I hate this paid support model. I don’t want to have to pay to tell a company I think they screwed up.
Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
301–310 of 433 posts
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#302This is being looked into internally and I am involved. Likely won’t post an update here as it pertains to a customer account (unless customer agrees). BTW If you, dear reader, ever find yourself so frustrated with Cloudflare that you feel like your only recourse is a blog post... my email is jgc@cloudflare.com and I’m happy to hear from people.
I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…
I like the ombudsman idea. A lot.
I am a tech executive in my company and my direct e-mail address is at the bottom of every Web site. Yes, this means I deal with routing all sorts of problems BUT I know instantly when there is a problem. Any problem. And I can actually help. But really it helps me with my job. It's win/win/win.
Plus, poor customer services is simply inexcusable -- you have to treat people the way you want to be treated. You're letting yourself and everyone else down otherwise. There is ethics and morals in business and they are important.
It doesn't have to be my way but there are definitely ways to do it, do it well and not break the bank.
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#303Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because requiring the customer to pay a cost fixes the incentives problem. A customer may have an issue that is a minor inconvenience to them, that can either stay as not resolved, is due to error, or is simply not worth resolving to them. By having them pay for fixing the issue it could greatly reduce the number of inbound cases, allowing them to go straight to people that can act on them instead of sitting in triag…
In terms of games theory; if there's no cost to the company to ignore the customer, then that's an incentive to ignore the consumer's complaint. Especially if that company has a monopoly. I can understand why GP suggested company pays $20.
A company has no incentive to ignore the customer, all else being equal, but they do have costs in servicing the customer and costs from ignoring the customer.
Assume the company has no way of distinguishing "valid" or "high impact" cases from other cases. This means that in order for the company to handle cases they need the sum of fully treating every case to be greater than the sum of the cost of fully treating every case. This is almost certainly never going to be true, unless each of your cases is high cost to ignore (think enterprise support).
So you need to funnel down the cases. Typically this is done with low tier support that tries to suggest fixes and such. You can also offer high value added support to give customers the ability to pay for a support plan. This $20 proposal is like that but on a more ad-hoc basis.
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#305Occasions are rare where I get to say "hey, I built a thing that might help here!" - so forgive me as I take this opportunity with both hands. Whether this was a bug or a rare protective mechanisme, there will be times when your DNS provider makes a mistake and removes records. You mentioned in your post your DNS isn't hard to reproduce, but how certain are you that _all_ records are restored? How long do you have to…
How do you get all records for domains that don’t allow zone transfer (most don’t)? I’ve always thought it was impossible to get 100% accurate results with normal DNS queries (ex: ALL).
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#306Cloudflare considered harmful: https://www.devever.net/~hl/cloudflare
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#307This is being looked into internally and I am involved. Likely won’t post an update here as it pertains to a customer account (unless customer agrees). BTW If you, dear reader, ever find yourself so frustrated with Cloudflare that you feel like your only recourse is a blog post... my email is jgc@cloudflare.com and I’m happy to hear from people.
Please explain something to me. For me and my of my customers, having your "entire cloud deleted" is like... the #1 nightmare scenario. So why does this capability/function even exist for active accounts at CloudFlare? It sounds like the OP fell victim to what is essentially a regular process. Or to put it another way: No amount of explanation or assurance is ever going to make me feel comfortable with my doctor havi…
It doesn't sound like it actually deleted anything other than the DNS entries. It's not like any actual data got lost.
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
When your entire site and suite of applications are offline, especially during business hours, waiting who knows how long for a support queue isn't really an option. Outages like this can kill a business or cost millions.
(op here). To be fair to Cloudflare a business with millions on the line should be paying a lot more money to Cloudflare than I, a college student with significantly less on the line, would. If I had the option to pay $1,000 right now and get everything back up instantly I wouldn't take it because it isn't worth that much to me.
I realize that... the issue isn't necessarily tethered to your paying status, and it could just as easily happen to someone with a high value business account.
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#309This is being looked into internally and I am involved. Likely won’t post an update here as it pertains to a customer account (unless customer agrees). BTW If you, dear reader, ever find yourself so frustrated with Cloudflare that you feel like your only recourse is a blog post... my email is jgc@cloudflare.com and I’m happy to hear from people.
I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…
Steve@apple.com worked amazingly for me back when I bought apple products. Both times I literally get a phone call from someone who has already talked to my local store and has his proposed solution set up for me.
But that was like 10 years ago. Not sure if it's still good.
Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…
Steve@apple.com worked amazingly for me back when I bought apple products. Both times I literally get a phone call from someone who has already talked to my local store and has his proposed solution set up for me. But that was like 10 years ago. Not sure if it's still good.
I can confirm, in those rare instances where it’s required, similar email addresses still work. Just keep it nice and polite. I’m sure they have manually maintained spam filters...