Elance.com CEO referring to me as 'jerk' on support ticket

I know this is hard to believe but this happened a few hours ago.

I was talking to Elance.com support on email and copied their CEO (Fabio Rosati) on email (found his email address on Google) as I hoped he would be able to help me out.

  
Next day, I get an email with a support ticket update. This is what Elance CEO had to write

 

The actual image of the email is here:
http://reddit.com/tb/j99wg

Most likely, he didn't realize that he was replying to the support ticket and I will get a copy too. But for a CEO of a professional services company, this is very inappropriate to use these words on email regardless of circumstances.

What are my legal options? Any advice will be great.

Thanks 

 

You have no legal options. He's entitled to his opinion.

 

So somebody called you a jerk. You need legal options to know what to do? Get a thicker skin.

 

There is no legal recourse.
However, here are the two most damaging things you can do to the company:
1. Give that email as much publicity as possible. If it goes viral, Elance could lose significant revenue as a result of lost business.
2. Bring your business elsewhere. There is no reason to continue doing business with a company that has poor/rude customer service.

 

Get a life man... Legal options? Why do u have to make money out of sewing other people of their opinions.

 

You know what? He's right, you are a jerk.

He shouldn't have said it, but your immediate reaction is LEGAL ACTION!!!! LETS SUE!!! Dude what the f*ck?!  Get real. 

Take me to court if you're not happy about my opinion either. 

I'm sorry if you find this offensive but seriously, people looking for any excuse to take legal action are just drama-queens looking for attention and fuss over nothing.  Elance.com CEO is unprofessional and opinionated. That's not a crime. 

 

I absolutely agree to everything you said

Let me clarify - I am not out there to get money from anyone or create a drama. I have no issues you calling me anything because it is a different context.

I just don't feel that it is right for a company to refer to its client in this manner - I am pretty sure he was unaware that I was going to get his message. 

Though I believe Elance has caused me financial loss and they may or may not agree but nothing justifies someone or I being called so unprofessionally.

If he had some courtesy, he would have called and apologized - this is all it takes.

Thanks 

 

Elance is one of the best freelance sites out there and rips us off the least of all of them.  I would take him calling you a jerk as a compliment and then enjoy all the snarky comments people post on reddit about the email.

 

I don't necessarily disagree that Elance is a great plateform

Without knowing the circumstances or the situation, how could you assume that his comment was justified? 

Honestly, just put yourself in my shoes? Would you take any customer service abuse at you or anyone close to you as compliment? 

Think about it. 

 

Thanks lithicstudios for good advice.

I agree - it would be no point giving anymore business to Elance after this experience. 

I don't really want them to loose business. There are thousands of people who earn their livelihood from Elance but I think Elance has a responsibility to those people and if they kept acting like this or have this culture in the company where a CEO refers to a customer as a jerk on email to his staff, sooner or later they will start driving buyers away. 

 

 

Very simple solution send him an email back explaining that he sent you the email also explain how you are very dissatisfied with his remarks and feel you are not a valued customer. IF he is a decent CEO he will strive to ammend his actions.

On another note there are legal standings as such this could be classed as slander and demeaning to yourself (would be hard to prove though). You could also argue the part that he could have known he was also responding to you.

BUT in my opinion you should just message him back in a polite manner let him know he sent it to you (so he doesent make this mistake again) and IF you where being a jerk then accept what he says and learn from the experience.

Depending on the reasons behind his remarks you could have disrespected him by what you origionally sent in the email. Without knowing the full story we couldnt be of much help.

 

Thanks Damien.

This is the sort of advice I was looking for.

I did send him an email asking for an apology so he knows that I have actually received his remarks.

A little background: I was emailing their customer service back and forth with no success so I found his email address from Google and copied him. Until this stage, he was not involved in the whole issue.

Apparently, he looked at that email on his smartphone (and without knowing the full context of the conversation), he replied to his customer service guy referring to me as a jerk. He was not part of the conversation until that point as I had not emailed him previously. Now I am really convinced that he didn't realize that by replying to the email, he was adding to the support ticket or not just replying to his staff. The support ticket number was in the subject and their system was probably configured to pick up the email and add it to the ticket.  Now I don't know if it was wrong to include him on the email but his information was publicly available and the world knows that Fabio Rosati is Elance CEO so I don't think that qualified me to be called a 'jerk'.

Thanks Damien for your candid advice again. 

 

Simples.

Option 1: Sue him. Start Blog with adsense. Make money from blog while case ongoing. Lose case. Get rich from media coverage and interviews. Fade from public view after one week. Attempt to rebuilt life. Slowly regret making such a big deal of it as everyone only knows you as the guy that sued over the jerk comment.

Option 2: Take your business elsewhere.

Option 3: Email him back with all the rude words you can think of. Ask him how he feels now that the shoe is on the other foot. End up best of friends.

 

I would forget about the whole lawsuit deal since the guy probably has quite a nice legal team and just rain hell over the subject . Yes everyone is entitled to an opinion but also everyone is responsible for their opinions . For example if your opinion is that a certain race is composed out of worthless thieves that makes you a racist and you are responsible in the a court of law . I would just go public with this and let everyone know what a nice person he is .

 

he just did that. 

 

On just one forum with some nonimpressive words , if he wrote a tabloid like article and went viral with it that would mean going public with it .

 

I can see the headlines now. 'Person uses rude word'

Bound to go viral with a bullet. 

 

What about "Elance CEO Insults Faithful Customer"? Or "Insulting CEO at Elance: The Horror"?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion as a right, as long as you are not violating someone else's rights. That being said, they probably have a legal team behind them, so the smartest thing to do would be to publicize it like crazy, and they will probably make amends if it damages their company too much.

 

Honestly could not have said it better.

 

How about "Elance's CEO abuses customers" ? And that can be inflated even more .