Best Buy will join the long list of large companies whose social media departments have slipped up, apologizing for an offensive tweet about a murder that occurred 15 years ago.
Thursday, the same day the podcast Serial premiered, the company’s Twitter account tweeted, "We have everything you need. Unless you need a payphone. #Serial.”
Best Buy actually has ties to the murder stemming from 1999, in which 17-year-old Hae Min Lee was killed by her boyfriend Adnan Syed in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, in the company’s parking lot, USA Today reports.
The podcast, hosted by host Sarah Koenig, examines whether or not Syed called a friend to come pick him up from the parking lot using a pay phone. They delve into the question of whether a pay phone even exited in the parking lot.
Like most controversies, Twitter users were split in their belief that the tweet was offensive and that the tweet was clever to tie in the podcast.
Either way, Best Buy deleted the tweet and followed up with an apology. “We deeply apologize for our earlier tweet about Serial. It lacked good judgment and doesn’t reflect the values of our company. We are sorry,” they wrote.