A new low for Smart Parts?! Or should I say DLX Technologies...

[wyn1370]

In no way am I defending what has been done, but there is a possibility that the fault may be on Audrey alone. She may have made the decision to post the photo without input from others in the company. Anyhow, I do believe that the company is reponsible for the actions of the employees, since they do often represent and speak on the company's behalf. Just a thought.

let me just say this real quick, there is no Audrey. How do I know this, I don't, but all the facts post to it being a fictional person. Inconsitent birthdays, fake pictures, hell even her profile on Myspace says she's from California. If she a cali girl, how did she get the brittish accent to record onto the board?

Now I can see this happening. They blaim Audrey, claim they've fired her and move on. Funny thing is nothing would have changed as it would still be the same people who posted as Audrey that would continue to post as customer reps, just not Audrey.

[raehl]

Creating a "personality" is one thing. Using a fake photo is not even that bad (if you use it with permission). Outright lying about it is something else all together. The issue is not with the cheezy initial actions, it is with the way it was handled by both PBN and DLX.

Maybe I'm missing something - was there outright lying other than saying the photo was accurate?

I put that in the clumsy category - you want your CSR personality to be 'real', but with a wink and a nod so everyone knows they're not REALLY real. I just think SP did a poor job of maintaining the illusion while still allowing people to understand it is an illusion.

The online CSR rep is a fictional personality. The fictional personality is kinda SUPPOSED to make you 'believe' they're not fictional.

- Chris

[manike]

Chris, the online rep claimed the photo and the voice of the gun to be hers.

[georgeyew]

let me just say this real quick, there is no Audrey. How do I know this, I don't, but all the facts post to it being a fictional person. Inconsitent birthdays, fake pictures, hell even her profile on Myspace says she's from California. If she a cali girl, how did she get the brittish accent to record onto the board?

Now I can see this happening. They blaim Audrey, claim they've fired her and move on. Funny thing is nothing would have changed as it would still be the same people who posted as Audrey that would continue to post as customer reps, just not Audrey.

Guess we may never really know. Imagine if you were one of the members that flirted with her on the threads...and she turns out to be a dude!

I remember in one of the threads, a guy asked if she would be at the Luxe booth at PSP. She said that she can't attend events because she has to man the office....I guess the pieces are starting to come together.

[BigEvil]

Chris, the online rep claimed the photo and the voice of the gun to be hers.

"Chris" huh? :rofl:

[manike]

You misread that, lmao :rofl: , I was replying to Chris (Raehl). :rofl:

[BigEvil]

You misread that, lmao :rofl: , I was replying to Chris (Raehl). :rofl:

AH - LOL

[Hexis]

Maybe I'm missing something - was there outright lying other than saying the photo was accurate?

So, is that question really "How is the company rep unethical other than being unethical?"

[wyn1370]

So, is that question really "How is the company rep unethical other than being unethical?"

or
was there outright lying other than outright lying?

[Lohman446]

I don't know that I'd say this is as nefarious as some people are trying to make this out to be, although it was definitely a clumsy effort.

Fake avatar picture:

Everybody on PbN has fake avatar pictures. IF we all looked like our avatar pics, I look like a check mark.

Fake personality:

It's actually quite common for companies to have CSR personalities for communicating with customers on the internet. They don't represent a real person - they might represent one person for a time until someone else gets the CSR job, or might even represent multiple people. That lets the company have a consistent presence despite staffing changes.

Fake myspace page:

Lots of companies have 'fake' myspace pages. Seems every nightclub on myspace for example is a 25 year old hot female.


But, using a photo without permission was clearly an error, and it was clumsy to not be more clear about the nature of Audrey from the beginning. But there's a big difference between clumsy and nefarious.

DLX was trying to create an online CSR personality. There's really nothing odd, uncommon, or inherently dishonest about that. They just did a poor job of it.

It's not like they claimed their gun shoots further than other guns or something.

- Chris

I actually agree with the it wasn't that big of a deal. On the list of "marketing" done in paintball this may be slightly new (to paintball, obviously it has existed outside) but it surely isn't very low. It was just horribly handled and let spin out of control but I doubt anyone (well, almost anyone) would have really cared.

Should have stuck to the "does too shoot further" in the face of undeniable physical evidence against it. That seemed to work better.

[raehl]

So, is that question really "How is the company rep unethical other than being unethical?"

I don't think there's anything unethical about having an online CSR persona that doesn't correspond to a real person. It's a pretty common business practice. For example, I frequent a frequent-flyer forum for Northwest Airlines, and Northwest has a 'person' named NW_Scoop who is the presence on that site. NW_Scoop doesn't correspond to a real person.

Hell, some companies go so far as to use talking amphibians!

Anyway, I don't think there's anything wrong with the fictional persona pretending they're not fictional. If I ask a magician if they really just cut their assistant in half, they're going to say yes. We're paying the magician to act like they're really doing magic and not just being tricky. And it doesn't seem odd to me that you have this high-end gun with 'the voice' that talks to you and you make an online persona to go with it. Now not only will your gun talk to you on the field, it'll talk to you online too! It's just standard promotional stuff. We should all know our gun isn't really talking to us, but part of the product is the illusion that the gun talks.

The problem is DLX didn't do a good job of establishing Audrey as a fictional persona. I think in most environments most people would understand that Audrey was a personality ('the voice on the gun') and not a real person, but some people didn't get it, and I do think DLX did a poor job of establishing who exactly Audrey was (or more importantly, was not).

And they should have used a photo they had rights to. Nobody expects the pictures of the customer service reps on customer contact pages of websites to be actual customer service reps, but ya at least pay someone for the rights to the photos you're using.


- Chris

[Lohman446]

Thats what throws me... is it seems SP would have the rights to plenty of photos of good looking woman to use for this that could not have "blown up" in there face.

The concept was not faulty, the execution and subsequent explanation could have been handled better by my 8 year old child.

[wyn1370]

They could have easily used a cartoon picture of a woman (think Erin Esurance) had that screen name pretend to be Audrey and no body would have cared. They could even have said that the voice was her, since they probably did pay for that.
But no, they had to be stupid about it and got caught. Own up, say sorry, move on. It's funny how many supporters say they don't care about being lied to. It may be a little lie, but it's still a lie. Once you're caught, own up to it or no one will ever believe anything you say without undeniable proof.

[snoopay700]

http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=2766369

In there people claim to know who she is, but that she isn't huge in the industry, anti SP people. Pretty much i guess she exists, just isn't that woman and isn't as important as she claimed.

[wyn1370]

I think you may have linked the wrong thread. I too have heard there is a girl at SP, that may have at one point used the username to post replies. But her name is not Audrey, and she is not the only one using the DLX Audrey account.
If anyone is interested, the Audrey username has been on PBN, just has not posted anything since this all blew up this morning.