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Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

penny-arcade.com

61–70 of 97 posts

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#61
post #35
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean you endorse it.

I think this is a case where it's justified to consider them guilty until proven innocent. Interacting with customers is what they paid these guys to do . It's not like he's doing this in his spare time or anything. Yeah, they probably don't endorse it, but as has been pointed out elsethread, this isn't the first time this awful marketing company pissed people off. When it comes to Googling for due diligence, surely…

Choosing what to examine in the course of due diligence is often a function of experience. Should someone be lambasted for making a mistake their first time?

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#62
post #28

Sigh. This may actually be good PR :( I had never heard of this controller until this story. It looks really cool. How other many people is that true for? edit/update: this story is #2 on the vanilla reddit front page.

Hah - that'd be a good story.

"I'll be a complete internet jerkwad, and get you in front of thousands of people. Disassociate yourself from me when the shit hits the fan."

As long as you're careful about not letting the internet detectives dig too deeply, you could probably re-invent yourself and do this repeatedly.

However, I'm a little unsure how many people would be willing to work with you on this. Great tin-foil hat material though.

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#63
post #16

From about five seconds of Google, it looks like the actual product was made by David Kotkin and is considered to be rather significant for disabled users. http://www.ablegamers.com/hardware-news/interview-with-aveng... Paul Christoforo is just some schmuck at the contracted marketing company, because the product was put together by an art teacher trying to make small-quantity disability aids and not someone trying t…

This is a fair point, but it should be noted that is seems that Christoforo and Kotkin are friends, rather than Christoforo just being some random shmuck.

Should Kotkin be penalized for his friends behaviour? Probably not, but he should be more careful about hiring buds in the future.

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#64
post #57
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's all correct, except for the Twitter account, which I believe was created by another disgruntled customer (Nathan Stansell) a few months ago, following a similar exchange with Paul Christoforo. It looks like Stansell is now retweeting messages related to the new controversy. http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service "2:45 am. Created a Twitter account just so i could Tweet a comment and link to…

That was the right account, but it changed. Someone registered the old name and started tweeting stuff. The website was still pulling tweets from the original account a few minutes ago. The new account for the original is https://twitter.com/#!/oceanstratagy

Ocean Stratagy? How could either of these misspelled Twitter accounts be legit?

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#65
post #21

I like how the guy is completely clueless about who he is talking to. He is in marketing, and didn't know someone like that? And this whole thing could have just been avoided with a measly $10 coupon.

Well according to the copy posted in the email "As a token of our appreciation we are offering all our pre-order customers and new customers 10$ off your next order with us just enter Avenger1001 at Checkout".

So the company was even offering that measly $10 coupon that the pre-order customer wanted!

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#66

The guy must fancy himself as a bit of a mob boss/gangster. Maybe got too into The Sopranos? There's a point where you can start reading it all in Chris Moltisanti's voice. The fella making the complaint was hardly better, but seeing as the guy he was talking to was being unprofessional (at the very least) right off the bat, his only fault is letting his frustration get the better of him.

One of the golden rules of Sicilian "organized crime syndicates" is that you never, ever introduce yourself as a member or as someone who is connected. It is a hard and fast requirement that you are introduced by someone else who is inside.

This goes back to the earliest days of protection racketeering on the island, and is taken extremely seriously even today.

I'm not sure if the Campania/Napolitani families follow the same tradition, but it's a pretty good bet that if someone even so much as implies that they're "connected" to an Italian syndicate, they're not.

Also, if you think pretending to be a cop is a bad idea, try pretending to be affiliated with gangsters...

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#67
post #48
post #36

Yeah, the inventor David Kotkin is/was a teacher and inventor in Miami Florida, he was actually on local news demoing it. It seems it is being sold by a company called iNcontrol Enterprises LLC. Interestingly, all the press releases up until march 2011 for iNcontrol were done by a florida operation called The HAND Media who seem slightly more legit than Ocean Marketing. Ocean marketing seems to be mainly interested i…

The biz dev guy from n-control is on the case https://twitter.com/Tatterr

I love how this guy's tweets are all him announcing what game he's playing until this controversy flared up. He must be pretty annoyed about the dent this is making in his non-stop gaming lifestyle.

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#69

What happened to talking to your customers in complete sentences?

I'm always surprised when I see people of extremely questionable literacy in public-facing positions. I really must be doing something wrong.

Re: Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

#70
post #21

I like how the guy is completely clueless about who he is talking to. He is in marketing, and didn't know someone like that? And this whole thing could have just been avoided with a measly $10 coupon.

Well according to the copy posted in the email "As a token of our appreciation we are offering all our pre-order customers and new customers 10$ off your next order with us just enter Avenger1001 at Checkout". So the company was even offering that measly $10 coupon that the pre-order customer wanted!

Except that new customers could use that $10 on the controller that pre-order customers had already purchased, while pre-order customers would have to buy something else (your next order) in order to use the $10 coupon.
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