dbrand is well-known for two things — creating device skins and using humor to maintain a lively presence on social media. Typically, its responses to customer feedback are light-hearted; however, it recently crossed the line by mocking a customer’s surname.
On April 8, Bhuwan Chitransh, a user based in India, tweeted about a Mac skin purchased from dbrand that was fading. Instead of providing a proper response, dbrand retweeted Bhuwan’s tweet with a derogatory comment about his surname. The retweet read “Your last name is basically shit rash, be serious,”.
Following this reply, dbrand received hate from users who found the response highly unprofessional, offensive, and racist. Bhuwan also expressed dissatisfaction with dbrand’s reply, stating that it reflected their invaluable perspective towards Indian customers.
Initially, dbrand thought that the situation would cool down, and it even mentioned that it would not apologize for the tweet. However, after receiving a significant amount of hate, dbrand issued an apology statement on X. The tweet read:
“Well that escalated quickly.
1. Yes – we made fun of a guy’s name. It was a huge fumble.
2. We apologized to him directly and offered him $10,000 as a gesture of goodwill.
3. We’ve been poking fun at customers on social media for over a decade now. We’re not going to stop, but maybe next time you’ll be the one who gets $10,000.”
While dbrand mentioned in the tweet that it made a mistake by making fun of Bhuwan’s surname, the company also mentioned that it is not going to stop doing this. This statement clearly shows that dbrand was not serious about the apology and it offered a $10,000 “bribe” to just close the matter.
Entrer, MKBHD
After compensating Bhuwan with $10,000 for the racist tweet, dbrand thought that the situation would cool down. However, the real twist was yet to come. Marques Brownlee, popularly known as MKBHD, came in support of Bhuwan and tweeted that he would not be working with dbrand until the company deleted the original tweet, in which it made fun of Bhuwan’s surname.
Following this tweet from MKBHD, dbrand immediately deleted the racist tweet and replied to MKBHD’s tweet that the team understood that the response was wrong and would be more careful about it going forward.
MKBHD thanked dbrand for the apology and mentioned that he had known the brand for a long time. It did not want to harm anyone’s emotions, but it somehow crossed the line this time.
