This Company Made Itself Serious Troll Bait

a10warthog

a10warthog

Member
The story of "Garadget", a young company making "smart" garage door monitoring devices, needs to be first on the list of "How not to run your business" lessons given in business schools.
Essentially, as I understand the story, the company "bricked" (I.E. deactivated, via the Internet of Things) a customer's remote garage door monitor because they didn't like the poor review of the opener the customer posted on the company website, and on Amazon. There were many other customers who had complained, but, the company took exception to this particular customer's use of the word "sh-t." So, he was (it appears) singled out to have his device deactivated. (no, he wasn't locked out of his garage, but his device was bricked)
Of course, this being the Age of Information, the story got out and, The Trolls, other p-ssed off customers, and anyone taking exception to Freedom of Speech being abridged, came out to savage Garadget. The customer comments on Amazon for the opener make for some truly "OhMyGodMyHairIsOnFire" reading.

My first thought after reading that a company could turn a short term problem (an unhappy customer) into a long term problem of damaging your reputation by "getting some seriously bad publicity " was....

Thank God Garadget doesn't make heart pace makers.
 
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It's hard to believe that in this day and age, with so many bone headed moves to serve as an example, that people continue to make bone headed moves like this one.

bs
 
Fortunately, it was a silly name for a company, and they'll be able to change it easily enough and start fresh ...

I'm thinking BrickIt would be kinda catchy ...
 
And as usual, slow news day = bad news. I see the ARS article shows a smashed garage door that has absolutely nothing to do with what took place. Also, the company did NOT deny access to the garage, or interfere with the original garage door opener's operation in any way ... all he did was deactivate the Garadget device, AFTER telling the customer he would be doing so AND offering a full refund as soon as the product was returned.

"Grisak is the device’s inventor and distributor. He points out that Martin wasn’t in danger of being locked out of the garage or being unable to close the door, since the device hadn’t been activated."

Also, not knowing exactly what other exchanges occurred between the parties, I'd have to say that Grisak was well within his rights to take the actions he did. No different really from banning an abusive customer from a bar or restaurant, or in this case, tossing them out on their ear without having to pay the check.

That said, ain't none of that gonna stop the half baked half cocked to go off about something they've blown all out of proportion, eh. That in itself, was a bad PR move that will get it's 15 minutes of fame.

PS ... half the "one size fits all" apps in circulation don't work right out the gate on every possible platform. Be interesting to see what the stats are on customers who HAD issues they were able to work through with tech support just by talking nice ...
 
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Wow, you really know how to take the fun out of righteous indignation.

sKiZo said:
And as usual, slow news day = bad news. I see the ARS article shows a smashed garage door that has absolutely nothing to do with what took place. Also, the company did NOT deny access to the garage, or interfere with the original garage door opener's operation in any way ... all he did was deactivate the Garadget device, AFTER telling the customer he would be doing so AND offering a full refund as soon as the product was returned.

"Grisak is the device’s inventor and distributor. He points out that Martin wasn’t in danger of being locked out of the garage or being unable to close the door, since the device hadn’t been activated."

Also, not knowing exactly what other exchanges occurred between the parties, I'd have to say that Grisak was well within his rights to take the actions he did. No different really from banning an abusive customer from a bar or restaurant, or in this case, tossing them out on their ear without having to pay the check.

That said, ain't none of that gonna stop the half baked half cocked to go off about something they've blown all out of proportion, eh. That in itself, was a bad PR move that will get it's 15 minutes of fame.

PS ... half the "one size fits all" apps in circulation don't work right out the gate on every possible platform. Be interesting to see what the stats are on customers who HAD issues they were able to work through with tech support just by talking nice ...
Click to expand...
 
This whole trend of people putting everything on the web is flat crazy -
its ripe for abuse - or for Putin's buds to have a bit of fun with ya! ;)
 
Isn't technology grand??? I have an employee that made the terrible mistake (against my advice) of purchasing a relatively late model used car from one of those scumbag "buy here/pay here" franchises--he and his wife have crappy credit, but with a new baby, he insisted that she needed a "better" car for her and the baby. What he didn't realize (or didn't bother to read in the fine print) is that all of those vehicles are "low-jacked", so if you are late on a payment, they can and will disable the vehicle--not while in operation (for obvious safety reasons), but the next time you go to start it--it won't. Needless to say, he was a week late on a payment--his precious wife and baby came out of the store and the car was disabled. He then went to his brother and borrowed money to make the payment--by the time they returned to the parking lot, the car had already been repo'd and the dealer wanted another $300 for towing/repo/impound fees on top of the payment he had just made!!!
 
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