Considering that every other PR guy that makes an unprofessional outburst like this gets fired, I wouldn't hold out much hope for this one's job security. There's no excuse for that kind of behavior, on a professional level or not.
Ocean Marketing vs. Penny Arcade
- Thread starter agentorange98
- Start date
Honestly that is the worst thing about all of this. See this guy runs a marketing firm, his company does not actually make the controller. But the company who hired him is getting some of the hate for him being bad at his job. And they do not deserve that. Will they use a different firm from now on? No doubt. But they do not deserve to lose sales because this guy was an ass.everythingbeeps said:
His reactions were pretty mild at first. The rep was definitely dickish and out of proportion. The OM rep started the dickishness.ms_sunlight said:
OM's rep was sort of right, though. I don't think I ever heard about the Avenger Controller.
....Now I know about it, and am pretty assured not to buy it. But at least I know what it is now!
A lot of adults behaving like children there. Painful, really on all sides. The only one with an excuse would be the customer if he actually is a child (which I doubt).
When the customer starts screaming at you, either apologize or hang up. Yelling back is never an acceptable option. Especially in email.
When the customer starts screaming at you, either apologize or hang up. Yelling back is never an acceptable option. Especially in email.
Now, I like his comment about pre-ordering video games and how you don't whine to the developers about pushing pre-orders back. Problem is, some people DO. And another thing: Controllers =/= games. Admittedly, they are similar, but most times a game company pushing back a release date is much more customer-friendly than some unprofessional representative telling you that it's been pushed back.
I find it a little odd that the PR rep claims to be the president of the company, and have 125 people working for him, but at other times (found in this correspondence):
he maintains that his abysmal customer service stems from the fact that he has to do everything himself. Changing the story to fit whoever he's arguing with at the time, it seems.Ronin08 said:
*clicks links*
This is without a doubt a "cool story bro" moment. So, cool story bro. Penny Arcade might be great at owning marketing people (don't know, because I can't read any of it), but I have to say they rather suck at web design. Or both Kotaku and TC suck at linking. One of the two.
Guy's talking about how he knows the big players in Boston, how he rubs elbows with the big dogs in gaming. I'm not surprised he has spent his time talking up his stature as well. I'm inclined to believe he works by himself, but when confronted by someone irate he tried to puff himself up like many weak creatures in the animal kingdom.ChildofGallifrey said:
I've been trying to reconcile that in my head, and I just can't. Product A is Product A. It might do things differently than Product B, C, and D, but it's still a product in that line. What makes me choose Product A over B, C, and D is usually my feelings about that Product.Eric the Orange said:
Every hotel has four walls, a bed, and a door. The Bells and whistles are nice, but in the end, how you're treated as a guest will determine if you'll come back again or if it was a nice one stay.
What most people believe is how one facet of a company behaves is somewhat indicative to how the company might behave all together. If they allow this shoddy treatment of the customer, what will happen if, say, you bought the controller and something's wrong with it? Broken out of the box, you didn't get the right product, whatever. If you bought and didn't receive a product, did the company who hired this guy hire someone just like them to bash down all of your requests for fixes? Will you be insulted and dismissed, or will you be treated like a customer should be?
On a tangent that doesn't have to do with what I quoted, I do not get how Dave was a douche. You pay, you get. You don't get, you have the right and frankly the duty to question why. If you guys paid for a burger and didn't get it for two days, are you REALLY going to say 'I'm going to wait for it like a man'? You paid for internet for three months and didn't get it, are you not allowed to ask what's wrong?
I would love to see the pre-order website.
Give it another shot in a few minutes. I went back and re-read the thing a couple of times, and the site is loading really slowly. They've probably gotten more traffic than usual for a non-strip day from all of the outlets linking them.mjc0961 said:
It's not always that easy. I have been involved in the launch and maintenance of a small business before and running a business it is far more difficult than you would think. You can't always just make the right decision. You never have enough money to do everything right and worst of all you can't always tell what the right decision is. I guarantee this guy was extremely polite and respectful to the people giving him money. They may not have known the risk they were taking when they were hiring this guy because without connections there is no real way to know who is good and who sucks. I feel sorry for the controller manufacture. Their buisness probably just went up in smoke because they made one bad judgement.meowface said:
I hope this OceanMarketing guy crashes and burns. It's people like him that make running a small buisness a nightmare.
It's somewhat deliciously tragic that the, as you say, big dogs in gaming that he claims to be buddy-buddy with have come out publicly decrying him.Zachary Amaranth said:
Guy needs to learn that, while working in public relations, you will have to extensive deal with, and relate to, the public.
Very true, a lot of people don't realize the pressure. But this guy's a pro. He runs several businesses. He has 125 employees at just at OM! But he has to do everything himself, all the while running his other businesses! He's Superman!DrOswald said:
These days, gamers are called "spoiled" and "entitled" just for wanting a game that works.ObsidianJones said:
Of course he's going to be called whiny and "douchey" over wanting information from an obstinate service rep.
That's the most important point. You don't have a crystal ball. Yeah, there are other factors. Yeah, you may have had to cut corners. Maybe you're under the gun. In fact, you probably are. You're going to have to make about fifty calls, and some of them will almost certainly be bad.DrOswald said:
I bolded the key word there, "if". yeah if they keep doing buisness with the guy they deserve what they get. But I can almost guarantee when they hear about the shit storm he caused they'll drop him and send out an apology. If they had known he would act like this they wouldn't have hired him in the first place. Honestly unless the company has a record of bad consulting choices I would at least give them the benefit of the doubt for now.ObsidianJones said:
Very true, but as someone has been posting earlier, this Paul is not new to the interwebs.Eric the Orange said:
http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service
This facade started in Jun 29th of this year, with a page devoted to it.
Fast forward to this time, and it seems the company is ok with his practices. He'll probably be let go after this one, but if he isn't.. What does that say about this company? It will inevitably cast a shadow of doubt on the other people this company hired.
captcha: militys compass.2. Holy crap, there was an exponent in my Captcha!
The company that hired him absolutely met him first (well...one would hope!). And if they went ahead and did business with him anyway, that's their problem. They aren't without blame here.Eric the Orange said: