Paid verification may make this kind of joke even worse.
Imagine leaving an honest comment about a company’s upcoming for sale event and getting a snarky reply back. And, when you call out their lack of professionalism, they double down on the rudeness and essentially tell you there’s nothing you can do about it.
That’s what happened to a woman, who shall remain anonymous, commenting on an official Harbor Freight post touting its upcoming President’s Day 20% off any one item sale.
When she left, an honest critique of the terms and conditions of the sale and how their associates misinterpret them. calling the sale a joke, what she thought was Harbor Freight replied back saying, “Your life is a joke.”
Here’s a screenshot of the in hindsight, kind of humorous but still pretty awful exchange below.
I, quite honestly, thought Harbor Freight really went off the rails and didn’t even consider someone would spoof the official H.F. account but, of course, it’s a thing.
Although I couldn’t find the original replies back (anon’s comments, however, are still up) I did do a quick public search for Harbor Freight accounts and lo and behold, not only was the old fake account gone (probably deleted) there’s a new profile created just a few hours ago (as of this blog post) ready to troll some H.F. customers.
While it’s rare for social media managers to decide they have nothing to lose and really let their fingers fly on the keyboard, replying to comments in the worst ways, it’s rare.
If you, like this commenter, come across a company replying to you extremely rudely or see it happening to someone else online, do yourself a favor click on the alleged official looking Facebook profile and see if it’s actually the official one.
Here’s what the official Harbor Freight Facebook profile looks like, the url after facebook.com/ is spelled correctly, they have actual posts with several fans who follow, and, they’re verified with a white checkmark with a blue circle next to their profile name (which, for right now, is something you can rely on.)
I say “right now” because, if you don’t already know, Facebook (aka Meta) is allowing anyone who pony’s up $12/month to buy verification.
So, 99 times out of 100, if you see an official company making a super rude comment, it’s probably some troll using an official looking Facebook profile to troll some people.
