Gary walks into a TV store and buys a TV from Joe. Gary pays for the TV up front with cash and Joe accepts the payment for the brand new TV. Joe loads the TV in Gary's car and shakes Gary's hand. "Thanks for your business" says Joe. "See you next time" says Gary.
Gary gets home with his brand new TV and opens the box only to discover that not only is it not the TV Gary bought, but the TV's busted. It only displays color on some channels, has a dim and flickering display, isn't compatible with his cable. All in all, this TV is about 10% of what Gary paid for. So Gary's pretty pissed off, there's time and money behind this TV and he doesn't appreciate this kind of thing...I mean what kind of customer service does this to you?
So Gary takes the TV back to Joe and tells him pretty sternly "You packaged the wrong TV and to top it off, this one's busted, what kind of circus are you running around here"?
You see, Gary's reaction (While impolite) is actually justified as the customer because he gave 100% of what he owed to Joe and Joe only gave Gary 10% of what he owed. Gary being the customer isn't expected to do anything but pay because that's his half of the deal. Joe however, has the product to deliver and is expected to deliver it in the condition it was advertised in. While Joe doesn't like Gary's attitude, Joe knows that it's his fault and while he may not have done it intentionally, he's still wronged Gary and simultaneously made his business look bad.
So Joe tries to make it better by taking the TV back and packing up a new TV for Gary and soon enough Gary's on his way home with his new TV again. Gary gets home, opens the box and BAM...it's still busted? It's the right model, and granted it's not as busted as before but there's a different set of problems with this new one. The frame's dented, it won't sit level because the base is damaged and the buttons are all broken except for the menu button. Gary is livid now. Gary goes back to the store and confronts Joe again, only this time Joe admits that he doesn't actually have any fully functional TVs. "WHAT"!? Says Gary.
Gary proceeds to rip Joe a new one in front of all of his customers and in turn... all Joe's customers start in on him too...and rightfully so. As it turns out, Joe had been selling faulty, shoddy and defective TVs all along and knew it...but didn't say anything. When any of his customers complained, Joe simply reassured them that he'd fix the problem...but 49 days after Joe had started selling them, he hadn't fixed a single one back to an acceptable standard and to top that off the TVs he worked on all came back with more problems than when they went in for repairs.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a story about Business. Customers spend money, the Business provides a service or product. When the Customer screws the Business out of money...well there's usually jail involved or at the very least the Business either gets the money back or the product is taken back. This is simply the standard. But when a Business screws the customer...now that's a different story, for some reason the Customer is supposed to be supporting and understanding and allow months to pass without the product that they paid 100% of the money for. This simply isn't how things work in the real world, when the Business screws the Customer, the Customer gets pissed...every time. And when the Business fails to make good on their product or service for almost 2 months....the customers get really pissed and says mean and awful things....because the business can't be sent to jail and in most cases they can't even get their money back...not in today's Business world.
Remember Gary and Joe next time you stand up for Big Business. That poor Ubisoft company. Ubisoft claims to be the third largest independent publisher of video games worldwide (after Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts). Ubisoft worldwide presence includes 29 studios in 19 countries. The company has subsidiaries in 26 countries. Ubisoft's largest development studio is Ubisoft Montreal in Canada, which employs about 2,100 people.
In Ubisoft's 2008–2009 fiscal year, the company's revenue was €1.256 billion, reaching the €1 billion milestone for the first time in the company's history. Ubisoft created its own film division, called Ubisoft Motion Pictures, which creates shows and films based on the company's games.
So quit standing up for these guys like they're some sort of victim in all this, the bleeding hearts going out to Ubisoft are making me sick.
AMEN Bigmosca, but apparently it's not...there's some new age thing about customers being emotionally supportive of Big Business when it sells them faulty products...not sure what that's all about but I've only seen like 20 threads on it...it's sickening that Businesses have people so hooked that they'll stand up and defend these multi-billion dollar companies and their supposed feelings.