I think there’s objectionable behavior from all corners: The customer Dave for initiating the e-mail pissing match (especially with his p.s. and p.p.s.), Christoforo for all the obvious stuff, and Gabe for being pompous and wielding his internet celebrity like a club. The fact that the PR douche is by FAR the worst offender and this whole thing smacks of both sticking it to a company and standing up to a bully makes satisfying drama for the PA/QT3/Reddit crowds, but honestly I’m just left feeling kind of sad.
On the other hand, Christoforo has come across as such a miscreant and so childishly unrepentant that the schadenfreude sort of feels worth it.
I agree that no one has exactly covered themselves in glory here, but the customer replied with the snarky p.s. and p.p.s. note only after Christoforo told him:
I’m not the type of guy who flies off the handle too easily, but if some guy responded to my fairly polite questions with an admonishment to grow up and stop whining, informs me that my reward for being an early adopter was to lose money, and then says that he wishes I would cancel so that he could make more money… well, I think I would have used more colorful language than Dave did.
A customer never has any requirement to be professional and a customer service rep always has the requirement of keeping his cool as when he speaks on behalf of his company and his product he is not a man but he is the business itself. So all of this ‘everyone on all sides of this acted badly’ is some horseshit. In the beginning of the exchange the only thing that said Dave should be polite is the social contract that strangers should always be polite. When the guy acting on behalf of the Avenger got snide Dave no longer had any reason to stick to that contract. The customer may not always be right, but the representative should always be professional. Always. Even when the customer is an asshole.
I like Bahimiron’s post better than mine. Can we switch the names?
ShivaX
2965
This. You’re always professional, even when the customer is an irrational loon. They ask something impossible and insult you and you apologize and reaffirm that you unfortunately are not able to help them. I worked for years in customer service and that email the PR dude sent would’ve gotten him instantly fired anywhere.
That his power trip drove him right into a fucking brick wall when he fucked with Mike is just justice. Obviously no one was overseeing this fuck and he thought he was some king shit, only to find out he was pissing with one of the most influential people in gaming. Hes only sorry now because Mike was who he said he was, not because he thought he did anything wrong.
Mr.GRIM
2966
From a strictly marketing point of view, I think he did a fantastic job. He just entered the “Avenger” into the consciousness of hundreds of thousands of gamers purely through social media.
Austen
2967
Quaro
2968
Looks like he’s on cycle now according to that forum. Lots of people use steroids without going completely insane though.
The “ALL attention is GOOD attention” tack seems to be the one he’s taking. One that, it should be noted, never, ever works in either a professional or online environ.
Foxstab
2970
You’ve been doing some reading, eh?
Well, Paul dun goofed and got backtraced.
What’s here for us to learn?
- If you want everyone, hundreds of thousands of people, to know your product by tomorrow then you merely need to go and piss off the guy herding a social media giant.
- If you work in customer service, use a spell checker and remain professional when answering your clients, even a complete batshit insane class-a douche.
I will never understand this sentiment and yes I understand marketing very well. The crux of the email argument was the guy potentially getting ripped off by these people. Let’s ask Jack in the Box how great all that free exposure was when their burger meat was contaminated. When the “free marketing” involves clear signs that a company is not trustworthy I don’t see how that is a plus, especially after the 1 star Amazon carpetbombing. No one associated with this product is popping champagne bottles over this incident.
dermot
2972
I disagree. If they’re a small company with little to no in-house marketing expertise then they deserve the benefit of the doubt if they inadvertently choose a complete fuck-nut as their outside PR person. If they don’t denounce this fool now then yeah, they’re arseholes.
This is awesome sauce.
I know ‘dave’ kinda lost it a bit, but as someone who also deals with lots of gamers over the years, and tech support, I have to say that I’ve had 100 times worse angry emails, including death threats, and still not risen to the bait in reply in the way this PR moron did.
And frankly, anyone I employed in gaming PR who didn’t know who ran pax… well wtf are they doing? regardless of their attitude, they are clearly incapable of doing their job, due to an overhwleming lack of industry knowledge.
This is great :D
Rimbo
2974
You are who you hire. Whether it’s a full-time employee or outsourced agency. Plus, this company had apparently been warned about this guy months ago and refused to believe it.
Cool blog. I’ll have to start reading that. Thanks!
WarrenM
2976
PopeHat is consistently entertaining for being a legal blog. When they go after scammers, it’s fucking epic.
When I was in a consumer business, the customer service people were people I admired for their patience and serenity when dealing with angry (sometimes irrational) customers. CS roles require personalities like that. 'Roid rage, domestic violence types, not so much.
ShivaX
2978
They denounced him and fired his ass within a few hours.
Though there were hints he was involved with the CEO beyond a mere “outsourced customer service/PR” role, they canned him immediately.
And its not like this is the first time the guy has done this. Its just the first time people found out about it since Dave decided to email Gabe. The other guy put up a blogpost about it and it went mostly unnoticed. I guess it pays to know something about your industry so you don’t go pissing off the heaviest hitters in it and calling them names. I mean the fucker didn’t even know how big Penny Arcade was or that they ran PAX. How the fuck can you be in the gaming business and not know that? I can’t even think of an analogy that stupid.
I’m not really 100% who the guy even was. The Josh Lieber guy makes it sound like his company was actually brought in to handle marketing and distribution but that his company dropped N-Control as a client because they forced him to work with Paul Whatsisnuts. So apparently Ocean was some kind of consulting group that N-Control decided they had super crushes on and brought in despite the fact that the consulting group they were already working with didn’t need or want him and in fact Josh Lieber ends up characterizing Pauly Walnuts as something of a thuggish cretin.
Either way, I’ve got zero problems with how all of this played out. Paul initiated a negative response with “big boy hat”, he then went off the rails when he more actively and enthusiastically told Dave how little he mattered and then he crashed right into a wall when he told Gabe that he could sneak into PAX if he wanted because he knows the King of Little Italy* who has all the secret passages into BCEC.
Chochacho had a lot, a lot, of chances to back the fuck off and apologize earlier. Every single one of them he shit on his customer, then he shit on potential advertising venues and finally he took a big fat dump all over himself. Gabe didn’t lead the internet in a lynching. This guy hung himself.
*I guess the North End is a little Italy, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call it that. It’s just the North End. I’m not a native, though.
Quitch
2980
I don’t understand the sentiment either.
