Hacker News Reader

Comment by wombatpm | Hacker News Reader

Yeah don’t forget the bad words filter. I worked on an IKEA mailing where the list processing house was adding an autogenerated discount code to the address label. The customers received codes with BOOB, DICK, TWAT, and CUNT embedded within. People were not happy.

View on HN

Did they never make an IKEA purchase after that or did they get over it like a normal adult?

I don't work retail, but something tells me people will make a stink out of just about anything if it meant potentially free products or other compensation.

Plus, are you filtering just English curse words or all curse words for countries that use Latin characters?

The risk is not in offending someone, but in that someone posting the rude string on social media in real or mock indignation, causing the outrage machine to turn on your brand. There’s a steady supply of bottom-feeding journalists waiting to write the article “IKEA’s new system is sending hate messages to customers”.

Can you cite an example of a journalist writing an article that makes such an accusation?

We caught it about 2 million into a 15 million print run. I had to go through the control files and change the offending value or identify the pallet and bundle of mail it was in so we could remove and readdress the catalog. It was about 10 years ago and anyone who complained got a coupon.

The mailing house that did the work was fired though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com