Ocean Marketing vs. Penny Arcade

[Something Amyss]

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):

http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service

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.

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.

 

[Something Amyss]

*clicks links*

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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.

Got in through that link multiple times.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

The Amazon-bombs are pretty awesome.

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.

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.

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.

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

-snip-

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.

 

[DrOswald]

The Amazon-bombs are pretty awesome.

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.

The company that makes the controller made a calculated risk in hiring this guy, they deserve everything they get. Spend peanuts, get monkeys.

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.

I hope this OceanMarketing guy crashes and burns. It's people like him that make running a small buisness a nightmare.

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

Guy's talking about how he knows the big players in Boston, how he rubs elbows with the big dogs in gaming.

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.

Guy needs to learn that, while working in public relations, you will have to extensive deal with, and relate to, the public.

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.

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!

 

[Something Amyss]

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?

These days, gamers are called "spoiled" and "entitled" just for wanting a game that works.

Of course he's going to be called whiny and "douchey" over wanting information from an obstinate service rep.

and worst of all you can't always tell what the right decision is.

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.

 

[Eric the Orange]

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?

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_v1legacy]

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?

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.

Very true, but as someone has been posting earlier, this Paul is not new to the interwebs.

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!

 

[Le_Lisra]

I bet he don't work there no more. ^^

 

[everythingbeeps]

The Amazon-bombs are pretty awesome.

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.

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.

 

[Sixcess]

I find this really quite disheartening. None of the internet lynch mob who are baying for this guy's blood and flooding Amazon and Facebook today had even heard of him yesterday and I really doubt there's a lot of thought behind their response. He's just today's target.*

[sub]*I'm not saying he's blame-free or anything. He's not, but what a lot of misdirected energy is being wasted on this.[/sub]

It's a Two Minute Hate.

 

[xvbones]

http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/just-wow1 So check it out this is an email dialogue between an attempted customer of an Avenger controller and the Ocean Marketing people, big surprise the Ocean Marketing people are massive douches and when the people from PAX and Penny Arcade got involved big surprise the people form Ocean were still douches

Imo, the man and his company were dead with the words 'big boy hat.'

And then he was considerate enough to bury himself with 'Oh wait you have to ask mom and pa dukes your not an industry professional and you have no money on snap you just got told. '

Funeral services were conducted when he said 'Who are you again ?' to Mike fucking Krahulik.



Every American should be forced into one year of mandatory retail employment. One full year manning the registers.
Teach us some fucking humility.

 

[everythingbeeps]

It's a Two Minute Hate.

That's the best kind.

 

[DustyDrB]

My God, this is...I can't stop watching. He has to be high or something because he's still not backing down. This is like watching a train run off a broken bridge and into a gorge...but it's a circus train and they drunken clowns are still dancing around and thinking the train is gonna show that gorge who is boss.

I wish we could get a video of the moment he calms down and the regret starts to set in.

 

[Eric the Orange]

snap

Well to be honest I want to believe in them because I think they're doing a good thing with this product. The controller was created to help people with disabilities play games and I find that commendable. Here's an article about it.

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/04/15/inventive-teacher-gives-disabled-student-control/

 

[Corra Sigurdson]

Lols his wikipedia and Facebook pages have been deleted.

 

[Mau95]

"Son Im 38 I wwebsite as on the internet when you were a sperm in your daddys balls and before it was the internet, thanks for the welcome to message wurd up."
Lolwut? I despise people using the word son.

 

[repeating integers]

Lols his wikipedia and Facebook pages have been deleted.

Ah, the art of "unpersoning" somebody. Always funny to watch.

 

[Smooth Operator]

And this is why kids you read PR 101 before entering any sort of business exchange, it may only be the internets where you usually dump all your obscenities, but when shit gets real it gets real real.