JB Hi-Fi’s identity mix-up: did it damage the brand or was it handled with ‘grace and style’?

JB Hi-Fi

JB Hi-Fi has earned praise for its crisis management handling over an incident where a man with Down Syndrome was wrongly banned from a store, although the manager’s refusal to initially apologise has done it “much damage” according to one PR expert.

According to news reports, 21-year-old James Milne was barred from going into the store after a security guard said he looked like a man on the “no entry list”, a decision that was then supported by the JB Hi-Fi store manager, despite the man’s family pointing out the banned man – who also had Down Syndrome – was clearly not Milne.

The store initially refused to apologise over the incident, however JB Hi-Fi CEO Richard Murray did issue an apology yesterday afternoon after Milne’s sister took to Facebook to complain about the incident.

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