Indeed, but if in their T&Cs when you create an account they mention something like we have the right to close any account at anytime for any reason then they're covered, but the fact is this is a PR disaster.
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So... Shopto (UK retailer) cancelled my PS4 preorder for complaining on twitter
- Thread starter Carl
- Start date
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Indeed, but if in their T&Cs when you create an account they mention something like we have the right to close any account at anytime for any reason then they're covered, but the fact is this is a PR disaster.
Samurai_Heart
Member
Cheers. Too bad there's no timestamp on the DM, cause atm it just looks like Shopto DMed OP saying they can't drop the price and then within the hour banned his account. But all in all OP is partially wrong, but Shopto is fully in the wrong from the context and attitude as a company.
This wasn't in their store though. It would be like walking down the street and over hearing someone complain about your store.
Impeccable
Member
Corporate apologists, haha! So cute.
Hope Shopto realizes this has probably already cost them thousands of pounds.
Hope Shopto realizes this has probably already cost them thousands of pounds.
Iacobellis
Junior Member
Yeah, I'm with Carl on this one. ShopTo may have lost a sale, but Carl ultimately lost his PS4 preorder. I sure hope the whole situation gets sorted out and he can still get a system on launch day.
darkazcura
Member
Restaurant would probably do nothing, but this isn't a good comparison. Shopto doesn't own the Twitter space.
I can't believe how many people are actually saying Carl deserved this because you have to watch what you say in public. Do people saying this understand how messed up that is? To have to watch what you say in public? Especially when it is as harmless as this? Geez.
This IS NOT HOW CUSTOMER SERVICE WORKS.
Really, sorry for the caps there, but it needs to be repeated loudly. If you went into a Best Buy with a friend, saw a price tag for a product you thought was ridiculous or something and an employee overheard you say "Fuck BestBuy", that does not give them good justification to deny you future customer service and/or ban you from the store and buying any products there. That's absolutely insane.
Customer service is there to help customers if its within their power. To smile, take shit from crappy people(not saying you are a crappy person OP) and help them out, because that's how you keep customers coming back. Not by being offended and banning them out of personal pride or something.
They fuck him, losing many customers as a result severely fucks them. Abnormal business.
Mechanized
Member
That's what I was thinking. Is this really company policy? It seems ridiculous.
Yeah i phrased that pretty badly, and i'm not entirely sure what I meant by it. Don't care if they order is reinstated or not - unless they make it free i'll probably tell them where to shove it.
Just wanted people to know about it, really.
Wickerbasket
Member
The only thing wrong OP did was give them his order number.
Fuck shopto and their shitty customer service.
SneakyStephan
Banned
Just email your exchange to kotaku/ign/polygon or w/e other desperate for hits pr website you can find.
One of them is bound to make a headline out of it.
One of them is bound to make a headline out of it.
Nailed it. It amazes me that people actually believe the shit they're spewing in this thread. It's obvious none of them work in the corporate world or know anything about PR/customer relations.
No wait, I got it. I need to gather the usernames and amazon/PSN/XBox accounts of all the people that justify shoptos behaviour, and watch them on gaf. If they write ANYTHING that sounds dickish, I'll let a certain company I have contacts with know to ban their accounts from buying their games because they surely dont want them as customers.
Sounds like a great plan, amiright. Lets see how many people would justify that then.
Sounds like a great plan, amiright. Lets see how many people would justify that then.
fabricated backlash
Member
Pretty much. If this were a deal between two private parties, I'd still be shitty, but this behaviour from part of the PUBLIC RELATIONS department of a business is just downright baffling but not unheard of. EA customer service for example is a bunch of scamming assholes as far as I'm concerned.
B
bomb
Unconfirmed Member
The actions of this retailer were way overboard. I am mainly talking about this customer entitlement attitude over the 20 euros. Just because a retailer do not match Amazon causes that type of reaction makes me furious. The retailer should make a thread and say "look in the OP I already said I was being childish". Then all is forgiven I guess.
Another classic example of one employee causing the entire business to look bad. Two childs on both sides. Yet, it is going to cost one a lot more than the other. Maybe this is one of the reasons businesses try to stay lean with employment. To keep these knuckleheads from causing these headaches.
PrivateRyan
Member
Bizarre to see some people defending ShopTo's behaviour - given the fallout so far and how visible it has been, how does this benefit ShopTo in any way?
Kun Aguero
Member
Common sense = not giving your account details. In no way am I defending ShopTo over this, the decision to cancel the OP's PS4 order is reprehensible, and I hope they use some "common sense" and reverse their decision.
Actually a better comparison is you walking on a public street and telling your friend something negative about best buy that an employee overhears then the next time you're in best buy they kick you out.
They'll care if any of the major gaming outlets get hold of this and decide to run with it.
Perhaps not PS4 console sales because people want them for launch, but I guarantee at least a few people will now choose competitors instead of ShopTo going forward.
Like, I'm never going to order from SimplyGames or Pink Planet Games Exchange again because of that stupid post pre-order higher than RRP price bump thing they did. That kind of behaviour is just unacceptable.
Do Kotaku a favor and let them have at this. Shopto isn't a private establishment that you're shopping at, and this is not proper reason for denial of service. You can't do anything but use the media for what it was made for and get it on your side.
K
kittens
Unconfirmed Member
Wow, how absurd. If you had somehow specifically threatened the person running their twitter account, then I could see this response being appropriate, but definitely not for what you said (to someone else!).
legacyzero
Banned
funkystudent
Member
Well thats incredibly shitting on Shopto's part. Never used them due to people having problems with them and that shady creditcard business a while ago so Ill continue to not give them my money.
Shopto just seems like a real shitty place to deal with.
Also GAF continues to have a defence force for everything.
Shopto just seems like a real shitty place to deal with.
Also GAF continues to have a defence force for everything.
darkazcura
Member
Bad PR is bad PR. There have already been a few people in this thread that have ordered on Amazon instead of ShopTo because of this thread. Sure they probably won't notice it too much, but they are losing customers. Eventually it could pile up and really hit them hard if this kind of business practice continues.
Yeah, I mean I expect most people who work in just about any company could understand that. Imagine you are the one in charge of your company twitter account, you use it for new promotions, to try to get new business/clients/etc, the really obvious stuff that pertains to essentially all companies who offer a product or service.
One day you react to negative criticism by literally canceling the order of a customer who did not ask for it, if you had a flow chart for how to deal with customer comments, I expect none of the arrows lead to 'do whatever it takes to lose a sale'.
Broken Joystick
At least you can talk. Who are you?
Anecdotal evidence has shown me that several people have already joined the "Fuck ShopTo" brigade and now have no intention of ever buying from there and/or cancelling any order they had. That was within the first hour it was on Twitter. Now that this is bound to spread around big gaming sites and this thread has already has 12K views, I think the retailer is gonna care just a little bit.
FlyStarJay
Member
Customer service might not work like that (which i know) but does not give a customer the right to provoke them. In the UK, if you are abusing staff for no reason, you can get sued.
Again as i said if they did not provoke him, the retailer has the right to part ways with the customer. What has ShopTo done to him? Most likely nothing.
No 1 deserves to be provoke. And i agree with the decision.
Was it a casual conversation? I would like to see and know how the conversation started
cartman414
Member
Yeah. Here I am wondering what the rep was doing looking through his personal tweets. What a snoop.
/thread
Yea. That's not an insult to anyone who doesn't have experience in this world, but its crazy how many people have opinions about things they obviously don't understand in the least.
True. It really is that bewildering.
The employee should be fired and replaced by somebody who knows how to handle the job properly and wont be a liability for the company.
Fox Mulder
Member
pretty shitty and thin skinned for a company to stalk twitter for what people say about them and then get mad about it. They provided a valid excuse for not price matching, and should have ended the matter there for the customer to decide what to do next.
Pretty petty to react this way from "rude" words with context from a disappointed customer in a casual conversation.
Pretty petty to react this way from "rude" words with context from a disappointed customer in a casual conversation.
I use Shopto and I'd have to agree that their service has been getting worse over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, I live in the middle of no where and they're basically one of the few places online that actually does do next day 24 hour royal mail delivery. If I were to order from many other places online, I'd probably get a game on the Monday, rather than the Friday.
This is a PR disaster though.
This is a PR disaster though.
That is the part that most of the defenders do not seem to grasp, to run a successful business you cannot get upset, hold grudges or "strike back" at your customers, as it seems they did here, because one person working there got upset that he would take his business to Amazon.
Its not how you do business, Sony does not deny Capcom to make games for PS3 and PS4 just because Capcom took Monster Hunter and put it on 3DS. They do not ring Capcom up and tell them to fuck off, it would be a bad thing for everyone involved. Everyone loses in that situation.
Company =/= consumer. Its not a black and white thing with 2 equal parties. They could have just ignored his outbreak and sold him his PS4, after all they still make their money. Now they get bad publicity that could spread, lose a sale, for what? For some personal gratification that 1 employee had when he found out about his Twitter outburst?
Imagine if Platinum and Nintendo refused to release Bayo 2 in Europe because W101 sold like shit and they are butthurt about it, "yeah you motherfuckers, now we are gonna show you!". That might be how some (petty) people resolve their issues but not major companies. Its a negative on all fronts
Normal business? Seriously, what was there to gain by cancelling his pre-order? Nothing at all, except for bad PR, the pre-order itself and any future business form at least this customer. Sounds like a dumb move by shopto to me and not normal business at all.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Really? So you're having a conversation with a friend in Game or Gamestop, and you say to him "they won't price match such-and-such, so I'm getting all my future games from a supermarket as a 'fuck you'", and then one of the shop assistants walks over, says they don't tolerate abuse, they're cancelling your £400 order and they don't need your business, and you think that would be quite okay? I think that would be fucking atrocious customer service, as it is here. I hope this gets lots of attention on Twitter and they relent with their tail between their legs.
Do you live in the UK? Shopto is one of the better and more reliable online retailers (this kind of bullshit excepted). They've been growing at quite a rate for the last handful of years.
definitely shouldn't have cancelled the order and just let it die in this instance but when a customer purposefully flames a company and uses bad language I'm just not surprised be it shopto or any other csr empowering themselves to make the customer pay and then inevitably getting reprimanded by the company. especially when they public ally say they are taking their business elsewhere on top of it all.
I'm quite sure that is not applicable when you're insulting the company on the street, and not actually in store attacking the employee.
NaughtyCalibur
Member
Not just fucked up, but insanely stupid. A tweet that would have otherwise gone unnoticed by the public is now stirring up shit because the company thought it'd be a good idea to single it out as the reason for canceling a customer's order.
It's easily one of the dumbest PR moves in history.
And they only done this because they didn't lose anything and at the same time screwed the person from getting a PS4 at launch.
If the PS4 didn't had a waiting list on every website, ShopTo would never do it. They would never chose to lose money so it's not a matter of principle for them, it was just them reacting like little kids because they can and screw someone that said something mean about them.
I really hope this gets the media attention like the SimplyGames news, so everyone knows about this shitty company. Unfortunately Eurogamer will not touch this because of their Shopto partnership......
I meant in this case, not thinking of the long term
All and all, long term effects matter if the mainstream places like Kotaku etc start picking up on it
Nobody was provoked, though. :/ OP said it on Twitter to a friend. It was not directed at the ShopTo employee.
And in any case, saying 'Fuck <your company' is not a provocation or abuse. Yelling, threatening or being physical with an employee might be an example of justification to kick somebody out, but simply displaying your dissatisfaction with a curse word is hardly something to get worked up about.
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