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Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support

penny-arcade.com

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

#71

Post by lparry »

ycomb wrote: post #60

I am not pissed off at Ocean Marketing. In fact I love the put downs in their emails. Of course it was awful customer support. But damn. Mike K of Penny Arcade tries to flex his muscle saying he runs Pax. The Ocean Marketing rep did not give a damn, and took the piss out of him too. LMAO!

I think you missed it. Mike said he ran PAX, the guy didn't recognize the name and started tying to name drop and claiming he'd get a booth if he wanted one. When the penny dropped that mike == gabe, and there's no way they'll be at PAX if he doesn't want them there, the penny drops and his tone changes

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

#72

Post by Hominem »

sunchild wrote: post #67
Hominem wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually feel bad for these guys. They put trust in a supposedly professional,albeit somewhat slimy seeming with the pushing ebay auctions on the corporate Twitter account, marketing firm and this blows up over Christmas weekend.

I worked with a really terrible marketing and pr firm myself when I was working for a small startup years ago. We were featured in the NYT, but our PR firm misrepresented us in such an insane way we could only conclude the firm didn't even know what we were doing. It turned what should have been a coup for us into a massive blow to our business.

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

#73

Post by jonhendry »

powertower wrote: post #58

Is it just me, or does the customer come off as a bit of an asshole that's creating/feeding about 50% of the dramma he is complaining about.

The customer paid his money, and he got no controller, just bullshit excuses and evasion and abuse. That gives him the right to complain. And he certainly started with a reasonable tone.

It doesn't help that Christoforo is selling the controllers off his ebay account, which says they are shipping from Massachusetts, while his 'company' claims to be in California.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/230687329514#ht_2193wt_1398

So a paid order isn't filled on time, but this guy has controllers to sell on ebay?

Makes me wonder if he's been diverting the controllers, i.e. stealing them, and selling them out from under the company.

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

#74

Post by eropple »

fjarlq wrote: post #64
mkr-hn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The evidence points to illiteracy.

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

#75

Post by MichaelJW »

New update from Gabe: http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/an-update1

"When these assholes threaten me or Penny Arcade I just laugh. I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames."

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

#76

Post by mikeash »

rhizome wrote: post #61
mikeash wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well yes, otherwise what incentive do they have to get it right the first time?

If and when the manufacturer dumps these guys and issues a public apology for their behavior, we certainly should forgive them. But it's still justifiable to place part of the responsibility on them for what happened.

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

#77

Post by Terretta »

dlss wrote: 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.

The product site is getting hammered. You and I, and many more.

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

#79

Post by Hominem »

Hominem wrote: 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…

What a mess, original marketing firm The HAND Media claims to have dumped n-control. And Ocean Marketing is using old HAND Media email addresses at n-control domains.

http://kotaku.com/5871400/cut-paul-oceanmarketting-christofo...

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

#80

Post by powertower »

jonhendry wrote: post #73
powertower wrote: post #58

Is it just me, or does the customer come off as a bit of an asshole that's creating/feeding about 50% of the dramma he is complaining about.

The customer paid his money, and he got no controller, just bullshit excuses and evasion and abuse. That gives him the right to complain. And he certainly started with a reasonable tone. It doesn't help that Christoforo is selling the controllers off his ebay account, which says they are shipping from Massachusetts, while his 'company' claims to be in California. http://www.ebay.com/itm/230687329514#ht_2193wt_1398 So…

The way I read it went like this...

1. Customer makes a $50 purchase. 2. Merchant gets over his head with new business, makes some mistakes. 3. Customer flips out on second email to merchant, tries to create problems for him with Visa. 4. Customer proceeds into a "principle" (aka ego) driven exchange with merchant that goes nowhere, turns into some kind of a pissing contest.

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