Penny Arcade Flames a Vendor

moondoggy23

moondoggy23

Well-Known Member
I was first made privy to this situation last nite when browing Facebook and saw this posted from a friend. Here's an article that surmises the whole situation. An unidentified Penny Arcade fan, in a bout of anger, CC'd Mike Krahulik (one of the founders of Penny Arcade, and PAX) as well as a number of other game media sites in an email chain between himself and a rep from Ocean Marketing, a firm involved in devloping an attachment of some sort for video game controllers. Mike has kindly posted the entire chain on Penny Arcade's website for all to read. The basic gist of the situation is the customer was inquiring about a delay in shipping of a particular product he had ordered, which the representative replied with less-than-satisfactory answers. The exchange stared off nice enough, and then the Ocean Marketing rep made the first move towards general assery by telling the customer to "Put on his big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else."

Yadda-yadda-yadda, Mike gets involved, more trolling from Ocean Marketing guy and Mike...Mike tells Ocean Marketing he will never see the inside of PAX again, more trolling from Ocean Marketing guy...Mike posts the email chain on Penny Arcade...Penny Arcade et. al. starting trolling the hell out of the Ocean Marketing guy.

As someone who works in customer service, this guy was a total ass, and should never have crossed that line. I'm sure he was being bombarded with similar, or maybe even worse email from other curious customers, but this guy didn't seem to come off as someone who was angry over the delay, he just wanted an idea when to expect his product, and was a little perturbed about getting gipped out of $10 since he pre-ordered. In any case, the Ocean Marketing guy has since issued an apology to Mike, which Mike has not accepted, since it seemed to him more of an apology for getting caught, rather than for being a complete ass.

Check it out for yourself, and discuss. Go here and you'll see the email chain under the title "Just Wow!"
 
Well I guess it's safe to say don't fuck with Penny Arcade.

I loved every bit of this story. Working in customer service myself, I know not to ever cross the boundary of personal feelings and work.
If a customer is pissing you off, you better be as damn polite as possible and get the customer out the door as soon as possible.

He seemed to forget that he was representing his company, rather then just representing himself.
 
Here's a follow-up to the situation that came down on Tuesday. According to this article on Kotaku, Paul Christoforo has been canned and his company Ocean Marketing is ruined. There is a new PR company in charge of the controller peripheral and they've been spending the past two days running damamge control. In the article, the person who hired Christoforo to handle the product admitted the guy was "rough around the edges" but he had drive and they were willing to give him a shot. The PR company in charge of the controller peripheral now was also handling the product prior to Ocean Marketing taking it over and they didn't have many nice things to say about Christoforo. In any case, you can see the controller here. I looked at it and I don't understand what it's supposed to do exactly...
 
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