Hell Hath No Fury… (follow-up)

15Oct07

Picture by jamestee Some rights reserved.

I didn’t get a chance to follow up on my previous posting about the kerfuffle caused by the Monster spamming incident a few weeks ago. Monster came back with an apology that defused the situation quite quickly. Apparently they were the actions of a “new hire” who didn’t understand Monster’s policies.

Of course, the whole thing would never had happened had their immediate reaction been an apology rather than adopting a confrontational attitude¹. Companies and organisations need to learn that consumers and individuals who feel they have been wronged have access to an outlet that can reach a much wider audience than the letters page of the local newspaper and is cheaper than their solicitor. It’s called the Internet and with the way people are interacting across it these days all it takes is a small bit of interest for a story to get out of control.

Unfortunately it’s usually the very act of coming back with a bad response to a complaint that makes the stories go public in the first place. Some companies then decide to throw fuel on the fire by hitting people with threats of legal action and cease-and-desist letters in a vain attempt to stop the bad publicity spreading. Next thing you know the story’s on Digg and Slashdot.

With this in mind I was amused to pick up this story from Slashdot (original link here) last week. It seems that some legal firms in the States are trying to prevent this kind of reaction to cease-and-desist letters by threatening to sue people for breach of copyright if they publish the cease-and-desist letters!

When will these idiots ever learn…?

– Fintan

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1 – He may have been a new hire but he was an employee of Monster and was therefore the public face of the company in this incident, at least for 48 hours.

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