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Comment by glimcat | Hacker News Reader

From about five seconds of Google, it looks like the actual product was made by David Kotkin and is considered to be rather significant for disabled users.

http://www.ablegamers.com/hardware-news/interview-with-aveng...

Paul Christoforo is just some schmuck at the contracted marketing company, because the product was put together by an art teacher trying to make small-quantity disability aids and not someone trying to launch a major business.

Due diligence regarding fact-checking has apparently slipped below the threshold of "punch it into Google."

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This is a fair point, but it should be noted that is seems that Christoforo and Kotkin are friends, rather than Christoforo just being some random shmuck.

Should Kotkin be penalized for his friends behaviour? Probably not, but he should be more careful about hiring buds in the future.

Glad someone has pointed this out. I predict a lot of misdirected internet anger towards an innocent man, here.

I wonder if anyone at Ocean Marketing and among the people who make Avengers had any idea how Paul Christoforo rolls.

Another point towards "trust but check" policy towards your employees.

From the looks of it, Paul Christoforo = Ocean Marketing.

The website [1] lists "Paul@OceanMarketingInc.com" as the only email address, and the bio for the Twitter account "oceanmarketting" has his name and picture as avatar.

[1] http://oceanmarketinginc.com/Contact-Us.php

I think that's all correct, except for the Twitter account, which I believe was created by another disgruntled customer (Nathan Stansell) a few months ago, following a similar exchange with Paul Christoforo. It looks like Stansell is now retweeting messages related to the new controversy.

http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service

"2:45 am. Created a Twitter account just so i could Tweet a comment and link to Mr Paul Christoforo at Ocean Marketing. @OceanMarketting - Am i still one little person out of Millions sir?"

That was the right account, but it changed. Someone registered the old name and started tweeting stuff. The website was still pulling tweets from the original account a few minutes ago.

The new account for the original is https://twitter.com/#!/oceanstratagy

Ocean Stratagy? How could either of these misspelled Twitter accounts be legit?

The evidence points to illiteracy.

Oh, my goodness. A truly funny comment on Hacker News. Thank you for this.

The original (@oceanmarketting) was linked to the site, including all the tweets from the person who grabbed the name. Then the new one appeared with the same follower/following count, tweets, and profile info as the original. And the original emails had bad spelling.

Yeah, and I like that despite it being (apparently) a one-man job, he decides to threaten "I have about 125 dedicated people to run PR , Blogs , Articles , Videos you have no clue who I am."

If you contract a marketing company, surely you take some responsibility for how they interact with your customers.

Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean you endorse it.

The moment you pay them, you're endorsing it. Sure, make your public "whoops" statements, but at the end of the day, it's your fault for hiring them and you get the rep hit as well.

I think this is a case where it's justified to consider them guilty until proven innocent. Interacting with customers is what they paid these guys to do. It's not like he's doing this in his spare time or anything. Yeah, they probably don't endorse it, but as has been pointed out elsethread, this isn't the first time this awful marketing company pissed people off. When it comes to Googling for due diligence, surely the same applies to choosing your marketing company.

Given Christoforo's spelling issues, it might not be easy to google.

Choosing what to examine in the course of due diligence is often a function of experience. Should someone be lambasted for making a mistake their first time?

Well yes, otherwise what incentive do they have to get it right the first time?

If and when the manufacturer dumps these guys and issues a public apology for their behavior, we certainly should forgive them. But it's still justifiable to place part of the responsibility on them for what happened.

Kotkin has issued and apology and fired Ocean Marketing... I'll try to find the link.

edit: http://i.imgur.com/axYAm.png

Good news! I couldn't find an official link, but did find this screenshot of an e-mail they sent out saying just that: http://i.imgur.com/axYAm.png

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