When you have a bad day and make a comment about to someone at the store, you probably don’t expect anyone to do anything other than nod their head and feign sympathy. But one Warby Parker customer says her visit to the eyewear store resulted in a little more than a “there there.”

An Atlanta-area woman named Tess says she recently had her car stolen and smashed into a tree as the thieves made off with it.

That same day she went into a Warby Parker store to pick up her new glasses and mentioned the theft of her vehicle.

Then, according to Tess, she got the above note and gift card to use at a popular bar in Atlanta.

“We were so sorry to hear about your car,” reads the note. “Since you probably won’t be the designated driver any time soon, here’s a round on us!”

Of course, since this is reddit, there are a number of people claiming that this is a plant from Warby Parker intended to go viral; in spite of the fact that Tess has been posting on reddit for two years, including the above-referenced post about her stolen Jeep. And while a number of these eagle-eyed cynics pointed out things like the clean photography, the inclusion of the logos for Warby Parker, the bar, and the name of a particular type of eyeglass frame — some of them managed to miss the fact that Tess is not a “him.”

Obviously Warby Parker and every other retailer that does something like this is hoping that the customer will share their story. That’s the whole point of making generous gestures to customers — that they will be so happy they feel compelled to tell others. Before the Internet, that was called “going above and beyond,” now it’s automatically labeled as viral marketing.

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UPDATE: When reached for comment by Consumerist, Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal, said this was not some carefully planned piece of viral marketing.

“The note was totally genuine,” says Blumenthal. “Customer service is all about treating others the way you’d want to be treated, and it’s great to hear that our Atlanta team did just that. We don’t have the expertise necessary to track down a missing Jeep yet, but we are able to provide beer and sympathy.”
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UPDATE #2: Some reddit users accused the bar of being behind this post. A rep for the bar tells Consumerist, “It is not a marketing ploy by The Porter, I can assure you. I have plenty to do without hoping a random goodwill gesture gets picked up on reddit. I applaud the folks at Warby Parker for having such excellent taste in beer bars and for being so generous and kind to someone who clearly had an awful day.”
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Back in 2013, multiple reddit threads accused an Olive Garden customer of being a corporate shill for posting a photo of a receipt for a meal that had been comped by the restaurant after learning of a family tragedy. In the end, it was all much ado about nothing, as the receipt turned out to be the real deal.

“I posted the receipt on the Internet, and the Internet is a highly skeptical place,” the customer told us at the time, “so I can’t really blame anyone for thinking the receipt was fake.”

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