Ocean Marketing vs. Penny Arcade

[Freyar]

Don't get me wrong, he may very well have a wife and a newborn child, but when it comes to the internet and the manipulative moves he's not garnering any trust with me.

 

[samsonguy920]

That Dave guy was a total dickhead though. Did he have a legitimate complaint? Certainly he did. He was still incredibly rude in his complaint email, and given all the swearwords, posturing and abuse I'm not surprised that the OceanMarketing guy thought it was a sockpuppet "Mike Krahulik" responding to him.

Dave held his calm far longer than I might have. He only failed in falling into this guy's trap of baiting him. The customer rep had zero intention of being cooperative or even slightly helpful. I know the stress of working customer service, it is the field I have been in for most of 20 years now. Regardless of what this rep has had to deal with up until Dave's entry, there is no excuse for that kind of behavior towards a customer.
Customers have the right to be irate over poor service. It is that simple. Acting like you are self-entitled to a customer acting like you are some kind of god is neither justified, nor warranted. If a customer is upset about some slip in service in my job, then it is part of my job to let them vent and get their frustration out. Then it is the next part of my job to apologize for the inconvenience, and then intelligently work with the customer on how to improve the situation.
You do not just give meaningless dates with no follow-up. You do not mock the customer. You do not start behaving like a five year old who has yet to grasp the basics of grammar(though I have known some five year olds who speak better than most forum(outside of the Escapist) posters over the age of 13).
If you want to remain in business making money off the sales of a product, you never work so hard to alienate a customer, or in this case, also alienate a large institution the likes of Penny Arcade. Who knows how many businesses have stayed in the black in this crap economy thanks to Child's Play buying their product for children whose families can barely keep food on the table because of medical costs and other burdens.
Dave is my hero for making the effort to bring attention to this atrocity to our eyes. He could have just threw up his hands and demanded his money back and made nothing more of it. Instead he recognized a problem that would only grow worse without bringing attention to it. He did right getting GabeJerry and Mike into this, as now Ocean Marketing will have to either start acting their age and recognize that customer service is more important than their own egos, or they will very swiftly go out of business and be in an even worse position than what they put Dave and other customers through.
Edit: I dun goofed and used Gabe instead of Jerry of Penny Arcade. Corrected.
Addendum: Heh, guess this guy already got recognized for his crappy service skills. I wonder how his courtroom skills are, as now numerous parties(Dave, Mike and Jerry, and parties our own #root_of_all_evil revealed) can easily take this joker to court. It remains to be seen what comes next.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

Not only that, but that people don't like to be name-dropped when you're being a dick.

At least, in the world of business/PR. I mean, if you're name dropping your bro at a frat house, maybe. But if you're teabagging a customer, people probably don't want you naming names. EVEN if you're tight with them.

 

[tgr]

I studied marketing back in the day. Either the definition of "marketing" has changed quite a bit since then, or I slept through those customer insulting classes.

He's doing marketting/stratagy though. Totally different thing

another small update: Internet detectives have found that paul uses roids and is prone to fits of roidrage.

Aa ok, my bad. I saw that "Ocean Marketing" thingy and just went from there. Well, that's not a textbook example of marketing/strategy, either, I guess Also, roid rage might explain a thing or 2 about this thing, heh.

 

[Lilani]

That Dave guy was a total dickhead though. Did he have a legitimate complaint? Certainly he did. He was still incredibly rude in his complaint email, and given all the swearwords, posturing and abuse I'm not surprised that the OceanMarketing guy thought it was a sockpuppet "Mike Krahulik" responding to him.

No matter how horrible the customer is behaving, there is no reason to send an email like that. As a representative of the company it is his job to keep his cool and return the emails in a civil and contrite manner. I've dealt with far more unreasonable people AND unreasonable complaints face-to-face. If that's all it takes to get this Gabe guy to snap through emails, he obviously lacks the restraint to work in any job that has anything to do with the public. Even in the first emails before things got nasty he never once apologized to Dave for what happened. The man had no intention of treating Dave with any respect in the first place. All he gave him was short, choppy, unhelpful replies.

 

[TheGuy(wantstobe)]

I studied marketing back in the day. Either the definition of "marketing" has changed quite a bit since then, or I slept through those customer insulting classes.

He's doing marketting/stratagy though. Totally different thing

another small update: Internet detectives have found that paul uses roids and is prone to fits of roidrage.

Aa ok, my bad. I saw that "Ocean Marketing" thingy and just went from there. Well, that's not a textbook example of marketing/strategy, either, I guess Also, roid rage might explain a thing or 2 about this thing, heh.

haha I was making fun of Paul not being able to spell correctly to show that he is doing it very wrong.

 

[Formica Archonis]

Just a little observation.... I've been in customer service for years. I've been:
swore at,
screamed at,
insulted,
threatened with death,
and had my physical appearance mocked in person and on a blog.

I have NEVER acted like this colossal douchebag, even to the people who did that stuff.

This guy needs to get out of not only PR or customer service or whatever the hell he is, but out of any business that involves interacting with people. He clearly doesn't know how to do it.

 

[Avulsion]

roid rage!
http://kotaku.com/5871400/

 

[Daystar Clarion]

roid rage!
http://kotaku.com/5871400/

This is so very beautiful.

It's what I've always wanted.

 

[Freyar]

That Dave guy was a total dickhead though. Did he have a legitimate complaint? Certainly he did. He was still incredibly rude in his complaint email, and given all the swearwords, posturing and abuse I'm not surprised that the OceanMarketing guy thought it was a sockpuppet "Mike Krahulik" responding to him.

No matter how horrible the customer is behaving, there is no reason to send an email like that. As a representative of the company it is his job to keep his cool and return the emails in a civil and contrite manner. I've dealt with far more unreasonable people AND unreasonable complaints face-to-face. If that's all it takes to get this Gabe guy to snap through emails, he obviously lacks the restraint to work in any job that has anything to do with the public. Even in the first emails before things got nasty he never once apologized to Dave for what happened. The man had no intention of treating Dave with any respect in the first place. All he gave him was short, choppy, unhelpful replies.

Hence where the notion of having a written reply that is carefully checked and leaves no further questions happens to alleviate a lot of problems. Even if it were a template in which he stuck relevant information in, that would have been significantly better. "December 17th" is not a full statement, without context there's no value to that response and is literally a waste of time. If I got something like that as a response I would have scratched my head wondering just who I was working with- the guy makes his "company" seem like a foreign knockoff.

 

[The Funslinger]

What fascinates me is the sheel level of arrogance and self-importance that the Ocean Marketing guy has. He's selling game controllers and he's acting like he has the chiefs of every major publisher, developer and gaming con at his beck and call. Oh well, time to add another company to my "No-buy" list...

Fair enough. What is Ocean, anyway? From those emails, I'm thinking it's some third party controller developer? In which case, wow. Could you be any more minor? How the hell did that marketing guy get such epic delusions of grandeur?

Also:

Ill be on the floor anyway so come find me , I?m born and raised in Boston I know the people who run the city inside and out watch the way you talk to people you never know who they know it?s a small industry and everyone knows everyone.

Yeah, you're some yuppy marketing guy for a third party controller dev. Not the fucking Godfather...

And I can't believe an apparent professional had so many grammatical and spelling errors in his emails.

 

[TheGuy(wantstobe)]

What fascinates me is the sheel level of arrogance and self-importance that the Ocean Marketing guy has. He's selling game controllers and he's acting like he has the chiefs of every major publisher, developer and gaming con at his beck and call. Oh well, time to add another company to my "No-buy" list...

Fair enough. What is Ocean, anyway? From those emails, I'm thinking it's some third party controller developer? In which case, wow. Could you be any more minor? How the hell did that marketing guy get such epic delusions of grandeur?

Also:

Ill be on the floor anyway so come find me , I?m born and raised in Boston I know the people who run the city inside and out watch the way you talk to people you never know who they know it?s a small industry and everyone knows everyone.

Yeah, you're some yuppy marketing guy for a third party controller dev. Not the fucking Godfather...

And I can't believe an apparent professional had so many grammatical and spelling errors in his emails.

It's a third party PR company owned and run by the guy in the emails and his wife. As far as the internet can tell they are the only two employees that actually exist.

The actual controller manufacturer's twitter can be found here https://twitter.com/#!/Tatterr

 

[Freyar]

Fair enough. What is Ocean, anyway? From those emails, I'm thinking it's some third party controller developer? In which case, wow. Could you be any more minor? How the hell did that marketing guy get such epic delusions of grandeur?

Marketing Firm.. literally that's all he is.

I keep reading his correspondence in Brucie's voice. (GTA IV)

 

[tgr]

I studied marketing back in the day. Either the definition of "marketing" has changed quite a bit since then, or I slept through those customer insulting classes.

He's doing marketting/stratagy though. Totally different thing

another small update: Internet detectives have found that paul uses roids and is prone to fits of roidrage.

Aa ok, my bad. I saw that "Ocean Marketing" thingy and just went from there. Well, that's not a textbook example of marketing/strategy, either, I guess Also, roid rage might explain a thing or 2 about this thing, heh.

haha I was making fun of Paul not being able to spell correctly to show that he is doing it very wrong.

(Facepalm) This whole thing is so full of WTF that I forgot about his inability to spell. I'm surprised that he did not use CAPS LOCK all the way...

 

[The Funslinger]

What fascinates me is the sheel level of arrogance and self-importance that the Ocean Marketing guy has. He's selling game controllers and he's acting like he has the chiefs of every major publisher, developer and gaming con at his beck and call. Oh well, time to add another company to my "No-buy" list...

Fair enough. What is Ocean, anyway? From those emails, I'm thinking it's some third party controller developer? In which case, wow. Could you be any more minor? How the hell did that marketing guy get such epic delusions of grandeur?

Also:

Ill be on the floor anyway so come find me , I?m born and raised in Boston I know the people who run the city inside and out watch the way you talk to people you never know who they know it?s a small industry and everyone knows everyone.

Yeah, you're some yuppy marketing guy for a third party controller dev. Not the fucking Godfather...

And I can't believe an apparent professional had so many grammatical and spelling errors in his emails.

It's a third party PR company owned and run by the guy in the emails and his wife. As far as the internet can tell they are the only two employees that actually exist.

The actual controller manufacturer's twitter can be found here https://twitter.com/#!/Tatterr

Oh my god, he's even more insignificant than I thought he was! He's literally a two man/woman company and he has the audacity to claim he has connections with huge developers to sound intimidating? That's just pathetic...

 

[DustyDrB]

I keep reading his correspondence in Brucie's voice. (GTA IV)

So was I. Awesome.

 

[CombustibleKoala]

Ha! It got so big that it was picked up by the International Business Times!

http://tinyurl.com/blo4gry

And so Penny Arcade leveled the company, sewed the ground with salt, and forbade any gamers to dwell there (Krahulik 24:4)

 

[Avulsion]

And now perhaps the Christoforo has gotten the axe?
[UPDATED] http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service