The Dark Side of
Online Dispensing
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Jim Magay |
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Back when everything on the net was through dial up connections we bought a ham for Christmas from a Smithfield Virginia Ham purveyor. Everyone at our holiday gathering was floored that we could do something like that! (The ham was terrific).
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Now I watch my nieces and nephews on their smartphones, iPads, Droids, etc. navigating their way through life ordering movie tickets, checking restaurant reviews, getting directions, finding out who is going to the pub tonight, and a myriad of other activities that would tax Dick Tracy’s wrist phone.
The connections on the Internet are truly impressive, but there is a dark side to this lovely picture. Stalkers, child molesters, cyber bullies, identity thieves, and eyeglass frame vendors!
Wait, what?
Yes, the New York Times has done a major story about Vitaly Borker, a Brooklyn resident who has a web store called DecorMyEyes. Mr. Borker has discovered a unique way to claw his way to the top of the Google rankings when folks are looking for an eyeglass frame online.
His technique flies in the face of everything most of us have learned about customer service. This is a guy who threatens customers, uses false names, has made up “enforcer” pseudonyms that would scare Tony Soprano, sends pictures of their houses to them with a not too veiled threat that “he knows where you live” and; quoting from the NYT article, “’Listen, bitch, I know your address. I’m one bridge over — a reference, it turned out, to the company’s office in Brooklyn. Then, she said, he threatened to find her and commit an act of sexual violence too graphic to describe in a newspaper.’”
He dotes on terrible reviews, the more bad reviews the higher he climbs on the Google rankings. From the NYT again: “Borker says that selling on the Internet attracts a new horde of potential customers every day. For the most part, they don’t know anything about DecorMyEyes, and the ones who bother to research the company – well, he says he doesn’t want their money.”
If you read consumer reviews he would rather you shop elsewhere.
A website called Get Satisfaction attempted to mediate on behalf of Borker’s unhappy customers. They wrote, “We’d like to talk to you; we should take a proactive approach.” His reply was a photograph of himself raising his middle finger.
This rudeness is key to the story; Borker stumbled upon the upside to it by accident. When he lost patience with customers and started telling them off in blunt terms – his Google search rank improved. The more online chatter about his appalling ways, the better his search engine rank.
How does he get away with it? Easily apparently. The Internet and the companies we deal with on it are still feeling their way along in these dark and seamy corners. Some day an order will be established but for the meantime caveat emptor!
At this point I must make a strong point that we should be emphasizing to our customers (patients, clients, whatever) how important it is for them to BUY LOCAL!
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