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The fuck off contact page

nicchan.me

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Re: The fuck off contact page

#171

Post by makbol »

dirkc wrote: post #157

Story time - A few years back I had to update a company linkedIn page, couldn't find who was admin and the normal process was broken somehow - can't remember the exact details. Found an obscure reference to a support page where you could contact them about exactly the issue I had, but the form was broken... I could see a coding error in the dev console, so I hot-patched the code and submitted a ticket! Lo and behold,…

>so I hot-patched the code and submitted a ticket!

Can you tell more, how did you "hot-patched" the code of website big as Linkedin?

Re: The fuck off contact page

#172

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

everfrustrated wrote: post #166
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating stuff, I really appreciate the high quality comment you have sent to me which I really appreciate I just wanted to inquire about something which wasn't related to my account itself per se. So I think that one of the things which can be done by hetzner in this context is atleast having a community where people can talk to them (similar to scaleway's slack) I am kind of involving myself in such a community…

In the EU a ton of laws, legal complexity and costs kick in if you start having a forum (social media). Having a closed forum helps a lot to avoid this.

Fascinating, I didn't know that, thank you!

Basically I dread the wall of email support sometimes because its too exhausting, assumes I am a company myself, assumes I must have a website, assumes I have a role at said supposed company.

Also I do not know in how many hours they might respond, Have they even read my message etc.

having something like telegram,matrix etc. can help but also at that point, I wonder if they all use email, can something like delta.chat be used to provide an instant experience to the email experience?

What are your thoughts on this, I am genuinely curious if delta.chat can provide a meaningful improvement over email because I dread having to open all of these things and then fear getting ghosted or fear that I would be able to explain myself only in a few messages worth of time maybe answering them to their questions,asking them questions etc. (I hope it may make sense)

Re: The fuck off contact page

#173

Post by red-iron-pine »

tuetuopay wrote: post #118
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue in web hosting companies which I see is that to get support through ticket, you need a login page and you cannot complete the login process until you sign up with a credit card That literally annoyed me so much even on something like hetzner. Hetzner team if you are reading this, although I love email platform, is there any way that your support stops being AI (which annoyed me) but rather you can have an d…

> One issue in web hosting companies which I see is that to get support through ticket, you need a login page and you cannot complete the login process until you sign up with a credit card > That literally annoyed me so much even on something like hetzner. In one word: fraud. I've worked at a company similar to Hetzner, and the "add a credit card first" is the single most effective way to weed out 99% of abusers. Peo…

> In one word: fraud. I've worked at a company similar to Hetzner, and the "add a credit card first" is the single most effective way to weed out 99% of abusers. People that will each up swaths of compute and mine crypto, ruining the service for everyone. Or hosting CSAM material. Or participating in botnets. Or sending spam. All those makes both the company AND the clients suffer.

Seconded. Used to work at an MSP that had a customer that did "micro-hosting" on a free tier. Just sign up, put data, run w/ it.

There were weeks where I emailed my FBI contact 3-4 times with CSAM links, spam, or evidence of DDoS attacks. Crypto was just getting off the ground then but could totally see that being a thing if the timing were different.

Customer was willing to address it quickly and paid even after we gave them the "fuck-off" quote, so we kept em for a while...

Re: The fuck off contact page

#174

Post by rkagerer »

This re-designed contact page, as certain as we were of how bad of an idea it was, wasn’t a fire, so we let it through.

...it didn’t meet my internal bar for a quality product worth sticking my name on, and I feel like I’ve let down both the client and the end-users

If this was a bridge that might not stay up, would you have let it through? Or a high voltage circuit with poor grounding?

I wish our field had a higher bar in terms of professional engineering integrity, and just refused to do things we instinctively know are wrong. Commenters will make all kinds of excuses (money, someone else's decision, etc), but the world would be a better place.

Re: The fuck off contact page

#175

Post by plorkyeran »

Revisional_Sin wrote: post #147
dotancohen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to laugh, but this is why I stick with AWS. They've twice helped me with billing issues on my personal account - as in an actual human helping me. They have no idea I manage large (not huge) AWS deployments at my day job. They just demonstrate great customer service to me as a small client. So they have me as a loyal customer. And advocate, it seems.

My toddler was playing with my Kindle the other day, and he bought a £600 (yes, six hundred) volume of books. I was unable to refund them automatically, and when looking for help I was confronted with a "fuck off" contact page. After finding the option to talk to a human, I was put through within 5 seconds, and the woman had the item refunded in about 1 minute. Was pleasantly surprised.

Amazon seems to be going for a model where they keep support costs down by making it progressively harder over time to actually contact a person, but when you do manage to you get a good experience. It's an interesting idea, and I suspect that the pleasant surprise at the end makes up for a lot of the frustration getting there.

Re: The fuck off contact page

#176

Post by plorkyeran »

makbol wrote: post #171
dirkc wrote: post #157

Story time - A few years back I had to update a company linkedIn page, couldn't find who was admin and the normal process was broken somehow - can't remember the exact details. Found an obscure reference to a support page where you could contact them about exactly the issue I had, but the form was broken... I could see a coding error in the dev console, so I hot-patched the code and submitted a ticket! Lo and behold,…

>so I hot-patched the code and submitted a ticket! Can you tell more, how did you "hot-patched" the code of website big as Linkedin?

Browser developer tools let you edit all of the client-side code for a website, and these days it's pretty common for bugs to be in the client-side js.

Re: The fuck off contact page

#177

Post by array_key_first »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #154
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all dependent entirely on scale. If a bajillion customers have major problems (whether actually major or in their mind), you have to triage and the first tier won't be experts with excellent command of English. Support is fucking expensive. Everyone wants bespoke service, but if you are not a customer, or if the amount of business you bring does not justify the expense, the support level you want cannot be provi…

One thing I've never understood though: if you have a bajillion customers, you presumably have a bajillion dollars to pay customer support, no?

Yes but that's a bajillion dollars you could, instead, pocket.

Walmart seems to have no problem staffing their stores with employees who can answer questions, among other things. And they actually sell real hard goods, in meat space.

Scale is a lame excuse. Yes your labor will have to scale with your customer base, that's just how a business works. That's a good thing, actually, because that's how we keep society from crumbling.

Re: The fuck off contact page

#178

Post by tuetuopay »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #142
tuetuopay wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One issue in web hosting companies which I see is that to get support through ticket, you need a login page and you cannot complete the login process until you sign up with a credit card > That literally annoyed me so much even on something like hetzner. In one word: fraud. I've worked at a company similar to Hetzner, and the "add a credit card first" is the single most effective way to weed out 99% of abusers. Peo…

Fascinating stuff, I really appreciate the high quality comment you have sent to me which I really appreciate I just wanted to inquire about something which wasn't related to my account itself per se. So I think that one of the things which can be done by hetzner in this context is atleast having a community where people can talk to them (similar to scaleway's slack) I am kind of involving myself in such a community…

For smaller providers, I've found that pinging them on social media, esp. Twitter, can help (I've even had the OVH support contact me directly after a public rant on Twitter). Or go to some forum with other people that know them, e.g. lowendtalks often have people that know hetzner, ovh, scaleway, etc in and out. They will also be able to offer comparisons and shoot through the marketing BS they often have.

Also, support often are happy to answer general inquiries not related to the product, as long as it's not for outsourcing reasons (not their job to help you set up Apache). They may even get you in touch with someone more technical if needed.

Anyways, feel free to shoot an email yes, username at me dot com.

Re: The fuck off contact page

#179

Post by tuetuopay »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #172
everfrustrated wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU a ton of laws, legal complexity and costs kick in if you start having a forum (social media). Having a closed forum helps a lot to avoid this.

Fascinating, I didn't know that, thank you! Basically I dread the wall of email support sometimes because its too exhausting, assumes I am a company myself, assumes I must have a website, assumes I have a role at said supposed company. Also I do not know in how many hours they might respond, Have they even read my message etc. having something like telegram,matrix etc. can help but also at that point, I wonder if the…

You can get ghosted on IM too. Just ask anyone on tinder lol.

The downside of IM like Telegram or Matrix or Slack is that it's a broadcast bottle-in-the-sea way of communication. It's everyone's job to answer there, thus it's no one's job to answer there. OTOH contact mail boxes are often direct at people whose job is to read it.

Re: The fuck off contact page

#180

Post by alt227 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #168
alt227 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you put an email address on a contact page, all manner of sh*t is going to be thrown at you. Automated marketing services, scammers, competitors, everyone and their dog are going to be filling up your customer service inbox and costing you time and money to manage it. Put a contact form on your website and you can secure it with a capture, which is not bulltproof but it sure does filter out a lot of au…

Protection against bots seeing the e-mail on your website has been around for at least a decade. And if any of your customers or business partners know of the company e-mail, then you're already known to all spammers in the world, since their contact lists are getting hacked all the time. Ie: If you're a business your e-mail adress is already out there, so give it also to those who need it the most, which are your cu…

You obviously dont run an ecommerce website
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