[restlessmedia]

I absolutely agree. From an outsider, the reaction from Garadget will stay in my mind far longer than the initial review. Imagine this in a bricks and mortar high-street shop? 'The customer is always right' is a difficult but noble stance - if a customer is being difficult, suck it up, be sickly nice then go out the back and scream when they've left.

[matt4077]

Customers are not always right. Making you employees treating them as if they were, or as if the employees were slaves, is morally bankrupt. Grow a spine!

That can actually be a winning PR strategy. Not sure how it is in the US, but here many companies have started to respond with blatant sarcasm and mockery to unreasonable criticism in social media. You'll have a newspaper's support guy answering "brb, getting one of those sweet-paying protest gigs" when someone accuses them of being "paid by George Soros, just like those protesters".

This, however, is not one of those cases. The customer may have been a bit harsh, but his review is completely within the bounds of acceptable human behaviour. They could have reached out to them, and they would have probably been willing to change the review as well.

[barking]

That's only because the reaction was so unusual. I'd react the way you suggest but I admire people who react the way he did. And, every now and then you hear of a business with a fuck you attitude that succeeds, e.g. Ryanair

[atemerev]

And if Ryanair representative suddenly appeared here and banned you from ever flying with them because you talk shit about them on HN, you'd have been rightfully mad.

Even more so if you had the ticket on hands. :)

[barking]

Absolutely and I know I could rely on the rest of you to show solidarity and boycott Ryanair, right?

[jungletek]

Nah, they're garbage, verging on a human-cattle transport service. Fuck 'em. There's far superior carriers servicing the same areas for the same or very similar prices.

Come at me, Ryanair :)

[StavrosK]

Ryanair only succeeds because my tolerance for "fuck you" is more than my tolerance for expensive flights. The moment I have a cheap alternative, I'm never touching Ryanair again, and sometimes not even then.

[barking]

In my experience there are a small percentage of customers, bullies basically, who are toxic and have the ability to ruin the experience for your good customers by taking up an inordinate amount of resources in money, time and employee mental state. Maybe part of the reason they are cheap is because they don't pander to this type?

[matt4077]

Dunno. I once tried to check in online, but the service was just giving me errors. Tried for half an hour.

When the service was back up, it wouldn't let me check in because that closes two hours before the flight. There were around 20 people at the check-in, all of which had had the same problem.

They made every single one pay 45 Euro per boarding pass, telling us to file a complaint later.

Filed a complaint, got a canned response "sorry, those are the rules". Didn't feel like suing them.

So, let me say this to Ryanair: "I'm very sorry for being toxic, and ruining the experience. Also: eat me!"

[mikro2nd]

Do you not have recourse to a Small Claims Court or similar process where you are?

Here the mere threat of using the Small Claims Court is frequently sufficient to prompt adequate redress. No lawyers are allowed to advise parties. The head of the company has to show up in person and sit waiting on a bench along with everyone else waiting for the case to get called. Court sits outside of normal working hours, and there's no appeal. For small amounts it works incredibly efficiently.

[StavrosK]

Another horror story: A friend of mine had booked a trip with Ryanair to Hungary for a week, Sunday to next Saturday. A few days before the trip, Ryanair calls him and tells him that the Sunday flight is not going to happen due to low occupancy, but they can transfer his booking to the Sunday after that. He had already booked the hotel, so he only agreed grudgingly, figuring that he might be able to transfer that booking for next week and asked whether the return flight would be on a Saturday as well, but Ryanair's answer was incredible:

The Saturday (return) flight is going to fly as scheduled, so they said it wasn't their responsibility to reschedule it for free. He could either pay out of his pocket to reschedule his return flight (if he could find a suitable flight), or he could return from Hungary a day before he actually flew there.

Fuck Ryanair.

[ValentineC]

Could it be possible that your friend got in this mess because they booked two one-way tickets instead of a return ticket? If both flights were on the same PNR, I can't see how such a ticket would be valid.

[barking]

You left it rather late to check in by the sound of it, though. Just saying

[youngtaff]

My tolerance for Ryanair is zero… I won't give my money to a business that treats me like shit

[gambiting]

I wish I had such choice......ryanair is the only airline that flies anywhere near where I live. I could say "fuck you ryanair" and fly with someone else, but then my total journey time home would go up from 3 hours to about 8-9 hours. As much as I dislike them, I'm not going to make my life significantly more difficult and spend more money just to avoid them.

[barking]

In the mid 80s the route I occasionally flew was monopolised by the national airlines of each country. There wasn't a penny difference between their fares at about ten times the usual fare today. Most people went by coach instead, a 12 hour miserable journey. Everyone flys it today thanks to Ryanair.

[atemerev]

Yeah, exactly. Their flights are a mass product designed to be as cheap as possible, and not, say, a luxury premium gadget designed to open my garage doors from the comfort of my car without the need to find my _usual_ garage remote key, right? I can use my iPhone for that! How convenient! I will definitely pay $99 for this wonderful appliance, right with my second Aston Martin. /s

[teh_klev]

> e.g. Ryanair

Well, actually:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/03/ryanair-cus...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06zv3xf

[barking]

True but it doesn't negate the fact that they became Europe's biggest airline before that.

[chrischen]

A lot of brick and mortar shops actually have a sign that says "We reserve the right to refuse service."

[andybak]

Yes but they had better have a really compelling unique product if they choose to exercise that right.

[ekidd]

I've worked retail. Pretty much every place that's worth working at has banned a few customers. Perhaps 1 in 1000 customers will be actively abusive towards other customers or towards employees.

I recall my first boss, who once had a customer push to the front of the line in a crowded shop. The customer rudely demand to be served. My boss was a very proper older southern lady, and she said, "Ma'am, you can also find [this product] at the grocery store across the street, and I encourage you go there." After the woman had stomped out, my boss turned the other customers and said, "Well, she wants us to have a bad day, and we're not going to," and she served the next person in line. I'm told the other customers practically cheered.

Of course, if you had told her that her product was a "piece of shit," she would have disapproved of your language but she would have refunded your money and replaced the product in an instant. She took quality seriously. If you were really rude about it, I suppose she might have "fired" you afterwards, though.

As a boss, you need to set limits about how badly your customers can act before they get (politely) booted. Anything less is inhumane to your employees. But this doesn't mean you should fire a customer over a bad Amazon review.

[bigiain]

There's "refusing service", "banning customers", and then there's "turning off a device you've already sold to a customer after he's taken it home". There are not many goods/products/businesses who get away with doing that. Even Steve's "You're holding it wrong!" wasn't followed up with "so I'm gonna remote brick it on you"...

(Interestingly, Amazon have in the past remote-deleted Kindle books on people's devices - but for very much better reasons that "you were a bit rude in your review", and they _still_ copped a roasting for it...)

[gambiting]

I've had one of my kindles replaced because it wouldn't connect to wifi anymore, and the rep said they are sending me a new one, and I don't have to send the old one back, but they are blacklisting it on their servers - so if I ever fix it, it won't connect to the internet at all.

It was a bit weird, but I guess acceptable in that situation.