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Vodafone Employee Gets Fired Over an (un)Funny Tweet.
Clearly companies are beginning to take their Twitter communication channel a little more seriously. For one Vodafone Hungary employee, Müller Tamás, this fact has left him stunned and unemployed.
It all began on Friday when T-Mobile had issues with its mobile network in Hungary. The Vodafone competitor was having trouble connecting phone calls and to keep its customers informed, decided to use Twitter.
The first tweet said
“Hungary´s T-Mobile network partly down, software to blame”
then another to calm some presumably furious customers saying:
“There will be an official statement (released) about the network problem. Please be patient!”
Tamas, as a member of Vodafone’s marketing staff responsible for the carrier’s Twitter messages, decided it would funny to retweet T-Mobiles tweet with a dash of humour to send it on its way.
The tweet is below, but its translation:
“OK, give us a ring! ;) RT @tmobilehungary There will be an official statement (released) about the network problem. Please be patient!”
Needless to say, Vodafone were not best pleased and quick to issue a statement of their own saying that Vodafone had nothing to do with this reply but it would gladly lend a helping hand to T-Mobile to fix its problem.
Vodafone didn’t leave it there either, the company announced that the Twitterer acted without authorisation and remark was inappropriate.
As such the company and Vodafone Hungary’s communications director, János Suba, would be taking the most severe action:
“The employee’s behaviour goes against fair competition and we decided the action called for sacking,”
Extreme or justified? Personally, the letters O T T come to mind.
(thanks Dniel Baranyi)
Discussion - 57 Comments/Pingbacks RSS feed for comments on this post
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It seems a bit humourless. That said – I hope Vodafone provided some editorial style training / guidelines for whoever was tweeting on their behalf, otherwise sacking him seems unfair. Invisible goalposts come to mind.
Surely at the end of the first para you mean “unemployed” rather than “employed”?
yep, thanks
It’s actually quite amusing. They should expect quid pro quo when their network goes down.
No need to fire the guy, but do set up a social media policy!
I guess that if the guy wouldn’t have been fired, this issue would never have gotten that much attention.
Making the guy apologise on Twitter as well would have seemed like a better solution, I mean, what’s the deal anyway?
It is humourless indeed. But now at least everyone knows about the tweet. Did Vodafone want that?
As someone who works in mobile telecoms (not for an operator though):
1. “Vodafone had nothing to do with this reply but it would gladly lend a helping hand to T-Mobile to fix its problem.”
– pigs will fly. Operator 1 would never “help” Operator 2.
2. Mobile ops operate (mostly) in a world of we don’t poke fun at competitors (except it seems in the US).
What the guy did was unprofessional, and stupid. Serves him right to be honest.
You’re absolutely right. If you take a look at the ORIGINAL source of information (http://www.portfolio.hu/en/cikkek.tdp?k=2&i=19101), it says “For all the obvious reasons, T-Mobile would never ever let Vodafone people even close to its network, let alone allow them to “help” fix it.”
it was a RT to the second tweet, so the exact translation: “OK, give us a ring! ;) RT @tmobilehungary There will be an official statement (released) about the network problem. Please be patient!”
“What the guy did was unprofessional, and stupid. Serves him right to be honest.”
No Bernard, it wasn’t. It was funny. Taking twitter seriously is one thing – and I think it is an important step.
That said, twitter isn’t a channel for politically correct marketing language… that is what the PR-stream on the website is for so that mere mortals can ignore it.
Vodafone just proved they are way behind the times.
So when companies make mistakes (like Vodafone did in this case) they, they should ignore it? Which is it? Take Twitter seriously, or not…
Yes Vodafone should have given employees guidelines on how they should use these services.
But seeing as this guy was from marketing, therefore he should have understood how to use Twitter. Essentially he and his marketing people, and I presume COMMs people would have been involved in writing these guidelines.
By his actions, he has shown that he did not understand how to communicate on the Internet.
His comment would have been acceptable if he made it from *his* own *personal* account, as he speaks for himself. Coming from the “official” account of a company, it is stupid.
I think you are way behind the times in understanding how MobOps work.
Anyway, I’m sure he has interviews lined up somewhere…
Do you realize you’re being this serious about being funny?
Companies still have to watch what they say and be responsible — Everything said through official channels is a statement by the corporation that reflects on its management and policies.
The implications of something like this in the corporate world are very different from smaller companies.
They shouldn’t have fired the guy just for this, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t screw up.
This is not Tamas http://twitter.com/muller . This is Tamas http://twitter.com/muellah
Being funny is soooo unprofesional????
Uptight boring people here.
Looks pretty clear to me that Vodafone was just looking to fire any one. It is easier this way and spare them money and time.
I think it was a f*cking good advertisement for Vodafone. Instead of firing the guy, they should have nudge him. The guy knew that this gonna be viral. My theory is that he just didn’t know that vodafone, t-mobile and pannon gsm has an agreement behind the scenes. Just sayin’.
To be correct:
Twitter link of the fired employee is:
http://twitter.com/muellah
The person who You want to thank must be
Dániel Baranyi or Daniel, if Your charset doesn’t support the á letter.
I think firing the guy was the last thing they should have done. This was completely in keeping with the spirit of Twitter. It’s not meant to be a formal means of communication and this was a great way for people to see Vodafone’s Tweet and say, “Oh hey. Vodafone isn’t down. Their network must be better.”
Now, though, Vodafone is the last company I’d want to give my money to or get service with, since it’s obviously run by douche bags and pricks.
Firing the guy was a total overreaction by Vodafone. If that’s not what they their employees to do on Twitter, then fine, give him a slap on the wrist. Give him some guidelines, even tell him he’s not allowed to tweet anything about Vodafone from now on, but to fire a guy over that. Ridiculous!
Fan page of “Ok, give us a ring” on Facebook http://bit.ly/5oAqHV
It would have been really nice (ethical?) if you named your source…(http://www.portfolio.hu/en/cikkek.tdp?k=2&i=19101)
wasn’t our source actually, i thanked our source at the bottom
then your source “forgot” to name his source…
the result’s the same
Dumb move by Vodafone. Tweets are in the public domain and if T-Mobile are going down this route for the cust serv then what Vodafone did to their tweet was fair game; it wasn’t even libellous – simply a call to action (i.e. good counter marketing).
I doubt an eyelid would have been battered if this happened in the U.S. It likely would have been an advertisement in a newspaper.
Talk about Vodafone shooting themselves in the foot.
Looks like the wrong Vodafone employee was fired….
DJF
Marketing people at Vodafone Hun are a bunch of stuckup douches. Right now I’m considering changing my provider and my business’s provider (8 numbers) because of their stupid move to fire a guy who made the first good use of Twitter in Hungarian PR history. Problem is I obviously can’t go to T-Mobile (they go down) and the other provider availbel in Hungary Pannon is unreliable and change prices all the time.
“Problem is I obviously can’t go to T-Mobile (they go down)”
– this comment doesn’t make sense. Do you think that any mobile network has 100% uptime?
I would not be making a decision on changing mobile operators based on this twitter-yawnstorm.
It is indeed a move by Vodafone to accrue mileage over the employees comment. The failure of competitor has been highlighted because the employee was sacked. From marketing approach this is a brilliant coup to put down T-mobile but Vodafone’s ethics is questionable.
Wow, thats pretty messed up dude!
RT
http://www.online-privacy.th.tc
Her’s my 2p:
It was smart, cheeky & funny. It just wasn’t Vodafone.
I think a lot of commenters haven’t realized that, for the folloers of the Hungarian Vodafone a/c, the statement came FROM Vodafone.
Here’s how the scenario would have panned out if Vodafone had NOT fired the employee:
1. T-Mobile (Hungary) sues Vodafone (their lawyers would find a way to do it, I’m sure)
2. Vodafone would file a counter claim (their lawyers would find a way, too)
3. T-Mobile would issue ads in the newspaper about how their tweets are ‘5x professional than the Vodafone tweets’
4. Now it becomes Vodafone’s turn to sue T-Mobile & issue counter-ads.
5. T-Mobile responds with more ads & NOW the issue finally becomes a talking point in the Social Media.
Oh, wait. That’s what happened her. Only, quicker. :P
I think it’s good that Vodafone are taking their online reputation so seriously – a lot of companies don’t and although it seems like a harmless comment it could have done them serious damage.
Also, staff should be issued with guidelines so they know exactly what they can and can’t say
oh, and zee (the blogger), you might want to fix the link to the incorrect twitter account.
a commenter above, has already given you the correct link.
what competition law does it go against? furthermore, vodaphone should be happy they have a competitive employee on their team and use that to their advantage. i think the vodaphone employee found vodaphone’s new slogan,”tired of your service going down? give us a ring.”
If this guy broke Company policy then ok fire his arse. But I suspect this is not the case. As such, I think their actions are draconian and send the wrong message to both customers and employees.
The tweet, it’s funny, but it didn’t belong on Vodafone_HU’s account. That’s probably why he got fired.
This incident will forever be held up as an example of how a big corporate just doesn’t get the new rules in an open, always on, and connected digital world.
Anyway, if you use gerilla marketing and use Twitter or Facebook or anything else which was not designed for multinational companies, you must accomodate yourself to your environment. Actually it was funny and that’s about it. Politicians, washing powder marketingers and lawyers should avoid these forums. That’s my personal point of view ;)
lol this is helarious and he should have got fired the greedy bastard
he should have got fired because he is a twat for having twitter
gay
I thought the tweet was hilarious
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