Customer Service Wars: Ep 573: Controllers

[luckton]

http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/just-wow1

So yeah, I'll repost that link since the site's getting hammered right now from the news.


The tl;dr version is this: Some fancy controller company charged all preorders in full upfront for controllers they still haven't shipped.  When a customer emailed them about it and filed a complaint, the company gave the customer the verbal finger.  Customer became agitated (obviously) and sent a verbal finger back at the company, along with CCing the conversation to PA, Kotaku, IGN and a couple other PR places.  Company fired back with a stronger verbal finger, along with saying that all the people he CC'ed are on the company's side.

Now, all the PR/news/bloggers that were CC'ed are disavowing the company's claims, which is resulting in the company going full retard and verbal fingering PA, Kotaku, IGN and others...that their controllers are SO AWESOME  that they need no PR to help sell them.

[luckton]

Scott Lowe from IGN says Paul Christoforo/Ocean Marketing doesn't have IGN's support and that he was "completely unprofessional" when they worked together.

Kevin Kelly from G4 says he and G4 are with Lowe.

Kotaku has a post about this.

Ocean Marketing has responded to Lowe by calling him a douchebag.

He doesn't have the support of Kotaku's editor-in-chief either.

Also, in hindsight, I'm wondering if this should be moved to the Gaming forum?  Anyways...

 

[RhyssaFireheart]

I'm not sure the popcorn machine will be able to keep up!

 

The sheer unprofessionalness is just boggling. 

[apocrypha]

Oh that's hilarious.

But also kinda tragic. I mean this Paul Christoforo guy clearly has some issues, no idea what the word "professionalism" means and probably no idea how to spell it. And chances are his amateurishness and personality problems have just sunk that company. I feel sorry for anyone employed by him since they've probably just lost their jobs.

[Selby]

The sheer unprofessionalness is just boggling. 

In my experience in other realms, this is just a small sampling of how horrible some customer service can be.  I do enjoy good internet drama though!

[IainC]

Oh that's hilarious.

But also kinda tragic. I mean this Paul Christoforo guy clearly has some issues, no idea what the word "professionalism" means and probably no idea how to spell it. And chances are his amateurishness and personality problems have just sunk that company. I feel sorry for anyone employed by him since they've probably just lost their jobs.

I'll give you dollars to donuts that he doesn't have anyone working for him, he's likely a one man PR agency like the lass who was monumentally bad at representing Serek Dmart last year. Everything coming out of his PR firm has his name on it including the misspelt Twitter channel.

[luckton]

In typical fashion, the product in question is now getting review/1-star bombed on Amazon.

Also, Endgadget is throwing their hat into the ring on the side of the customer.

And Minecraft's Notch makes a comment.

On march the memes!

[luckton]

Start placing your bets on how quickly his Facebook page gets wrecked    https://www.facebook.com/PaulChristoforo

[kildorn]

Well he understands SEO pretty well. I mean, he's pretty much skyrocketing up the search order.

Sadly, I don't think he actually knows what PR is. Or that he should take like half a second before emailing people and think "does this look like something you'd hear from a press rep, or something spewed over XBL?"

[01101010]

There is biting the hand that feeds you and then there is killing it completely. 

Unleash the Kraken!

[angry.bob]

Start placing your bets on how quickly his Facebook page gets wrecked    https://www.facebook.com/PaulChristoforo

It's down as of this second, so in less an 3 hours...

[luckton]

Start placing your bets on how quickly his Facebook page gets wrecked    https://www.facebook.com/PaulChristoforo

It's down as of this second, so in less an 3 hours...

Still working for me.

[schild]

Gaming Industry and people with no social skills.

I hate to say it, but this is par for the course. Absolutely par.

This dude has no business speaking publically in this capacity and he did. Take nearly any engineer from almost any company and you'll quickly get the same results. Hell, most executives will wind up being this stupid in a situation where they think they're bulletproof.

[IainC]

Rule one of PR/CM/what the fuckever:

Whatever you write will become public even (especially!) if you didn't intend for it to be so.

[Hawkbit]

Too bad.  I had thought of buying one of these just to check out.  Not that I'm pro or anything, but the idea looked really neat.  I won't buy from people that can't respect a customer though.

[Montague]

The dude changed his twitter from @OceanMarketting (sic) to @OceanStratagy (double sic), and his FB pic just screams douchebag. You can't make this shit up...

[waffel]

[Yegolev]

I suppose I can be happy that 38 is when someone gets to be an authority on things.

[luckton]

[Ironwood]

 

[RhyssaFireheart]

Read somewhere on another site that someone figured out that about 83% of his site was plagiarized from other sites.  No link was given and nothing about how they came up with that percentage, but that is pretty funny if it's true. 

[Segoris]

Here is the link for 83% figure that was posted in the PA thread.

ThinkGeek is now "looking into" this situation, according to their twitter, as they were going to be one of the distributors

Worst part - the dbag of a PR representative is a 3rd party as supposedly the creator is in the works of making a statement regarding this situation and attempting to clean up this mess. The original intent of the controller was for helping one of his students with their disability or something according to a PA poster who knows the creator. Normally, if someone says they know someone else on the internet I wouldn't believe it at all, but this seems kind of legit with a link to a Miami CBS station story about the creator and his student. Hopefully it still goes well for the creator if that part is true

[luckton]

Even GEICO is keeping up with current trends 

[Segoris]

Even GEICO is keeping up with current trends 

 

[luckton]

And at the end of the day, the Internet wins.  As if there was any doubt.   

http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/an-update1

[MahrinSkel]

Note to self: No matter what, don't fuck with PA.

--Dave

[waffel]

aaand it looks like they're done for:

[Yegolev]

Interestingly, this entire thing has significantly expanded my personal awareness of the Avenger controller.  I think I will read up to see if I want one.

[Abagadro]

Wouldn't so sure as the guy has been known to use spoof emails, including an avengercontroller.com one:

http://kotaku.com/5871400/cut-paul-oceanmarketting-christoforo-a-breakhe-probably-just-has-roid-rage

Considering there are at least 5 grammatical/punctuation errors in that thing it could still be him.

[Paelos]

These kinds of stories warm my heart 

[bhodi]

This guy is all in:

yeah keep shitting on me kids, remember I have your CC info from orders. Let's see how tough you are after some nigerians get em. #War

[Trippy]

That's supposedly a fake account.

[bhodi]

Ah, you're right. One letter off.

[Fabricated]

Hi people, this is basic business acumen speaking: research the fuck out of anyone you hire.

This guy is either a smooth-as-shit talker in person or this is some friend-of-a-friend reference thing that got this presumably one-man PR firm hired to represent a company that even does a tiny amount of business with established websites. How did this guy even pass the sniff-test when he approached the Avenger people?

[Lakov_Sanite]

How did this guy even pass the sniff-test when he approached the Avenger people?

He knew the mayor.