How many lessons can be learned from this amusing trainwreck? Lessons about the importance of good customer service, to be sure. About the power of the internet in exposing your (you hoped it was private) idiocy, sure. And, oh yeah, don’t bring a butterknife to a gunfight…
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
On the one hand I hate Internet dogpiles where a disproportionate and hate-filled response can be generated with minimal effort, often for petty reasons.
On the other hand, wow, did that guy ever ask for it. What kind of marketing person pours that much abuse onto a customer IN WRITING, especially one who is clearly in the right and trying to maintain a constructive dialogue? I know customers can often be massive assholes but nothing “Dave” sent remotely warranted the pompous spew that was returned unto him.
Of course, the hidden downside is that every gamer and their Aibo will now be sending Gabe and Mike their consumer-based grievances to fix. No good deed goes unpunished.
I gotta say one thing I don’t like about this whole thing is that evidently the guy’s family has been getting harassing messages over this as well, which is very much over the line (then again, the internet is full of assholes it seems).
Also, the controller itself (well, the controller-adapter thing) has been hit with lots of 1-star reviews online by folks lashing back over the whole thing, and it’s debatable how many of the reviews are by people who have actually ever purchased or held the product in question.
Many people who are enraged by internet bullies…
respond by becoming internet bullies…
(Dave-with-a-V goes out of his way to stress in one of his emails that he doesn’t want the manufacturer hurt, he thinks it is a great product)
Didn’t anybody ever tell Mr. Christoforo about The First Rule Of Holes?
When you’re in one, stop digging.
I sincerely hope that he’s a stellar cello player or fry cook, because lordy he sucks at marketing.
I particularly enjoyed the way d-bag Paul so quickly resorted to implications that he was a dangerous person to mess with, and how grossly he appeared to misinterpret who he was dealing with. He explicitly accuses the customer, Dave, of being a child, but Dave’s language and grammar are not those of a child. He accuses Mike of being an imposter. Paul seems like a person who would be better suited to working in the mafia. Maybe the best part is that d-bag’s title is public relations representative.
I like how the very first line of the guy’s apology is “I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed I didn’t know how big your site was”. Translation: I thought you were someone I could be obnoxious to without consequences and I’m real sorry about that.
I’m not a huge fan of Krahulik but I’ll agree with him on that part: there’s a big difference between being sorry about something you did and being sorry you got caught.
Also, seriously, who the fuck in the gaming industry doesn’t know who the guys behind PAX are or how huge Penny Arcade is ? It’s like the guy is trying to be useless at his job in each and every way/
Maybe he goes to the Jayne Cobb School of Public Relations? 
But yeah, another lesson learned: You will be held responsible for the people you choose to represent you to the public. Let’s say you produce a great product, and hire an epic douchebag to do your customer service. Guess how people will perceive you? Electronic Arts doesn’t have the reputation it has because of poor games.
Mind you, this was with a product that had been experiencing delivery delays of a month or more, so PR was not the company’s only problem here.
I note from here that Ocean Marketing appears to be guilty of plagiarism as well.
I’ve been trying to find some readership numbers for Penny Arcade. The most recent I can find are from a USA Today article from April 2010 which claimed **3.5 million **worldwide readers, skewing heavily to serious gamers. That’s a hell of a demographic to piss off when you’re trying to promote N-controllers.
I’ve been keeping up with it. The amazon ratings are kind of instructive, I think. When I first saw them there was something like 12 positive reviews and 260 negative.
Nowit looks like some people are putting forth positive reviews (it’s up to 53). There are 300 one star reviews, most of them seem to be a direct result of this fiasco.
Bit of a tempest in a teapot, honestly, but it’s certainly legit to complain about missed delivery deadlines and lack of communication of same, especially for a pre-paid item. The contempt for customers oozing from the vendor’s replies beggars belief.
If nothing else, though, that idiot from Ocean Marketing needs to be worked over with a baseball bat until he learns how to use punctuation. Jiminy Christmas, wading through that wall of illiterate text made my head hurt.
This YouTube parody of the situation is pretty funny.
that’s funny. And of course it’s a tempest in a teapot, spun out of control with the rapidity only this modern age can support. That You-Tube video got put up what, one day later? Wonder how today’s gonna go.
I’m amazed by the fact that this guy (who seems borderline illiterate) even got this job. How many qualified marketing people are jobless, while this moron has clients?
Check out the sheer flood of updates on this page. This story is way more complicated than I would have expected.
1-up was reporting this story too.
Yes, the guy was a dick in that email chain. But did PA really need to make this public? They barred him from PAX, and they could have contacted the company and forwarded them the emails, which would probably have gotten him fired.
This whole situation feels like a bunch of internet geeks who got bullied at school are now gleefully taking the opportunity to be the bullies themselves. And that’s not right.
You’re not wrong. I noted this, by the way:
Update 24:
Update 26:
He’s got a wife and child AND a girlfriend?
I guess the juicy part is how Paul drop the name of some editors of prominent web sites and that backfires dramatically.