Here's a story about a company that had a small, easily fixable problem, and instead of fixing it, decided to mock a paying customer on the internet. It did not go well for them.
In August 2026, furniture brand Lovesac took a fairly ordinary customer complaint and, through a series of decisions that seemed to get worse each day, turned it into a national news story about corporate arrogance. If you work in comms, marketing, or you're just the person who ends up running your company's Instagram account, this one is worth studying closely. It's got everything: a viral video, a CEO who couldn't resist getting personal, a public joke about gardening gloves that spiraled into accusations of sexism, and an apology video that never actually said the word "sorry."
So what actually happened
Deric Cahill is a comedian and content creator based in Dallas with a decent-sized following. On August 17, he posted a video about the new couch he'd just bought from Lovesac, a "Sactional," which is their name for a modular sectional. The couch showed up in around two dozen boxes. Cahill, wearing small gardening gloves to protect his hands while he stuffed foam inserts into fabric covers for what was probably hours, called the whole process "corporate terrorism." It was crude, it was funny, and it was true. The video took off, eventually pulling in over 13 million views, because pretty much anyone who has ever assembled flat-pack furniture immediately understood the joke.
This is the part of the story where a company is supposed to do the boring, correct thing: acknowledge the feedback, maybe send a discount code, and quietly go work on a better unboxing experience.
Lovesac did not do the boring, correct thing.
The very next day, August 18, CEO Shawn Nelson posted his own public video responding to Cahill directly, joking about the small gloves Cahill had used and saying the company's "attorneys" had reviewed the situation and determined Cahill deserved compensation: a pair of small floral print gardening gloves for his soft hands. A public rebuttal from the founder, aimed at a customer who had just paid several thousand dollars for a couch he was struggling to assemble.
If that had been the end of it, this would already be a solid case study in what not to do. It was not the end of it.
The following day, August 19, Lovesac's official brand account posted its own follow-up video, showing a woman assembling the same couch by herself with no trouble, captioned with a line about "the feminine urge to provide the masculine energy."
Instead of addressing the complaint and taking it in stride, they went on the attack and implied that a customer wasn't man enough to put together his own couch.
The backlash was fast, and it made sense
What Lovesac probably thought would read as playful banter instead read as a company mocking someone for pointing out a real problem with their product, and doing it with a cheap gender joke on top. The story picked up coverage from Fast Company, Inc., and PR trade publications, and the narrative shifted almost overnight from "funny couch video" to "furniture brand bullies its own customer."
Three days after the brand's mocking video, on August 22, Nelson posted an apology video. Except it wasn't really an apology, at least not in the way anyone would recognize one. Commenters quickly pointed out that Nelson never once said the words "I'm sorry" or "apologize" anywhere in it. He'd found a way to make a video about the controversy without actually issuing one of the two sentences everyone was waiting to hear.
And the mocking video itself? It's still up. Lovesac never took it down. Buried in the comments, not pinned, sits a follow-up note from the brand: "We're not comedians after all. This was in poor taste. We would take it down but that would just be hiding from it. We've heard everyone's feedback and will do better next time." It's a strange kind of half-accountability: acknowledging the post was a mistake while leaving it live for anyone still finding their way to it.
Why this went so wrong, step by step
They treated a complaint like it was content. Cahill wasn't attacking the brand. He was describing a real experience that a lot of other Lovesac customers had quietly been living through too. One PR analyst summed it up well, saying Lovesac tried to turn his legitimate concerns into content, and when that didn't land, they belittled him with tired sexist jokes instead. The company saw a viral moment and reached for a punchline instead of a fix.
The CEO went public before anyone thought it through. Nelson didn't route this through a comms team, and he didn't even keep it private. He responded to a customer's complaint about his own company, in public, as the founder, with a joke about the customer's hands being too small. Jokes like that can work fine between two friends. They read completely differently coming from the person who runs the company that made the customer's life difficult in the first place. It looked like the CEO saw the video, took it personally, and made a snarky retort.
They punched down, then did it again. There's a real difference between laughing with a customer and laughing at one. Cahill's complaint wasn't unreasonable, and plenty of other people, including at least one delivery driver who chimed in about how much everyone hated hauling these boxes, backed him up. Lovesac had one chance to walk it back after the CEO's video. Instead, the brand account doubled down with an even worse joke the very next day.
The gender joke made everything worse. The "masculine energy" line didn't just fail to be funny. It gave critics a second, more serious reason to be angry, on top of the original complaint. Instead of one story about bad customer service, Lovesac now had two stories running at once, and the second one was arguably worse than the first.
The apology wasn't actually an apology. Waiting three days to respond is already a problem. Using that time to produce a video that carefully avoids saying "sorry" is worse. Audiences can tell the difference between someone taking responsibility and someone performing the shape of taking responsibility. Commenters noticed immediately, and calling it out became its own small wave of criticism.
They left the evidence up. Leaving the mocking video live, with an unpinned comment admitting it was in poor taste, sends a mixed message. It reads less like "we own this mistake" and more like "we know this was bad, but we'd also rather not deal with the awkwardness of a takedown." Either commit to standing behind a post or take it down. Doing neither satisfies no one.
What comms teams should take from this
Check whether there's a real problem hiding inside the joke before you respond to anything viral. If a customer complaint is going viral because it's true, the fix is to fix it, not to out-joke them.
Keep executives off the front line during a live situation, or at least make sure someone has thought through how it reads before it goes out. A CEO responding publicly to a customer complaint can be a great look or a disaster, and the difference usually comes down to whether anyone stopped him first.
Nobody wants your brand to be funny at their expense. Humor works as a garnish on top of an apology or a fix. It does not work as a replacement for either one.
Be extremely careful about what you're actually joking about. A joke about your product is fine. A joke about the customer's competence, their gender, or their body is not a brand joke anymore. It's a personal one, made from an account with a lot more reach than the person on the receiving end.
If you're going to apologize, actually apologize. Saying the words costs you nothing and buys you a lot of goodwill. Dancing around them just gives people one more thing to screenshot.
Decide what you're doing with the evidence, and commit to it. Half measures, like leaving a bad post up with a buried caveat, tend to read as worse than either owning it fully or removing it entirely.
The bottom line
Lovesac didn't get in trouble because a customer complained online. That happens to every brand on a daily basis. Lovesac got in trouble because it chose to respond to a real, valid criticism with mockery, let that mockery come straight from the top in public, followed it up with an even worse joke the next day, and then took three days to produce an apology that never actually apologized. Every single one of those was a choice, and every single one of them made things worse.