[The HACK]

This reminds me of this one time...

I used to work at a very reputable automotive aftermarket company, based out here in the United States. I was tasked to hold a specific event to reward our loyal customers. I won't go into details, but let's just say it's an event not unlike what you'd get from BMW's ///M school, but only cost the participants $120 for a day. Because, you know, we wanted to really reward some of our most loyal customers.

At the end of the day there were some prizes given away. Some including about $500 worth of parts, some including $500+ worth of DISCOUNTS from our participating vendor(s).

A few months go by, and I get an angry email from the participant who won one of the grand prizes at the end of the day. He demand that we pay him $1,200 for the parts that was promised (we gave him the $500 part), which includes a brand new set of Michelin tires. I told him he was on crack. No where does it state that the Michelins were for free. And even if it did say so, it was clearly marked that "prizes are subject to change."

Sure enough, said participant threatened to sue us and "ruin our reputation on the forums." I told him to go pound sand. He got a $1,200 worth of track day for paying $120, on top of that $500 worth of parts, AND a $500 discount on a new set of tires. Needless to say, said participant went on just about every single forum he could find that has anything remotely to do with our products and started bad-mouthing us. And was making harassing calls to our office daily asking to speak to the President and CEO, and left menacing voicemails on the phone.

Finally my boss caved and told accounts payable to cut him a check for $1,200. I argued until I was blue in the face to NOT GIVE IN TO THESE TERRORIST DEMANDS.

I was overruled. So what did we get out of the entire exchange? The douche on the other end of the phone got paid $1,080 ($1,200 minus his $120 entry fee), we had a sh*t load of threads bad-mouthing us on the forums and not once did the douche apologize or go back to edit his threads, and regardless of what we do, we ended up looking like the bad guys. I was furious. If we're going to look like bad guys anyway, why the f**k give in to his ridiculous demands?

At the end of the day, the lesson learned here is, you either ESCALADE or you acquiesce as the vendor/manufacturer, and the stories you hear on these intarweb forums is NEVER what it seems.