Jerry, your post here only serves to further exemplify the problem. You're looking at it from your perspective with no regard for his.
You yourself state that in your first response to him
The first time the customer emailed us we were half way through production on a lot of handles, and we were getting ready to have them polished, I responded to his email and told him as much. The polishing of that many handles takes a long time as they are all done buy hand on a lathe with 3 different grits of sand paper.
Then you state
The second email I got from him was a little irate in tone and I got the feeling that he felt we were trying to rip him off so I went further into the explanation about the stainless problem and offered him a full refund
YOU got the "feeling" that he felt you were trying to rip him off. He positively couldn't have posted to this board before you offered him a refund, as he wouldn't have known of your offer BEFORE he posted! When you got that "feeling", that should have been your clue that a communications breakdown had happened, and different measures should have been taken to ensure that your customer understood more fully what was happening, and shouldn't have ended until he realized the process that would ensue.
By your own admission, FIRST you tell him the item is being finished, SECOND, you tell him about problems getting the materials. How can you NOT understand why someone might view that as a "stalling" tactic and might be understandably peeved? Again, poor communication skills on both parts, his "irate tone" and your response.
in all honesty the only thing his post could ever accomplish is harming our good reputation in this industry, that was his only intention, lets call a spade a spade, what else was he hoping to accomplish, he was pissed and he lashed out in a public forum to harm us with bad intentions.
I find it crass and arrogant to think you can discern a person's motives regarding your company. Do you REALLY think that a message board peeing match is the way to promote the POSITIVE values of your company? Even you would be hard-pressed to say that he made no effort to resolve the issue with you. Two contacts between you two which failed to inform and calm a customer sufficiently about a purchase he was making with your company point to a communications failure on your part. There are companies out there that would KILL for TWO chances to turn a customer into a raving fan of their product and/or service. Remember, you're only as good as the worst impression of yourself.
One might ask a similar question regarding your actions towards his treatment of you. What did you hope to accomplish by treating him in the exact same fashion as he'd done to you? Were you looking to discredit him and his view, thereby removing the "bad press" he gave you? The general tone of EITHER of your posts, Jerry OR Christian, is leaving an "I'm right he's wrong, trash anyone who disagrees with us" taste in many mouths here about your view of your company.
I don't think there is one person in here that would run to help someone after they called you a jerk off and tried maliciously to interfere with your income stream.
I believe to kowtow to crash is wrong, however, I think the handling of his situation was YOUR mistake. This SHOULD have been handled privately. Now you have shown publicly that you have no problem with stooping to his level. That is hypocrisy in its highest form! Now, the only blame for "maliciously interfering with your income stream" is the way you are dealing with people who have a response to the situation It IS ok to "take a stand", but publicly pointing out your "stand", reduces it to GRANDstanding. You say you shouldn't have to "lay down and take it". You aren't laying down, you're standing up and, with both barrels, giving back that which you protest so much against. Your "stand" is a show of aggrandizement.
Your response needn't have included all the self-serving accolades if your company is as grand as you say it is. What IS needed is the realization that the attitude felt from your representatives in this and other threads are what the public are using to form an image of your company. On that point, YOU are the one doing the most harm to your company. I'm sure that there COULD be a list of complaints regarding your company, but that isn't necessary; you are here giving us what we need to know regarding your company.
I'd like to end with this:
we treat our customers like gold, unfortunately most of our customers are not in this forum, if they were they would post comments like I posted above.
I believe you have had more customers in this forum than you think. What I find hard to swallow is the line "unfortunately most of our customers are not in this forum". If you found it to be so unfortunate, why has this thread shown that statement to be so contrary? Please re-read the numerous postings
OTHER than crash's for a general feeling as to what I am speaking of. As an example, while self-serving, I will tell you that I thought long and hard, previewed AND edited my posts before posting them, so as not to side with one OR the other, as you are both wrong in this case. The LENGTHY post was dismissed with "YOUR entitled to YOUR opinion". As others have noted, they found the reply to be rude. I found it to be more than that, but again, illustrates why it almost CERTAINLY is the case that most of your customers are not in this forum.
I think I've been civil in this post and my other one, as I read Saint's statement before finishing this post. I feel this thread's value is comparable to a Consumer Reports article. One wouldn't know the bad AND the good regarding a product if all that was ever shown was the good. While I see worth in what SlikStick offers, there is also worth in how a company treats its present and future customers. In this case, I feel BOTH parties have failed to see the worth in dealing respectfully with others.