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Moving On...

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Re: Moving On...

#71

Post by user-id »

raldi wrote: post #65
giberson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't being used for nefarious purposes, you cannot cancel valid accounts for any reason. If I have a Rackspace account, I can go into twitter and say "Rackspace fucking sucks, everyone who works there can go fuck themselves," and there's no chance in he…

If you're taking a bus between two cities, can they decide in the middle of the trip that they don't want your business anymore, refund half your money, and leave you at the side of the road? Of course not. That's called breach of contract. And unless This* has a carefully-written escape clause in their service contract, they would be just as liable for canceling service in the middle of a contract period as well.

To extend on your analogy, I'm pretty sure if you started cussing out the bus driver because your mate hadn't paid and got left at the depot, you'd be on the side of the road too.

Re: Moving On...

#72

Post by hoop »

Customers are sometimes abusive, particularly on support lines. Anyone who works in a service industry needs to learn to deal with that. Even if they don't interact with customers, they should learn the people skills anyhow because really we all have "customers" - even if they are internal to the company.

On the other hand, at $3/mo, I'd say "this" could've gone ahead and terminated the hosting of the "painful" customers (keeping backups,) but only doing so at later date and with notice when everyone wasn't so fired up.

IMO their "technical director" also needs to be let go. Maybe not today, but after they've had a chance to get a new person trained but more importantly get their domains and accounts transferred into the company's (or its owner's) name. The TD has demonstrated that he's over-reactive. If kept with the company, there's the risk that he further damages the company in the future (even with him being isolated away from customers). If he's let go, there's the risk of overreacting and damaging the company in other ways.

Re: Moving On...

#73

Post by palish »

coryl wrote: post #57
desigooner wrote: post #13

This blog post was preceded by a different post by Jules. That post was deleted and this post by Doug took it's place instead. Here's the google cache link of the deleted post: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=ca... Content of the deleted post: The Reddit Incident POSTED BY Jules ON August 16, 2011 AT 4:45 pm UNDER Uncategorized I’m sure you may have heard about it by now, and if not I’m sure you…

Oh man, I hope everyone reading this understands the consequence of putting a person who doesn't understand public relations or customer service, into a position such as customer service.

Could you elaborate a little on why Jules' blog post was bad?

It seemed completely straight-up. "X happened, Y happened, Z happened". Whether or not we agree with their decision, it seems like a good (for us) thing to hear the full sequence of events.

Re: Moving On...

#74

Post by wvenable »

philwelch wrote: post #42
gfunk911 wrote: post #17

1. Are there seriously smiley faces in this serious post defending your company? 2. From what I can understand, they suspended multiple accounts, one of which was paid in full. The paid in full account's owner cursed out the company on twitter. I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't bei…

> I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't being used for nefarious purposes, you cannot cancel valid accounts for any reason. I'll agree with that, but with qualifications. Certainly you don't just cut off somebody's service. But there are pathological clients who aren't worth keeping on…

> We gave them a month to find another service provider, but there was no way we would allow them to remain a customer after that.

That is exactly the right way to handle the situation and, in my opinion, does not contradict what gfunk said. If you were to simply cut off a client, no notice, for no other reason except you don't like them -- that's not right.

Re: Moving On...

#75

Post by wvenable »

starwed wrote: post #52
rvanniekerk wrote: post #47

As the Co-founder of a statup that has dealt directly with situations like this in the past, I don't see much wrong with how the situation was handled. You wouldn't expect a restaurant owner to put up with a rude and insulting customer being a dick to restaurant staff, so why should any other service have to put up with it? Some customers just aren't worth the hassle they put out PERIOD. I don't give a shit if you're…

This seems to be one of those stories which has mutated. In the original account, the poster says they inquired about a problem, had their account terminated, and then flipped out. Almost every commenter on HN seems to assume that the account termination happened after the flip-out, but from what I can tell that isn't correct?

The fully paid and not in dispute account was suspended (disabled) because of the account owner's twitter comments. The account owner then swore on twitter and so his account was further deleted and all backups destroyed. The story hasn't mutated but the details are subtle.

Re: Moving On...

#76

Post by raldi »

user-id wrote: post #71
raldi wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're taking a bus between two cities, can they decide in the middle of the trip that they don't want your business anymore, refund half your money, and leave you at the side of the road? Of course not. That's called breach of contract. And unless This* has a carefully-written escape clause in their service contract, they would be just as liable for canceling service in the middle of a contract period as well.

To extend on your analogy, I'm pretty sure if you started cussing out the bus driver because your mate hadn't paid and got left at the depot, you'd be on the side of the road too.

It all depends on the contract. Presumably, a bus ticket would say something about not endangering or disturbing the other passengers, but if you just, say, tweeted angry messages to the president of Greyhound, it would be a hell of a stretch for them to find grounds to legally void the contract (i.e., kick you off the bus).

Re: Moving On...

#77

Post by jessedhillon »

palish wrote: post #73
coryl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I hope everyone reading this understands the consequence of putting a person who doesn't understand public relations or customer service, into a position such as customer service.

Could you elaborate a little on why Jules' blog post was bad? It seemed completely straight-up. "X happened, Y happened, Z happened". Whether or not we agree with their decision, it seems like a good (for us) thing to hear the full sequence of events.

Elaboration: Jules demonstrates zero willingness to understand the customer's point of view. Even if your position cannot be compromised, as a CS rep you should never leave the customer with the impression that they were ignored, or worse.

First, the tone is so unbelievably petty, it's difficult to believe this company has ever made more than $50. I would conclude from this exchange that it's run by two high school kids in their parents' basement.

Second, the post is chock full of defensive half-truths, or as I call it: bullshit. For example:

We take privacy very seriously.

So seriously that we flip off anyone who sends a tweet about you and your account. It's not about privacy -- if it were, a simple statement to the effect of "we can't comment about accounts publicly" would have sufficed.

...to which we responded “Best of luck with your new host!”. This was not intended to be a taunt, this was intended to be the closing line to our discussion with them.

Who honestly believes this? "When I told him to 'get the fuck out of here', I only wanted to let him know that he was welcome to leave."

---

This guy just does not get it. He must be an incredible sys admin, or it must be really hard to find a good one in Hampshire.

The truth -- as I see it -- is simply that this guy was irked by the thought of a customer posting annoying tweets about his company's policies, and he lost his cool. (If he ever knew to keep it in the first place.)

Re: Moving On...

#78

Post by tzs »

rvanniekerk wrote: post #47

As the Co-founder of a statup that has dealt directly with situations like this in the past, I don't see much wrong with how the situation was handled. You wouldn't expect a restaurant owner to put up with a rude and insulting customer being a dick to restaurant staff, so why should any other service have to put up with it? Some customers just aren't worth the hassle they put out PERIOD. I don't give a shit if you're…

To use your restaurant analogy, suppose I'm at a restaurant. There is some problem with my credit card. I get rude and insulting.

It is perfectly acceptable, as you note, for the restaurant to toss me out and to ban me.

What is not acceptable is that if a friend of mine later asks them why they banned me for them to state that it was due to a credit card dispute. They should just say "we do not discuss details related to past or present customers".

In the deleted blog post that's essentially what they admit doing. A friend of the customer asked about the incident, and they responded giving information that they should have not given, instead of just saying "we do not discuss account details of customers with third parties".

Re: Moving On...

#79

Post by eric-hu »

samdalton wrote: post #31
benatkin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where the O would come from, but if Doug and Jules turn out to be the same person, I'm calling him O'Doul's.

They have a different writing style, although he did appear right out of the blue..

"Hey buddy, I'm having some trouble with my site. Mind writing a blog post for me?"

More realistically, though, he could've found some PR person after seeing the fallout from his own attempts to calm the storm. If he sticks with it, that would actually be quite smart of him.

Re: Moving On...

#80

Post by nzadrozny »

palish wrote: post #73
coryl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I hope everyone reading this understands the consequence of putting a person who doesn't understand public relations or customer service, into a position such as customer service.

Could you elaborate a little on why Jules' blog post was bad? It seemed completely straight-up. "X happened, Y happened, Z happened". Whether or not we agree with their decision, it seems like a good (for us) thing to hear the full sequence of events.

I deal with customer support on a daily basis. In my opinion it wasn't just the blog post that was bad. By then it was way too late.

The account auto-suspension may have been a bit harsh. But what they never should have done was explain it in public. The rest is just downhill from there.

Personally, I'd have responded to the friend's tweet with nothing more than, "Account questions should be directed to [email/url] where we can better assist." That way you take that stuff offline as soon as possible before it has a chance to foment into something nasty. And if it's really something private, there's nothing more you can say.

That aside, the tone in that blog post is all wrong. In paragraph one, "our side of the fence" draws lines and creates an adversarial tone right from the start. It's clear throughout that the author is taking this personally.

Paragraph two is mostly fine, but ends on a self-righteous semi-parenthetical, "We don't, for the record." As if they're going out of their way to be better than everyone else.

From paragraph three, the airing of dirty laundry begins. Beyond this, deleting 80–90% of the post would likely add to its value.

In paragraph five there's even some kind of victim mentality going on. They're being "baited" on Twitter, and "[attacked] for reasons unknown." The analysis is starting to get tedious.

All throughout, the message being communicated is: We did nothing wrong. It's defensive, and what facts are present play a secondary role to the message. Better to be proactive about the facts, leave out anything that hints of defensiveness, and just take your lumps.

Any time you're saying "what I intended," you've already lost.

But, again, a better blog post would not have needed to be written in the first place.

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