Some people have nothing better to do
So I launched a new Broadband Providers site a couple of weeks ago. Then the other day I had a voice message on my answering machine from some guy who was clearly irate about something. The message went something like this…
This is Mr. Meldrew (not his real name but he did sound like him) and I’ve been on your broadband site and there is a mistake. Call me back on this number, which you can only use for the purpose for returning my call, and nothing else within 2 hours or I will call the Advertising Standards Authority with my complaint.
So I called him back after 3 hours had passed 
and it turns out we had inadvertently displayed an incorrect price for one of the packages from a broadband provider we feature. And since it was after my 2 hour deadline he had already rang the ASA.
I always find the best way to deal with these morons is to be extra polite and courteous. So I politely thanked him for pointing out our genuine error and assured him it would be corrected in 5 minutes. It was. That seemed to take the wind out of his sails and funnily enough he wasn’t such a blowhard from that point on.
So the moral of the story is to check the details. Everyone makes mistakes now and again and unfortunately there is always someone out there who has nothing better to do with their time than to look for them.
What I’m listening to right now: Joe - “Ain’t nothin’ like me”
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
New reader.
Hey im a new reader to your blog and i think it’s great. Not to ‘news’ orientated and is personal with a web related side - not sure how i found it, i think it had something to do with ukoffers.co.uk (i’m only joking .com ;p)
Did you purposely wait 3hours to phone back? and what will the ASA do to you?
April 24th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Yes, I purposely waited 3 hours to phone back. I don’t like been threatened so wanted to see how he reacted.
The ASA can’t do anything, it was a genuine mistake and I corrected it immediately. I’ve dealt with them before and they are reasonable people.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Not only that, but the ASA probably wouldn’t have covered Mr Blowhard’s complaint: http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/about/Guided+Tours/Consumers/What+types+of+ads+and+promotions+does+the+ASA+look+into.htm
April 25th, 2007 at 8:00 am
That happened to me once with an Ink Cartridge site of mine. Some delightful web user reported me to Trading Standards for a slight mis-wording about prices (and they sent me a big letter about it). I was only a newbie at the time, its enough to put you off!
April 25th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
We get a few of these conversations about our freebie site -
“Please contact me immediately and tell me who gave you authorization to link to our website” etc
Erm… It’s on a publicly accessible website, we don’t need permission to link to you.
I agree though. I always write back a very polite reply, stating that I’ve removed the link, and that if they’d like some free advertising and traffic in the future, please contact me. They’re usually not quite so aggressive in their reply then
BTW cool blog, keep it up. I should post something to mine one day!