Hellbent
Omnipotent
Some years ago I was helping a great friend of mine with his motorcycle business. I would go down whenever I wasn't busy with my business and give him a hand. It was my hobby...we were both passionate about it....it was a lot of fun. One day I sold a guy a high end motorcycle. He loved the thing...was giddy like a little kid when he left...it was the perfect sale. He was happy...we were happy. He brought the bike back to the shop a couple months later with a blown engine. He claimed he was just riding down the road and it just quit running and he wanted us to warranty the repairs. We were happy to help him out. Truth be told we relied on warranty work as a source of income for the shop. Without it we wouldn't have been able to keep our shop staffed. Upon further investigation it was blatantly obvious that he had tampered with the engine and the modifications he made caused the failure. Had he been forthcoming with that information and not forced us to spend many hours diagnosing the problem and it's cause, we probably would have been willing to help the guy out. But...since he wasn't honest about it and wasted a LOT of our time and money, I told him 'Sorry...but your modifications voided the warranty. You'll have to pay for the repairs.' He left the shop with the bike and that was that.
Several days later I get a call from a friend telling me to check out a popular motorcycle website. This customer decided to 'discuss' his situation there. Unfortunately for us, he neglected to include all of the details. He decided not to mention the modifications that he made....or the lack of ensuing honesty regarding those modifications. The numerous threads that had been started by that time were littered with negative comments about the shop from people we had never met or done business with. I had no idea who they were...but now thanks to these threads, everyone and their brother knew who we were. Any effort I made at that point to defend our reputation was pointless. It was just met with more speculation, attacks and negative opinions. We had become the 'big bad motorcycle dealer'. As a direct result of that internet activity we had several customers cancel orders on some very expensive bikes and demand refunds on their deposits. It was money the business had already spent. Combined with a few other circumstances, mostly to do with the poor economy and inability to secure adequate business credit at the time, my good friend was forced to close the shop. That entire sequence of events can be traced directly back to some threads on a message board. Then came the lawsuits...personal, vendors, state, federal, etc. Bankruptcy was the only option at that point.
We hadn't done anything wrong. Had the guy been honest with us about the situation there would have been a completely different outcome. But....no one reading those threads on that website cared how great we were. None of them cared how much passion we had for the hobby....how, if we actually added up the hours spent making a project 'just right', we never actually made money on a job. It didn't matter. It wasn't their business. It wasn't their reputation. It wasn't their family's income.
I felt horrible. I sold the guy the bike. My friend never once blamed me for the results of that sale. He's one of those friend's you don't deserve to have. But none of those keyboard warrior's knew that about him. They were just killing time at work....just like I am now. Both my friend's personal life and mine took dramatic downward spirals during that time. It took years for the two of us to recover...emotionally more than anything else. You could probably make the argument that neither of us really have recovered. I can promise you neither of us will ever be quite so passionate about our business again. We're both a lot more numb these days. It wasn't all a direct result of that unfortunate business dealing and subsequent internet experience....but that situation certainly didn't help...for either of us.
Take caution when you create or comment on such threads. What seems sensible in the heat of the moment may have real-life, bad consequences for good people somewhere.
Several days later I get a call from a friend telling me to check out a popular motorcycle website. This customer decided to 'discuss' his situation there. Unfortunately for us, he neglected to include all of the details. He decided not to mention the modifications that he made....or the lack of ensuing honesty regarding those modifications. The numerous threads that had been started by that time were littered with negative comments about the shop from people we had never met or done business with. I had no idea who they were...but now thanks to these threads, everyone and their brother knew who we were. Any effort I made at that point to defend our reputation was pointless. It was just met with more speculation, attacks and negative opinions. We had become the 'big bad motorcycle dealer'. As a direct result of that internet activity we had several customers cancel orders on some very expensive bikes and demand refunds on their deposits. It was money the business had already spent. Combined with a few other circumstances, mostly to do with the poor economy and inability to secure adequate business credit at the time, my good friend was forced to close the shop. That entire sequence of events can be traced directly back to some threads on a message board. Then came the lawsuits...personal, vendors, state, federal, etc. Bankruptcy was the only option at that point.
We hadn't done anything wrong. Had the guy been honest with us about the situation there would have been a completely different outcome. But....no one reading those threads on that website cared how great we were. None of them cared how much passion we had for the hobby....how, if we actually added up the hours spent making a project 'just right', we never actually made money on a job. It didn't matter. It wasn't their business. It wasn't their reputation. It wasn't their family's income.
I felt horrible. I sold the guy the bike. My friend never once blamed me for the results of that sale. He's one of those friend's you don't deserve to have. But none of those keyboard warrior's knew that about him. They were just killing time at work....just like I am now. Both my friend's personal life and mine took dramatic downward spirals during that time. It took years for the two of us to recover...emotionally more than anything else. You could probably make the argument that neither of us really have recovered. I can promise you neither of us will ever be quite so passionate about our business again. We're both a lot more numb these days. It wasn't all a direct result of that unfortunate business dealing and subsequent internet experience....but that situation certainly didn't help...for either of us.
Take caution when you create or comment on such threads. What seems sensible in the heat of the moment may have real-life, bad consequences for good people somewhere.
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