The Customer Isn’t Always Right: 5 Times the Public Got It Completely Wrong

(Plus 5 Honourable Mentions)

“The customer is always right.”

It’s one of those phrases that sounds brilliant on a motivational poster, right up until you’re dealing with a queue of furious adults arguing over a chicken sandwich like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon.

Most of the time, customers are right – or at least they’re right to have opinions, expectations, and the occasional emotional wobble when something goes wrong. But every now and then, we get moments where the customer isn’t just slightly mistaken… they’re collectively, spectacularly, headline-grabbingly wrong.

And from a marketing perspective, these moments are fascinating because they reveal something important:

People don’t buy products rationally – and they don’t react rationally either.

They react through emotion, identity, group behaviour, and whatever nonsense has gone viral in the last 48 hours.

So here’s a countdown of the top five times the customer wasn’t right, framed through the lens of marketing, PR, and brand response.

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5) Starbucks and the “War on Christmas” Cup Panic (2015)

In 2015, Starbucks released a simple red holiday cup. No snowflakes. No reindeer. No Christmas trees. Just red.

Which, in most workplaces, would be described as “clean” and “minimalist”.

On the internet, however, it became a symbol of cultural collapse.

A loud group of customers claimed Starbucks was waging a “War on Christmas” and deliberately removing Christianity from the festive season. This wasn’t a niche complaint either – it spread quickly across social media and news outlets, creating a full-blown outrage cycle over what was essentially… a cup that didn’t have a cartoon bauble on it.

Starbucks didn’t throw fuel on the fire. It calmly explained the design was meant to be welcoming and open to interpretation, and carried on selling Christmas products like it always had. The controversy eventually fizzled out, but not before giving the world a marketing lesson that still holds true today.

Sometimes the customer isn’t reacting to your product.

They’re reacting to what they think your product represents.

If you want more on the saga, check out my article on Christmas Controversies.

Marketing lesson: Brand meaning isn’t always what you say it is – it’s what people decide it is.

4) KFC UK’s Chicken Shortage (2018) – and People Calling the Police

In early 2018, KFC experienced one of the most British crises imaginable.

A chicken shop ran out of chicken.

Due to a logistics change, hundreds of KFC stores across the UK had to close temporarily, leaving customers wandering into empty restaurants like survivors emerging from a bunker.

But instead of accepting this mild inconvenience and going somewhere else like a normal person, some customers went straight to the emergency services.

Yes – there were reports of people calling the police because KFC had no chicken.

This is one of those moments where you realise “the customer is always right” was never designed to cover the modern era.

To KFC’s credit, the brand response was outstanding. They ran a now-famous apology ad rearranging their logo to spell “FCK” on an empty bucket, paired with a genuinely human apology. It was funny, humble, and direct – which is basically the holy trinity of crisis comms.

It’s still widely referenced as a case study in turning a disaster into brand equity, including my article as an introduction to PR.

Marketing lesson: If you’ve messed up, the fastest way out is through honesty – ideally with a bit of humour.

3) Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Mania (2019) – When Demand Turns Into Chaos

When Popeyes launched its chicken sandwich in 2019, it didn’t just create a popular menu item.

It created an event.

The sandwich went viral, queues exploded, and stores ran out of stock. That’s normally a dream scenario for marketers – scarcity, hype, word-of-mouth, earned media, the lot.

But then it crossed the line from excitement into disorder.

There were reports of fights, aggression, and even weapons being pulled on staff in disputes over availability. Most tragically, there was a fatal stabbing linked to an argument over queue cutting when the sandwich returned later in the year.

You can’t “brand” your way out of that.

The story became part of the wider coverage around the sandwich frenzy, including lists of incidents such as the violence linked to the Popeyes chicken sandwich craze.

Popeyes didn’t create the violence, of course – but the situation exposed something brands sometimes forget:

Viral success isn’t always a controlled environment.

Sometimes it’s a match thrown into dry grass.

Marketing lesson: If you create a frenzy, you need operational readiness – because the crowd will always arrive before the spreadsheets catch up.

2) The Great Toilet Roll Panic (2020) – Herd Behaviour in the Wild

The early days of COVID-19 created plenty of uncertainty, but one collective decision stood out as both hilarious and bleak:

People started panic-buying toilet paper like civilisation was about to be rebuilt using Andrex rolls as currency.

Across the world, shelves were emptied. Supermarkets introduced limits. Photos of overflowing trolleys went viral. There were even reports of physical altercations in stores.

What makes this fascinating isn’t the toilet roll itself.

It’s that it wasn’t driven by logic.

Supply chains weren’t collapsing. There wasn’t an actual global shortage. But people saw other people panic-buying… and joined in. It was social proof at its most chaotic, amplified by fear and repetition.

The visual documentation of this behaviour is well recorded, including reporting like how the world rushed to panic buy toilet paper during COVID-19.

This is marketing psychology in its rawest form: people copying the crowd because the crowd feels safer than thinking alone.

Marketing lesson: Consumers don’t just respond to brands – they respond to other consumers.

Honourable Mentions

The “Glass in the Food” Scam (UK, 2025)

A couple allegedly planted glass in a meal to avoid paying – CCTV reportedly suggested otherwise.
Lesson: Some complaints aren’t feedback. They’re attempted fraud.

The McDonald’s “Pig” Cup Hoax (US, 2019)

A customer (who also happened to be a policeman) claimed an insult was written on his cup – footage suggested he wrote it himself.
Lesson: Evidence beats outrage. Every time.

The $54 Million “Lost Trousers” Lawsuit (US, 2005–2007)

A man sued a dry cleaner for millions over missing trousers, using “Satisfaction Guaranteed” as justification.
Lesson: Your wording matters – because someone will take it literally and weaponise it.

The Influencer Freebie Backfire (Ireland, 2018)

A blogger asked for a free stay “for exposure”. The owner posted the email publicly. Chaos followed.
Lesson: Not every customer is a customer – some are just a pitch in human form.

The Szechuan Sauce Madness (US, 2017)

Limited edition sauce. Huge queues. Police dispersing crowds. All over dip.
Lesson: Scarcity marketing works… until it turns into a small riot.

1) Wayfair and the Conspiracy That Became a Brand Crisis (2020)

If you want the clearest modern example of “the customer wasn’t right”, it’s this one – because it wasn’t just irrational.

It was dangerous.

In 2020, Wayfair was hit by a viral conspiracy theory claiming the company was involved in child trafficking. The “evidence” was based on expensive industrial cabinets and product listings that shared names similar to names found elsewhere online.

It spread fast. Millions of people saw it. Many believed it. And Wayfair became the target of serious accusations, despite there being no credible evidence.

Wayfair denied the claims, explained the pricing and product naming, and removed or clarified listings to reduce confusion. But the damage wasn’t just commercial – misinformation like this creates real-world consequences, from harassment to threats, and it forces brands into a defensive posture against something they didn’t do.

This event has been widely discussed as part of the wider misinformation environment of that period, including in documented summaries of the backlash such as the Wayfair conspiracy theory.

Marketing lesson: In the internet age, you can be innocent and still face a crisis – because belief spreads faster than proof.

TL;DR (Summary)

“The customer is always right” is useful as a mindset – but it’s not reality.

Sometimes the customer is wrong because they’ve misunderstood the brand.
Sometimes they’re wrong because they’ve followed the herd.
Sometimes they’re wrong because they’ve been whipped into outrage by a viral narrative.
And sometimes… they’re wrong because they’re behaving like absolute lunatics over poultry.

The marketing lesson isn’t “ignore customers”.

It’s to recognise that customers are human – and humans are emotional, tribal, and occasionally one missing drumstick away from losing the plot.