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How not to get acquired

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Re: How not to get acquired

#61

Post by chrismckee »

jmathai wrote: post #33
polyfractal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Braintree is pretty great, I like working with their API and customer service (always ready and willing to talk on the phone, which is great). Avoid Authorize.Net like the plague. Horrifically bad XML API that will make you want to claw your eyes out.

But it'll be a horrifically bad XML API for years and years :)

You should try WorldPay if your looking for shit but consistent. WorldPay will be around for ever, as will their dog-rough "web service" written by someone who hates the web and where verification tokens are optional. Checkout this FAB API http://www.worldpay.com/support/kb/bg/recurringpayments/rpfp...

Re: How not to get acquired

#62

Post by rhizome »

whit537 wrote: post #32
startupstella wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, I cannot although I wish I could. I was not interested in working for a big company post-acquisition...hence the name "startup stella." I do hope the guys respond as we always respected the HN community and depended on it greatly. Whatever happened, hopefully the situation can be rectified.

Thanks for weighing in, Stella. I've just heard from Sheel via email with an apology, and now I've just gotten off the phone with Sean. He apologized for the support requests that have been dropped during the transition to GroupOn. At his request, I've removed the "Reflection" part of my piece, which admittedly engaged in unfounded speculation. I apologize. I'd also like to apologize to Sean and the team for not tryi…

Don't apologize. This was apparently the only possible way they would respond (which you didn't know anyway). Remember all the tweets, emails and stuff they flat-out ignored.

Re: How not to get acquired

#63

Post by rhizome »

seanharper wrote: post #44

Hello everyone -- this has been an interesting and painful conversation to watch. I am Sean, co-founder of FeeFighters. Integrating the acquisition of a small company into a large company is hard. I suspect there are very few acquisitions where customers do not experience at least some pain. I am deeply sorry for customers who have had support tickets get dropped or experienced slow responses during this period of in…

It's assumed that a company acting in its own interest is a foregone conclusion, but when a customer does the same thing it's a problem. Note that this post was apparently the only way to get attention to the problem.

Call a spade a spade: the ball was dropped here. No need for butthurt, you guys got paid.

Re: How not to get acquired

#64

Post by polyfractal »

tzs wrote: post #45
polyfractal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the code handy (was client work for a third party), but we definitely used XML through Auth.net's AIM. Here are the API docs for it: http://www.authorize.net/support/AIM_guide_XML.pdf We also used XML through their CIM to manage customer profiles. To be fair, this was all in PHP, and the code was inherited so I'm not sure if there was a better way to deal with Auth.net's API. I do know that their dashboa…

Interesting. Here's the non-XML AIM guide: http://www.authorize.net/support/AIM_guide.pdf That's the one we use. I didn't even know they had an XML option--and now I'm going to try to forget it! :-)

Interesting! I had no idea they had a non-XML option. If I was still working on the project, I'd totally push for that.

Good to know for future projects =)

Re: How not to get acquired

#65

Post by entropy_ »

WalterSear wrote: post #28
dmix wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there are plenty of good ideas and lessons from reading the bible. Doesn't mean you have to live up to every word of it without common sense.

I haven't seen any that weren't stolen from somewhere else and weren't no-brainers to begin with.

"The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what every one, at bottom, had always known to be right. Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that. As Dr Johnson said, ‘People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.’ The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk."

-- C.S Lewis "Mere Christianity"

Re: How not to get acquired

#66

Post by true_religion »

seanharper wrote: post #44

Hello everyone -- this has been an interesting and painful conversation to watch. I am Sean, co-founder of FeeFighters. Integrating the acquisition of a small company into a large company is hard. I suspect there are very few acquisitions where customers do not experience at least some pain. I am deeply sorry for customers who have had support tickets get dropped or experienced slow responses during this period of in…

> It is really uncool how quickly other startups are to snipe at each other.

You abandoned your paying B2B clients, and left them holding the ball with annoyed customers and damaged cash flow. Isn't it unfair then to complain that they are badmouthing you?

Out of professionalism (if not contractual obligation), this situation should have been better handled. Finance is all about trust in questions such as: will they pay me? can my customers have faith in them? what happens if there's a problem?

To be fair, FeeFighters isn't the worst transitional incidident in recent history (AlertPay's was much worse), and hasn't harmed the most people (ePassporte and iBill before it were terrible).

I'm not one of your clients, and before this fiasco I had quite a bit of respect for FeeFighters, but in the future I'll find myself vary wary about using any financial product you create or invest in.

Re: How not to get acquired

#67

Post by michaeledwards »

jusben1369 wrote: post #31
whit537 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no kidding. I ended up with a merchant account with fusty old FirstData out of the ordeal. I look at FirstData and their portal, www.mymerchantoffice.com, in a whole new light now. It may suck, but I can expect it to suck consistently for years to come. It also feels now like I should be vaulting cards with multiple vendors to avoid a single point of failure. As mentioned I went with Stripe, who are similarly g…

Shameless plug for Spreedlycore.com where you can vault your cards separately and work with all the gateways listed here. This is an extreme example (gone into limbo in this case) but one of the motivations for our offering. You could have migrated to Stripe/Braintree etc via a config change.

This looks really cool.

Re: How not to get acquired

#68

Post by jrs235 »

true_religion wrote: post #66
seanharper wrote: post #44

Hello everyone -- this has been an interesting and painful conversation to watch. I am Sean, co-founder of FeeFighters. Integrating the acquisition of a small company into a large company is hard. I suspect there are very few acquisitions where customers do not experience at least some pain. I am deeply sorry for customers who have had support tickets get dropped or experienced slow responses during this period of in…

> It is really uncool how quickly other startups are to snipe at each other. You abandoned your paying B2B clients, and left them holding the ball with annoyed customers and damaged cash flow. Isn't it unfair then to complain that they are badmouthing you? Out of professionalism (if not contractual obligation), this situation should have been better handled. Finance is all about trust in questions such as: will they…

Reminds me when a bunch of Minnesota nurses walked-out on their patients in protest of conflict with their union negotiations claiming "We're doing this for our patients, because we are understaffed and the hospitals need to staff more but are unwilling." Complete BS. You care soooo much about your patients (customers) that you walk out on them... not cool [and highly hypocritical].

Re: How not to get acquired

#69

Post by jrs235 »

snorkel wrote: post #46
seanharper wrote: post #44

Hello everyone -- this has been an interesting and painful conversation to watch. I am Sean, co-founder of FeeFighters. Integrating the acquisition of a small company into a large company is hard. I suspect there are very few acquisitions where customers do not experience at least some pain. I am deeply sorry for customers who have had support tickets get dropped or experienced slow responses during this period of in…

I have to wag my head at the lack of a having a smooth transition plan for customer support. The new Groupon overlords should've insisted on it, or at least supported it.

Sounds like GroupOn might be able to compete with Digital River for crappiest customer experiences.
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