The strange events last night on BBO

I played bridge with Colin last night on BBO.  The first part of the evening we had a very nice session of bridge against quite good opponents especially a chap with called “pshvarts”.     After 16 boards he left.  He was replaced by a nice fellow who it soon became clear was not a strong player lets’s call him Mr Newby.  Mr. Newby was not conversant with fairly common bidding conventions. Our other opponent lets call him, Mr.  Wantowin, had only been with us for a few hands.  We had a couple of good results which might have been irritating to him when this situation come up.  I do not have the exact hand because we never played it but here it is from my memory.

With no-one vulnerable, Colin opened 1NT (12-14) and Mr. Wantowin bid 2◊.  I had the worst hand for this auction I had something like this

♠ 5 ♥ A1043 ◊ K104 ♣ Q5432

I want to compete but I have some problems.

I have no way to find out if partner has hearts without forcing to game.  I can’t make a negative double without spades (we don’t actually play this but even if we did…).  My clubs aren’t wonderful but I decided the most pragmatic thing to do was just to play 3♣ and hope it was right.  So I bid 2NT (Lebensohl) and so alerted.  Mr. Newby asked in the open what Lebensohl was and both Colin and I answered.  We both said more or less the same thing, “it asked the notrump bidder to bid clubs.”  I suppose in retrospect we might have added that there were a number of things that could happen after that. 

Mr. Newby passed and Colin bid 3♣ which was passed out.  This looked like a below average board for us because Colin had both clubs and hearts and we can make a heart game.  The opponents probably can make a partial in either of the other two suits. 

Before making the opening lead Mr. Wantowin started to send me messages.  He was incensed about our explanation of Lebensohl.  He kept saying shame on you.  I repeated what he said in the clear and asked what his problem was.  I was very polite and would have been happy to skip the board.  He just kept sending me “flame” messages. Things like you are “not very nice” and “shame on you”.  I kept asking him what his problem was and offering to help.  I just didn’t understand the problem. 

Should we have done something different?  Did we do something wrong?   Does anyone have any suggestions about how to defuse the situation, I tried humour, being conciliatory, apologizing (well I am Canadian).