Quote:
Originally Posted by odiakkoh
I do think its ridiculous to call people trolls just because they have a POV that they feel strongly about. Now if he was going out of his way to search for these threads I'd agree about the trollish thing.
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I sense I'm going to regret this but since the moderators aren't cleaning up this side show (I've alerted them twice), I'll bite. I agree that it's ridiculous to label people simply for offering a different opinion, and that is not why I said what I did.
In my original post I gave a story as context and then asked which retailers offer discounts, as those are the ones I would like to frequent. I wasn't seeking solace, or advice on how to extract a refund from Kobo (which I got without particular difficulty, BTW), or whether it was appropriate of me to expect one. Rather than answering my reasonable question, he chose to make a provocative and irrelevant statement.
It's irrelevant because it's not related to what I asked: I was looking for advice on where to shop *in the future.* Rather than allowing the discussion to flow towards which retailers offer discounts, it diverts things to whether or not I am taking responsibility for my actions.
It's provocative partly because its blunt phrasing is an attack designed to provoke an emotional response. It does so because entices me to defend myself and my "mistake." In addition, it seems clear to everyone else that I was simply expecting the level of service found in most other on-line retailers and B&M stores. Assisting a customer in instances such as this is just good customer service: common sense for the retailer because it keeps customers coming back. This is so obvious it hardly needs to be said. So his comment was also provocative in that it ignores this.
Finally, searching through his previous posts immediately revealed a similar comment in response to another poster who was trying to get a refund from Kobo. So what sort of person repeatedly posts inflammatory, irrelevant, messages to online fora with the (apparent) intent of provoking an emotional response? So I called a spade, a spade. So now he's largely succeeded in diverting the thread into a discussion of my character, which apparently is of great interest to him. *sigh*