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?
[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-
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.
. 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!?
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...
I'm sure the world has bigger idiots that are dumb enough to actually send him death threats but I'm not inclined to believe anything this guy says without good evidence to back it up.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
You don't know shit.
He's just being politically incorrect. He shouldn't have said "control the customer", because it sounds bad. But believe me, there are ways to do it.
You have no idea the jedi tricks these people can pull on you, and you don't even notice and fall right into their trap. How do you think "social engineering" works?
Let me teach you a little bit:
B is the caller, let's say a bank. C is the customer ("victim" if you want a politically incorrect term).
B: Hello?
C: Good day sir, is this John Doe?
B: Yes, who's this? --"yes" #1
C: This is X from Bank Y, do you have a minute? -- it's more than a minute, but if i say "a minute" i'm more likely to get your attention
B: Um...okay? --didn't say yes, try again
C: Excuse me? I can't hear you?
B: Yes, I have a minute --- "yes" #2
C: Oh very good. Just a minute, I'll check the computer...ohh it's slow today, it's one of those days, how is your day? -- fake slow day to get him into small talk
B: I'm doing fine
C: Oh it's so good to hear you're having a good day, it's been crazy here! --show him how good he is, and how bad you are, so he'll feel sorry for you
B: Oh i see, yes, it's been good --great, you got him on a positive mood!
C: OK, here we are.. let me check, are you John F. Doe, yes? - ask with yes, not "right". you want him to say "yes", not "right
B: Right -- try again
C: Excuse me? I can't hear you
B: Yes, I'm John F. Doe
C: Oh ok, and your address is 123 Fake St.?
B: Yes. --good
C: And your date of birth is 12/23/55?
B: Yes ---ooh man, we're on a roll!
C: Oh OK, everything sounds right. So, let me tell you about the deal we got for you: because you've been a great customer to us, we're offering a new *whatever* blah blah blah
then you explain how much he's gaining from this "deal", why he wants it, etc.
Why did i make such an emphasis on getting a YES answer? Because ultimately you're going to ask him if he wants, say, a new credit card. You want him to say "yes", not "right", "uh-huh", "OK". You need a "yes". So you ask him a lot of questions that will get him saying "yes", so he's more willing to say "yes" later on.
THAT's how it works. THAT's what "controlling" a customer is. When you get a call from some sales person you say "I'm not interested" and hang up right away. The moment you let them speak, they get into your head. They have all sorts of tricks to get even the most "uninterested" person in buying things they don't want or need. This has been true for decades. They have teams of psychologysts to understand people, and millions of hours of conversations to learn from.
I dunno, maybe they'll name a psychological disorder after the guy.
Christoforo's Syndrome - a psychological disorder characterized by pathological lying, shallow affect, a noted lack of empathy and consistent abusive behavior. It is distinguished from Antisocial Personality Disorder chiefly by poor spelling and grammar.