Beware of the Buzz

CompUSA learned the hard way.

Last week, Terry Heaton complained on his relatively large blog that the troubled retail chain sold him an empty box for $269. This is just the sort of juicy and strange tidbit bloggers love to buzz about. And sure enough, a day later, an even larger blog picked up the story, which earned the attention of true blog heavyweights like engadget and BoingBoing. Soon MSM took notice, capping off a true PR debacle. (Jackie Huba gives an excellent and detailed blow by blow of the events on her blog, Church of the Customer). In the end, CompUSA admitted defeat and sent along their apologies and a $300 gift certificate, which his step daughter Ashley gleefully cashed in for its intended purpose.

Now, it seems the easiest way to avoid a problem like this would be to not sell empty boxes in the first place. Of course, there is a valuable lesson here that should not be missed. No company can always avoid such mishaps, but they ALL can make sure to keep tabs on the blogosphere and nip this sort of thing in the bud before the resulting buzz leads to a nightmare scenario for company PR.

Just imagine what might have happened if CompUSA (presumably a tech savvy company) devoted a little effort to blog monitoring. Surely things would have been different if this was discovered on day one. It’s possible that more blogs would have picked up on the original post, but the blow would certainly have been cushioned had CompUSA quickly offered a refund and apology based on the initial post.

Does this mean that retailers ought to shell out $300 to every unhappy blogger with a case? Perhaps not, but clearly the cost of keeping tabs on the blogosphere pales in comparison to the cost of the negative PR that resulted in this instance.