone who has the power to change something. And you can't let those people tie you up.
Yes it sounds bad phrased like that, but anyone who does any kind of support or customer contact should have been coached on controlling the customer. He realizes that he could have phrased things differently and not pissed this guy off, that's "controlling the customer". What he doesn't realize is that his natural personality is quite dick-ish and won't allow him to do that. Especially when you have piles of people asking the same thing, and are afraid to give some bad news that stuff won't be under the Christmas tree as promised, and you're too arrogant to apologise.
a net positive for the product's sales.
... that the PR firm can't charge for.
Wait, are you saying that there's space in the market for one shot "kamikaze" PR firms who deliberately fail and torpedo their own reputations - and thus their long term prospects - in return for a sudden viral explosion in visibility of one lucky product?
So now, when we get shitty customer service, we have to question whether we're being trolled into having our favourite blogger publicise the product. Long term, this introduces one new good product in exchange for removing one PR asshat from the market... I'm okay with that trade, actually. Bring on the one shot PR firms.
He still comes across as a jerk, contrite only to try to get people to stop harassing him. Seems like he can't shut up because his ego just won't let go.
This concise explanation / apology (and say nothing else) would have gone a long way, and it might even be somewhat true:
Add another line or two about how he hopes his behavior won't kill such a great gamer product, and done.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Does anyone else find it ironic that he's been receiving DEATH THREATS aimed at him, his wife, and their 2 month old son, because of this? And he's the bad guy. What is wrong with this planet..
There is a difference between education, or a knack for spelling, and class.
Well, no, education and class are related. It can bump you up a half-notch or so. But in any case, there is a difference between correcting the words with the squiggly red lines under them, and not correcting them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is true. The only way to prevent this in the future is to boycott the Avenger. Otherwise you are rewarding the A-hole.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It was promised to be delivered before XMas... so it's not unreasonable to want the controller by XMas. Even that, all he initially wanted was an actual ETA.
The customer was not out of line in any way.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is this his LinkedIn presence? I wonder if people will rush to disassociate from him now...
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
"They've pretty much ruined me in the past 24 hours," Christoforo said.
No, he did it all by himself. All they did was give him the publicity he so badly wanted. . .
Make sure you stir up a lot of controversy about us the more the better we needed some drama gets good blood flow going about the new product launch.
He was also lying to the customer. On the 16th, he told the customer it would ship by the 17th. Then the next week he admitted that it was still going through customs. There's no way he could have thought they would ship the next day if they hadn't even made it through customs yet. A letter email said it was still shipping from China. He couldn't even be bothered to keep his excuses consistent.
It wouldn't be that hard to pretend you know acted badly and wouldn't do it again. Instead he pulls out:
And of course assigns the fault to the Penny Arcade guy for being rude to him.
If you aren't going to pretend then at least stop digging.
Please tell us of all the articles you don't want to read anymore by telling us about them on every article you didn't read to comment on their /. stubs. Do you have a website where like-minded people can find out about all the stories you don't care about so we can not care about them either?
Maybe a newsletter?
Yet despite all the drama, Christoforo said he hasn't lost any of his other accounts, aside from Avenger. "It hasn't affected my business yet," he said. "Clients have brought it up, but they've mainly laughed about it. I haven't lost any clients."
That's because most of the people who have the authority to sever ties with you are on vacation. Next week's gonna be a pile of suck.
How dare he want his controller by X-mas when it was advertised to him that it would arrive in early December!? How dare he ask for an update on the ETA.
I agree with you on these points, however:
How dare he get upset when the HEAD OF PUBLIC RELATIONS calls him a bitch!?
Well, the customer started the name-calling when he signed off his long e-mail with:
p.p.s. Welcome to the internet, bitch. That’s how I roll.
I find it difficult to have any sympathy for this guy, reading his various outbursts it seems that in this situation the troll has become the trolled.
And the company ended up having to give everyone on pre-order a $10 discount. How does the joke go? "I know this widget costs $10 to make and we sell it for $5, but we'll make it up in volume!"
This is a huge fiasco for the company that is going to cost them dearly. Yes, brand recognition might be up, but if it costs them more to clean up that recognition"than they make from sales (and I bet you that their margins aren't that awesome to begin with), this is a net loss.
So the current "marketting" so far has cost the company $10 on every controller ordered so far, a one-star review on Amazon, required the revamp of their marketing department, their CS methods and another PR campaign to put out the message "Sorry about that". These are real costs that I'm pretty sure aren't covered by the exposure. Not to mention that now everyone also knows about the shitty delivery time frames.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If you want to make one fail, do what this guy did. I don't know how you make it to your late 30s without learning that lesson. It actually doesn't seem to me like he's learned it now. He seems like the kind of person who will blame anyone else for his failure when his last customer deserts him and his business lies in ruins.
The best move, from his company's perspective, would be to fire him and go "under new management." I don't know if anyone's ever been fired from running the company they own, but that might just do the trick. They could get an Australian guy in, since "Yeah, we got rid of that last guy, he was a cunt," sounds so much better with that accent. I think they'd be back on top in no time!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Not really.
Pity the narcissist and especcialy those near to him.
It is a one-man shop, and he even got "Marketting" wrong.
I mean: Nat Rou1ly :)
No. The Amazon ratings for the Avenger went from 5 stars to 2 stars overnight.
... you have to work behind the grill because you're not allowed to speak to customers.
The best move, from his company's perspective, would be to fire him and go "under new management."
Did you read the response from N-Control? They are trying to put as much distance between that guy and the company as they can.
I wonder if this Paul Cristoforo has pioneered a new PR strategy for startups though. . . hire him, or someone like him, to stir up a big pot of controversy, publicly fire him saying you had NO IDEA he was going to abuse his position, and release press releases talking about how great your products are for disabled people/kids/other sympathetic group, etc. Get the public to view your company as another victim of his abuse and try to get them to feel bad for you and good about your products, while transferring their rage to the "rogue employee/consultant".
Sort of Good Cop/Bad Cop for startups.
"'The customer is always right' means that a company should look for ways to please the customer."
I think it's false that "the customer is always right". However, what I think it means is larger-company internal dogma, coming from the top, and targeted at the peons on the bottom. In your example, you benefited from it being your "own shop", so you had the wherewithal to draw a line somewhere (including "don't come back ever again"). If you'd done that in a sufficiently large company, you'd probably be ordered by your boss to make an apology, regardless of how outrageously the customer was behaving.
I agree that the customer in the PR story clearly went uncivil first, and I was aggravated with him first. But having made that cat-scratch, seeing Christoforo supernova in a display of stupidity, obscenity, plagiarized websites, stolen identities, and sociopathy, makes it a story on a different scale.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
For their customer service
This power is only going to grow.
The internet stopped the AT&T buyout of T-Mobile. Nearly every other public presentation of the story was favorable to AT&T and their empty promises. The internet and its users were unrelenting and got the information out there. It took a LOT of work by people with a sense of urgency.
The internet *IS* the 99%. The 1% still thinks the internet is a digital sales leaflet.
Efforts out there are working. They will only get stronger and more effective as more and more people of the 99% and the 1% are taking more notice. The 1% is actively trying to limit and control the internet at every turn. While the 99% still have control over the internet and while they are not yet listed as "terrorists" action and enthusiasm need to increase. Don't let them take our internet. Don't even let them try.
I know I have been vocal in sending out contacts to various politicians letting them know "we are watching" and that even though the establishment has the old media locked down and in their pockets, the "new media" is still a wild west which no one controls 100% and the information can, will and does get out there. We are watching. And we are TRACKING. The internet's memory is a LOT longer than that of the average individual consumer. They can't lie and get away with it any longer.
I thank all of those who have made similar efforts out there. THEY WORKED. And to those who have been sitting on the side lines to see what would happen or who would win? You have your answer. It's time for you to join in and solidify your support for your own interests. I'm not saying you should stand up for what you believe in. I'm saying SIT DOWN and DON'T BE MOVED. This is your life. Your internet. Your ability to exist in the world. KEEP IT.
Open your eyes, boycotting the Avenger achieves exactly nothing. N-Control made the mistake of using Ocean Marketing, they are no longer using OM, so nothing you can do can possibly reward OM. You are quite mean-spirited if you think N-Control deserve further punishment for that initial mistake.
He's a fratboy douche bully who got caught. He can go fuck himself.
If you ever wondered how abusive loudmouth assholes end up in life, he's your example. The guy can't spell, lost his job, and is a fucking moron with no real skills.
Everything that's happening to him is well deserved.
The whole fiasco is almost certainly a net positive for the product's sales.
Except, of course, the fire bombing of it's ratings on Amazon. I doubt something like 300 1-star reviews will do it much good.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
I can assure you, most slashdotters wouldn't last a week. Hell, not even a day, when working for customer service. They would get violent, or just break down to tears. You need a really thick skin, and if you're whining about who's right and who's wrong in a site like slashdot, it just means you don't have what it takes.
Agreed. I work in the same room as Customer Service and I have a lot of respect for those guys. They put up with a ton of shit from customers.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
I'm REALLY liking the mindset of the new PR guy for N-Control.
I'm just glad I didn't have a soda to my mouth.
Nice, blunt honesty in the situation with a schadenfreude-funny quote goes a long way. Kudos Moisés!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes, the customer is always right is a phrase that should sound more in the "higher" positions of a company. The mid-term and long-term planning and R&D people.
A story of how "the customer is always right": I sell YuGiOh! trading cards. They're $25 (in my currency. that's about USD5). People demanded that if they took a few I should give them a discount. The margins aren't really that big to make a significant discount so I checked what other shops were doing. Turns out they sell them for $30 each, or 4 for $100. I started doing the same, and customers were happy that I gave them a (false) discount. That's an example of where "the customer is always right" can get you.
But salesperson and support guys can't do much about the "the customer is always right" mantra.
Also, the fact that you'll have to make an apology means how fucked up the customers are. It's not "ok, no big deal" what they think when you apologize. It's a childish "HAHA you asshole. DAMN RIGHT i was right".
Well, if its really is a brilliant marketing scheme, I imagine other companies will recognize it (or at least recognize the corresponding increase in sales) and he probably will get hired again.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
He asked for it literally
"Your spamming me you’re not on a mailing list you idiot ! You sent me an email remember . Make sure you stir up a lot of controversy about us the more the better we needed some drama gets good blood flow going about the new product launch . Your sites amateur at best my son could put together a better site than yours and you run PAX ?? Wow , Ill put my marketing team on a smear campaign of you and your site and your emails , I have about 125 dedicated people to run PR , Blogs , Articles , Videos you have no clue who I am . Thanks again
I can’t wait for the Penny Arcade smear campaign! "
He "couldn't wait" and he wanted some "drama" well he got it and now he is trying to placate the Internet mob that's arse raping him while simultaneously keeping his ego intact.
He deserves everything he gets.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The guy's clearly got some real psychological problems. He's plagiarizing and using stolen identities. Notice in the MSNBC interview he's still constantly using obscenities, "f***" and "s***" all over the place. And this theme:
"He has a lot of connections, ones I want too.... I know a lot of people who own clubs. I know some influential people, like the guy who runs the door at the convention center... When is it big enough that it hits the news? When it hits Penny Arcade, when it hits a guy who has the biggest affiliations in the industry."
I've never heard of such an uncontrollable obsession with "connections" (whether real or fake; and this runs through all the original emails, too). As a total amateur, I'd guess something like borderline personality or sociopathy or whatever.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
He cannot empathize with other people, as such his feelings are the only ones that matter. So he sees himself as the victim here, because he is the only one who got hurt in his worldview.
It is how people like that act. They hurt others freely because to them it doesn't matter, other people don't have feelings like they do. However when they are hurt they go off the rails with the victim thing because it is so unfair.
They don't behave themselves, obey laws, do right by others, or any of that because of any sort of moral or human understanding. They do it because they don't want to get in trouble. If they think they can get away with it, they will.
Paul was a friend of David Kotkin's.
Do you have a citation for that? As I understood it, together they had set up an LLC in Fl. that never came to fruition, but that is the only connection between the two.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Funny, I try to make calls go long when I don't think the rep is being as helpful as they should be. I'll start talking slower, asking open-ended questions, and basically dragging it out and re-asking the question I called about. That's fine, 20 minutes on the phone looks much worse on their back than mine.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Just FYI, this guy does steriods. I'd imagine this accounts for 80% of his actions (the other 20% attributed to him being a dumb fuck).
I had no idea this product existed before this. It'll probably make my X-Mas list for my XBox fanatic friend next year.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
>>The douchebag loves attention and "connections".
Hey, don't mock his connections, okay?
Turns out he knows the guy at the door of the convention center.
You mean those little old ladies that are super nice and ask to see your badge? I don't know who works at the "convention center" in Boston, but in my city it seems to be mostly staffed by retiree-aged people.
I agree that the customer in the PR story clearly went uncivil first, and I was aggravated with him first.
I disagree. " so put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else" was the PR guy implying that the customer was being childish, when the customer was asking legitimate questions up to that point. That is the PR guy "going uncivil first".
There is no such thing as a private email conversation.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I would agree with you, except that based on his previous douchebaggery, I can't believe he meant it as you explain. Normal people, yes, this is a good thing to manage the calls coming in. King douche of the universe over there? No benefit of the doubt from me.
Did the customer get his controller or not? why is this about how he treated the penny arcade guy? Outting this guy is all well and good, but i'm sure the customer is still sitting around waiting for his controller.
I would say boycott the avenger if they kept this guy, but since they dumped him it is ok. However any company that keeps this asshat needs to be boycotted.
And the company reacted promptly by firing the PR fail and apologizing to the community. Deftly handled.
That was pretty obvious from the beginning, wasn't it? Christoforo was way too arrogant for mere corporate drone but at the same time there's no way a big business owner like he claims to be would deal with customers directly.
I said he is a dick. I also said that customer service type people are taught this type of term, and it doesn't mean what people read into it. Most likely he didn't mean it as I explained, his own dickish nature allowed him to interpret it however he wanted.
But there is a big difference between him coming up with the idea of controlling a customer on his own, versus it being a valid phrase that his dickheadedness misinterprets.
Doesn't make him any less of a dick. I'm not making excuses for his dickish behavior, I just think people should understand where it most likely came from so they can make sense of his dickishness. In fact, looking at it this way, he knew that he was supposed to control the customer, but could not make himself, making his dickery appear much more ingrained and permanent than a "bad day at work." And much more impossible to apologise for.
Nah, it went civil until Paul was all like
put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else. The benefit is a token of our appreaciation for everyone no one is special including you or any first time buyer . Feel free to cancel we need the units were back ordered 11,000 units so your 2 will be gone fast. Maybe Iâ(TM)ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself.
It's downhill from there.
I tried being dull, boring, and honest. I found that people like being lied to. Weird, but if you ever work retail you will find out yourself.
Yes but, even the original customer still wanted the device. Even he said he would hate to really hurt the device sales since they are great for people with disabilities and could really bring a fuckton of joy to kids who otherwise couldn't play video games. Hes right, it would have been quite sad if this product left the market entirely due to this.
That said, I think this is epic win. Epic win because, while it will help device sales, it is already hurting the massive douche who is the actual problem. His marketing company is out the door now. I would be shocked if this doesn't hurt his personal options career wise. Everyone is going to know what a massive douche he is. Not only that but, I have to imagine he royally pissed off everyone whose name he dropped...whether he knew them or not.
So douchebag is now known about, and anyone with the wherewithal to google him is going to know all about it. The product is even more well known, and the company is distancing itself from him big time. Thats Charlie Sheen in his own mind levels of winning.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I hear you. While I don't work in retail and don't have to deal with punters like that we are currently in the process of firing an especially unreasonable customer ourselves.
The customer his hardly ever right. Especially if they wade in with inflated expectations based on half knowledge. In my opinion this is totally ok and the very reason why advising them to your best experience and knowledge will see you through in the long run.
This Christoforo guy missed a couple of key moments to resolves this in a way that would have made him shine. Apart from the demeanor.
Dave said he needed one device as a Christmas present. That was an easy way to resolve this. I'd have asked him if this was his main concern and offered him a used/preliminary/beta device soon to be replaced by a brand new one so he would have at least something. It's an easy game of spotting the critical deadline. That's hardly rocket surgery. Also a bit of honesty would have gone a long way. Making promises which are out of your control to fulfill will always generate bad feelings.
Always assume that your BS will be called and act accordingly. Unfortunately a bit of BS is part of the job.
20 minutes into the future
MBA is one of only 3 masters level degrees offered in my (small) town. The others are education and nursing. I'd kill someone if I became a nurse. I'd kill a kid if I became a teacher. So I got my MBA because it is better than the alternatives.
However, the point about idiots getting an MBA is well taken. In my final project, there was one girl who was completely worthless. If she had done nothing at all, the final outcome would have been greater than her attempting to do anything. There were many idiots I had class with. People that I wouldn't want working with me or for me. Nevertheless, they have an MBA and some PHB will hire them I'm sure.
Yep, at first I was like, "What a jerk, he's totally going to get fired." Then I saw he was the president of his company.
Then I was like, "Well he's not going to fire himself, then his company won't have any employees."
They hired the jerk. They kept him on when their other PR people complained about his methods. They kept him on when the other PR firm pulled out because of him. They should be held accountable. I have no compassion for assholes or asshole enablers.
This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.
~William Lyon Phelps
There are exceptions to every rule, but unfortunately, most people who have an MBA are interested only in making money. They "achieve" this goal through lies called marketing, through bullshit accounting tricks and technically legal loopholing called money management, through exploitation of the earth and it's people called maximizing revenue. If you'd read your literature, you'd know that pursuit of money has never been a noble goal, and it never will be. It's the desire of degenerate subhumans whose greatest gift to the world will be as compost.
As one artist put it, you're a poor man's Donald Trump, and you think that's worthy of praise? I'll trade one million MBAs for one Jonas Salk any day of the week. You may have fooled yourself into thinking that greed and gluttony need a graduate program, but no one else is that delusional.
"... forcing the company to publicly drop Christoforo as its marketing representative."
and from the guy
"I haven't lost any clients."
This is taking into account that almost all service reps have very little power to do anything, right?
This guy is like the Asa Dotzler of N-Control
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... you can't help but watch with gleeful fascination.
Especially when the douchbag doing digging himself the mother of all holes is so representative of companies we've all had to deal with, unfulfilled promises, things that don't work, warranties that aren't honored.
Check your premises.
I encourage people to follow the link in the summary and read the n-control press release. It is absolutely brilliant. I don't think I've ever read an apology so sincere, or a PR termination notice so complete and profound.
My favorite part: “I can’t worry about the fact that there isn’t a bus big enough for me to throw Paul Christoforo under. The internet did that for me. I think they set him on fire too.”
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"If the product dose what it is design to, most of its target market (including Dave) won't be put off by a 1 month delay or a poor choice of PR firm. The whole fiasco is almost certainly a net positive for the product's sales." If they ever get the product. Its been plagued by non delivery before Paul was ever at the that company according to the previous rep that Paul name dropped.
While there are downsides to the 'internet mob mentality' when it comes to senselessly threatening someone's wife and kid (if that actually happened), the benefits of invoking the 'power of the internet' are more often a powerful force for good.
Consumerist.com makes a living out of giving internet-sized visibility to bad customer experiences. The result? The offending company usually learns a lesson and the customer often gets respectful treatment and accommodations. The customer just harnessed that same power and contacts to get increased visibility. Sure, he probably could have been less aggressive. But from the Kyle Orland interview, it doesn't seem like Paul Christoforo learned anything at all.
Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned (at least on the internet).
Violate this rule at your own peril, Mr. Christoforo.
It sounds like Dave is the real marketer that saved the day here. He sang praises of the controller throughout all the abuse and was very emphatic to Gabe that people need to disassociate Avenger from Ocean. At the end of it all the Avenger came out looking good despite Paul's efforts rather than because of them (well, he did absolutely nothing to protect the brand image and seems to be trying to milk this to make himself famous).
This controller is awful. I originally bought it hoping to improve my noob slaying skills. Merely looking at it however caused me to become blind in my left eye. The special tension wires and switches severed my thumbs and index fingers on both hands. Also unknown to me at the time, the Avenger controller is made of asbestos and coal dust and now I have the black lung and Mesothelioma. When I called customer support I was told to stop being a b***h and that they were websiting since I was a sperm inside my father. All that is left for me to do is weep inside my iron lung. Do not buy this controller. (permalink)
Seriously, I missed the drama earlier this week and finally went to look at this thing. It's ugly as sin, and I can't see how those goofy-looking levers could do anything but break with a few hours use.
I have two cheap $15 Logitech USB game pads that I regularly use that are constantly breaking and needing to be repaired, including wires breaking due to the lack of strain reliefs. (compared to standard Sony PS2 game pads that last months before I need to repair them... yeah, I need to just get a PS2-USB adapter already) This looks much more fragile than those.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Of course, knowing about these techniques allows a customer who's been wronged, if he has control of his own emotions, patience and a certain level of intelligence, to win sometimes.
Check your premises.
Christ, this incident must have REALLY struck a chord. I post a VERY mild defense of the guy and I'm immediately modded flamebait and blasted by everyone. I've gotten less heat here for saying Windows is better than Linux. I'm surprised this guy doesn't have a lynch mob outside his apartment.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He completely flew off the handle when the customer complained about being treated badly (Reacts to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation), doesn't seem to care about or even really understand why the customer is pissed off (Obsessed with oneself and Lacks empathy and disregards the feelings of others)
.
The entire thing describes him almost to the letter.
Interesting anecdote, thanks for sharing that.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
i am not nerd enough to care.
I dont mind if customer service uses polite forms to disguise their unacceptable behaviour or not. I prefer having somebody giving me a definitive impolite answer (which i can happily forward to his Boss and cancel the order) instead of indefinitely being forwarded or - after waiting for a few minutes on hold - being thrown out of the line.
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At best I would call that one phrase "snarky" at best. It triggered from Dave with a V a thousand-word rant, with lots of all-capital sentences, and calling him a "bitch" at the end.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Really? You think slashdotters can't handle customer service? I'd be willing to bet that many people around here started their careers on the help desk.
In my first real job, I was a part time programmer, part time help desk, and I made damn well sure that after every call the customer went away happy. There were even times where I couldn't necessarily help the customer, it was some problem out of my control, and I'd still make sure that I put in the time to make them feel like at least I attempted to help before recommending they call their local PC repair shop to have them fix the OS. I never wanted anyeone to think I was just trying to get them out of my hair. And in return our customers were as loyal as they come. Much larger competitors (we were in the digital legal publishing business, where West Publishing was king, and we were a three man shop in the early days) would lose their customers to us all the time, many times because my customers loved me and the support I provided and would convince colleagues to switch. These were attorneys, people used to getting their way, and they sometimes called up and were downright bitchy. But I never lost my cool with a single one.
There's simply no excuse for being an asshole to the people who are the reason you even have a job.
This is what you get when you have three internet tough guys all with the same false sense of entitlement and importance. Nothing to see here, and it happens every day. The media picked it up for page views. I think the customer wasted his time with his book of a response that came before the PR guy threw a fit. Then the customer doesn't even cancel his order. Okay. That's some resolve he has there. Then this Penny Arcade guy goes off on a power trip and even smirks with an emoticon as he tells the PR guy that's he's going to invoke his influence to give him a hard time.
Did you read the same email chain as me? I'm pretty sure the PR representative started it by calling the customer a kid when the customer asked for legitimate clarification on shipping dates for something he paid for.
As for the "Penny Arcade guy", I don't see how he has any false sense of entitlement or importance? He runs a well known website and expo in the gaming industry. I guess he's pretty unimportant if you look at him outside of that particular industry. I guess he's not entitled to decide who gets a spot at HIS show, nor is he entitled to post an PR firm's email exchange on a site HE owns?
I'll tell you what. Give me your money and a list of things you want to buy with this money. I'll send those items right over to you as soon as I acquire them. I'm not sure when I'll do it, but I'll do it eventually. Don't ask me for a specific date and don't bother me with emails or phone calls if your stuff doesn't come though. If you do that, that will make you a brat and a idiot and I'll just pawn your stuff off that you gave me money for on ebay. Don't worry, I'll give you a refund at some point... Not sure when though. ~Paul
Because reps are rated based on how efficiently (i.e. quickly) they are able to resolve customers' complaints. Hanging up when your complaint hasn't been resolved makes them appear better than they are; keeping them on the line longer makes them appear worse.
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What if this guy's plan was to cheese off every single person who contacted them, in hopes that one of them would "out" him in the public's eye? Maybe he planned to be this company's scapegoat from day 0. Sure, he ticked off plenty of not-Daves on the way, but once he ticked off Dave, and Dave got so fed up he told Mike, then Mike told Gabe, and then they got noticed big-time.
At some point your behavior is so over the top that it's bound to be noticed by someone of importance who will take great pleasure in publicly spanking you for it. As long as you're "just some marketting firm" that can be reasonably separated from the company making the product, and know you'll be cut loose as soon as you look bad, the company selling the product is going to look almost like a victim of a scammer as opposed to a scheming manipulator. They get noticed, and they even get pity for having been tricked into hiring such a lousy PR guy.
I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right. - P.T. Barnum, among others.
John
Just look at how much publicity Avenger got from this. It's insane. I would bet their orders increased tenfold since the story broke out. Makes me wonder if Ocean Marketing actually did this on purpose(well, probably not... maybe its another marketing company, using Ocean Marketing as a decoy). all it took was just two guys supposedly exchanging emails... internet did the rest. It was a gamble, sure... but if the story didnt pick up, it'd just fade into obscurity and sales wouldnt drop. It was a lossless strategy using a classic marketing ploy. Reminds me of Mad Men.
Its only hypocrisy if the mob had at some point claimed higher ground than this asshat, but at no point has the internet mob claimed to be anything more than a hate machine for great justice.
I got here through a series of tubes
Not necessarily - the customers who ask to complain to a manager tend to be the type who weren't going to be satisfied no matter what the rep did (maybe the rep didn't even have the authority to do what the customer wanted), so it doesn't really reflect badly on the rep. In fact, they did their job well: they handled the customer's call quickly, and accomplished all that they were expected to accomplish (i.e. resolved nothing with an incorrigible customer).
That said, I've been told before, flat out, (from a Kodak rep - yeah, I'll name names) that no, I couldn't speak to her manager because "a manger doesn't want to talk to you".
That could work. But Mike is Gabe. And Tycho's name is Jerry.
Except that he works as PR for the company that makes the Avenger, and he just got canned HARD. They did the right thing and apologized, and now THEY're going to get lots of free publicity, which is cool, they actually deserve it. Meanwhile anybody who googles this guy's name is going to see a MESS and he shouldn't be able to work anywhere near PR in the next century.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
I spent 13 years in Tech Support. I had bad days, but I would _never_ have spoken to a customer in that fashion, even when they were abusive. The proper response to an abusive customer is to push them up the chain so my manager could defuse the situation. The mute button is your friend.
Because having read the initial email and the PR guys follow-ups, both authors came off looking pretty stupid.
We all make mistakes. Anyone who doesn't make mistakes doesn't make anything (or so it is said!)
Do you really want to make his life sh1t (and that of his family and 8 week old son) because he didn't hold of sending an email whilst he cooled down. Put another way, hopefully he can learn and move on. Otherwise, he will burden you all and increase the jobless total.
Could he have handled it better. Definitely
Should he have considered the other person before he sent it ? Totally.
Should he loose his income because of a couple of shitty emails? Probably not.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
Except that this guy demonstrated zero professionalism, zero ability to even understand basic customer service skills, zero empathy with another human being. When he says control the customer, he meant, literally, control as in domination.
Look at every single thing this guy has done and it's very, very obvious he's a completely abusive shitheel who believes in a very strong hierarchy where big guys shit on little guys and that's *right*.
Every single statement he's made has been to the effect of "I'm sorry you were someone able to crush me, if I'd known that I wouldn't have started with you" and emphatically not "I'm sorry I was being an asshole to my customer, and I'm going to try to do better."
Further, there is evidence that he abused his wife/girlfriend (court documents have been found), that he's lying about some of the things he claims have contributed to his recent bad day (a friend of his died - an excuse he's used several times before), that he's behaved exactly like this in the past, over a course of years.
Even more damning is his response going forward: he's being a dick to everyone, insisting that it's everyone else's fault, and now looking to capitalize on just how huge a dick the entire internet now knows him to be.
The only saving grace here is that unlike many other people who have his same wiring (I'm not saying "sociopath" but yeah, basically "sociopath"), he is a complete fucking moron when it comes to learning how to effectively manipulate people and make them feel good about it.
This guy is clearly a bully, and he displays classic bully obsequiousness when he gets the shit kicked out of him by someone with more power. It's the only language he understands, as has been made ABUNDANTLY obvious by everything that's come out about him.
On the flip side, there's literally zero evidence that he knows how to behave like a normal human being. Nobody is coming forward to defend this guy - except for people who don't know him who feel bad that he's been set upon by the Internetz. He has had no friends speak up, nobody in the industry he supposedly has so many connections in has spoken up, not even to say, "Well, yeah, he was being a dick here but he's not always like that."
There certainly is a concept of controlling the call in customer service, but you cannot honestly tell me that you think this guy was using the term "control" in this way after everything he's said and done.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
If it's not non-apology apologies he's blaming PA's Mike Krahulik for being a bully (ironic) and attacking those he name dropped (who oddly enough failed to ride to his rescue...) and threatening twitter users for telling him off. Every single one of Paul Christoforo's actions during and after this mess boiled over scream that he believes he's not in the wrong. The jackass has some kind of douche mental block whereby he's unable to get he's in the wrong here.
Instead of even feigning a sincere apology and then shutting up (which would have led to this mess only being a flash in the pan that would quickly have tailed off), he keeps blaming everyone else for his problems, even inventing crap like 'my friend died', and continues to post arrogant douchebaggery and give interviews where he blames everyone but himself and tries to make out any publicity is good publicity. Uggg.
I'm sorry Paul, but you're just asking for your current harassment. You're practically begging for it...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
http://www.myspace.com/theangrypimp03/photos/4892418#%7B%22ImageId%22%3A4892418%7D
fak3r.com
And having worked in customer service you undoubtedly know the one of the main elements of "Call control" is to control yourself.. you lose that and its all over.
I worked at a business cellular call centre a while back and got a call from an average customer. I fixed his rather common issue though it took some time. I treated him like I treat everyone who called me; quickly, courteously and efficiently. When the issue was dealt with the customer mentioned that his brother was the president of the company and was thinking about moving to another cellular provider due to the poor service. He then stated that, considering the service he received from me, he thought the service was getting better and he would talk to his brother. I checked and found that I may have save the company a contract worth a couple hundred thousand dollars per year merely by doing my job by treating everyone as well as I can.
When you have contact with customers treat everyone as well as you can because the person in front of you a) deserves it and b) may influence a big customer. (The most important part of that is the a part)
But in any case, there is a difference between correcting the words with the squiggly red lines under them, and not correcting them.
Does Internet Explorer have spellcheck yet?
This sounds a bit like road rage -- if someone cuts me off, my goal becomes "get them away from me because they're potentially damaging to me", not "time to teach them a lesson".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Wow; for some reason your comment generated a whole helluva lot of Anonymous Coward objections. Your point is, of course, demonstrably correct. Regardless of how supernova-crazy Christoforo turned out to be afterwards.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
But in any case, there is a difference between correcting the words with the squiggly red lines under them, and not correcting them.
Does Internet Explorer have spellcheck yet?
I wouldn't know, because I don't use Aieeee! Another sign of class.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And in road rage you'd probably be right, but it wouldn't normally be very damaging to anyone to spend ten or fifteen minutes on the phone with an unhelpful support tech. It's just a waste of your time, which you can presumably spare, but it looks really bad for them.
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/30/144470789/the-last-word-in-business
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Yeah.
Honestly, I would have fired the customer at that point. There is no need to take abuse, though as one of the ACs correctly point out, the escalation really did probably start with the OceanMarketting (sic) guy.
Paul Christoforo, is that you?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Vegas? Those little old ladies must see the craziest sort.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If you can't see the fact that you sound exactly like the guy in the story, who is being the idiot?
But than again, you are the troll here...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?