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.
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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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!?
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 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...
No, he brought his son into it: "Your sites amateur at best my son could put together a better site than yours and you run PAX ??"
I think everyone should keep hammering at him. His arrogance is there because all his life he thought he could get away with it, it's time he and others like him learn that they can't. And my impression of the guy is that he has no redeeming values -- nothing to say one can stand his a-holeness because he has something else to give. (E.g. Jobs.) So he deserves all the lack of sleep he's going to get.
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?
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.
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..
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.
In the end, they did the right thing by losing Ocean Marketing, I'd imagine if they (very publicly) gave away a number of units to their indented customers (disabled gamers), they could walk away from this fiasco being THE brand in their field. Now I know there is a company called N-Control when I think about what controller adapter to get for someone with a disability. If they can keep the goodwill they have a market cornered. I'd call that a net positive.
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?
Pity the narcissist and especcialy those near to him.
... 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.
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.
I would agree with you, if not for the fact that there is zero evidence that anyone, let alone "everyone" (here come the Hyperbole Police, coming to take to to Exaggerationtraz) has made any threats to him or his family, outside Christoforo claiming that they have.
Considering this guy is a class-A lying, egomaniacal asshole, I would suggest taking any claims he makes with a very large amount of NaCl.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Wait, because of a couple of comments, you're saying his entire family deserves to be threatened with physical violence?
Maybe I'm interpreting what you said wrong, but it sounds to me like being a douche in an email warrants violent threats against children.
If that's how this world works, then what, next time some customer is a complete douche to me for absolutely no reason, I have the right to threaten their family with physical violence now?
Just because he mentions his son using it to insult someone else doesn't mean you have the right to insult the child back. His kid did nothing and knows nothing of what's happening. Would you punish all kids for their parents?
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.
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!!!
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
is there any evidence that anyone "involved" his wife and son? the only place i read that was in his email, and he is not very credible...
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.
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).
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"
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.
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.
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; }
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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