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Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

wired.com

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Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#91

Post by res0nat0r »

Karunamon wrote: post #90
res0nat0r wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say random routing doesn't qualify as "intelligent"? What if random routing is the most efficient routing schema for 99% of their users? Trying to sue because "intelligent" doesn't mean what you think it means isn't going to be very successful.

>Who's to say random routing doesn't qualify as "intelligent"? Heroku themselves! Again, they changed their documentation.

You mean..they changed their marketing speak. Suing because buzzwords don't work the way you think they should isn't a very good basis for a lawsuit.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#92

Post by Karunamon »

res0nat0r wrote: post #91
Karunamon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who's to say random routing doesn't qualify as "intelligent"? Heroku themselves! Again, they changed their documentation.

You mean..they changed their marketing speak. Suing because buzzwords don't work the way you think they should isn't a very good basis for a lawsuit.

>You mean..they changed their marketing speak.

Marketing speak is not allowed to be misleading or flatly untrue (as it was in Heroku's case). This can and has been the basis of successful lawsuits.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#93

Post by bascule »

DigitalSea wrote: post #77

At the end of the day Heroku are in the wrong here. Performance issues which Heroku basically wouldn't admit until they were outed about them meant that companies would have invested tonnes of time and effort which in turn equals money on trying to fix issues that were caused by Heroku the whole time.

I'm sorry, did I miss something since aphyr's analysis? http://aphyr.com/posts/278-timelike-2-everything-fails-all-t...

Why is Heroku "in the wrong" exactly?

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#94

Post by res0nat0r »

Karunamon wrote: post #92
res0nat0r wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean..they changed their marketing speak. Suing because buzzwords don't work the way you think they should isn't a very good basis for a lawsuit.

>You mean..they changed their marketing speak. Marketing speak is not allowed to be misleading or flatly untrue (as it was in Heroku's case). This can and has been the basis of successful lawsuits.

I don't know how "intelligent routing" can be defined to mean anything. It can be interpreted a million different ways. This is probably one of the reasons why they used it in their marketing because it sounds cool and is a generic term that could be applied to anything.

I don't see much of anything in a lawsuit unless specific metrics related to SLA's that were agreed to were broken.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#95

Post by joesb »

res0nat0r wrote: post #85
Karunamon wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By misrepresents you mean that the end users didn't exactly understand how underlying architecture worked Uh.. no. Heroku claimed to use intelligent routing, they used random routing. And then covered it up with their monitoring tools. How in the name of crap can you blame this on the user?! Did you even read the Rap Genius writeup on this problem? If I were in their position, I would be utterly livid.

I read the article. I wouldn't call it "covering up". It didn't explain everything going on, just like all kinds of things that go on behind the scenes everyday at AWS that users don't understand. Define "intelligent routing". Maybe it is intelligent to route 85% of your requests to /dev/null. Can you sue because your performance sucks in your application use case? Most normal people eval their provider, try to get a…

> Define "intelligent routing".

At least Heroku themselves define "intelligent routing" such that the request will only be given to the free Dynos. Their random routing does not do that.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#96

Post by dandelany »

jrockway wrote: post #62
mikeryan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to tldr; an article you should really read it. Rap genius isn't suing. No one, in fact, is actually yet suing.

The first line in the article "Rap Genius founder Tom Lehman says Heroku misled him and cost his company money." I have to imagine they're involved based on the number of articles I've read about them over the last week. Their own article, tech blogs interviewing them about the article, and now the founder's picture at the top of this article.

Granted, the article is poorly written and seems to imply their involvement. But it explicitly states, near the end, that the law firm involved has yet to find any plaintiffs:

He’s spoken with one customer, who has since backed off. “That being said, I am in the process of drafting a complaint, in case their feet warm up,” he told us.

Furthermore, Tom (the dude pictured) commented in a thread above saying he didn't even hear about the lawsuit until Wired called him to interview him for the article. Consider putting away your "Jump to Conclusions" mat and joining us in the world of facts.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#97

Post by jacques_chester »

notahacker wrote: post #82
jacques_chester wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule of law is a key part of the mix of institutions, geography, culture and luck that have made the USA the richest country that has ever been. And with the rule of law comes lawyers. I know it's fashionable to hate lawyers, but they're a necessary profession. Law is a field in which small details can have very large consequences once the full line of reasoning is unfolded. Because of the importance of exhaustiv…

Let's be honest, it isn't this firm's legal duty to set up a marketing website to try to find a plaintiff to launch a lucrative lawsuit. Law firms seek to offer the level of service that maximises their returns, just like any other corporation.

No, but once they have a client for a lawsuit, they're still bound by fiduciary duty.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#98

Post by jacques_chester »

zcrar70 wrote: post #81
jacques_chester wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule of law is a key part of the mix of institutions, geography, culture and luck that have made the USA the richest country that has ever been. And with the rule of law comes lawyers. I know it's fashionable to hate lawyers, but they're a necessary profession. Law is a field in which small details can have very large consequences once the full line of reasoning is unfolded. Because of the importance of exhaustiv…

Not all that is a part of the US is a reason for its success. Whilst the US does a lot of things well, there is always room for improvement, and some of the aspects of its legal framework is one of the areas that could benefit. The US spends 2-3 times as much on tort as other developed economies; this is clearly a problem, not an advantage. For more examples, see: http://www.economist.com/node/21541423 - on attempts…

Sure, there's room for improvement. But torts law reform is no the original point I was arguing. The root of this thread is a suggestion that lawyers deliberately complicate the law in order to maximise their bill.

I was explaining why lawyers spend so much time minutely examining every tiny bit of a case for their clients. They have to. A lawyer who doesn't could find themselves in breach of fiduciary duty.

Also, read what I've said again. Nowhere have I said that the USA is rich and powerful because of lawyering. But neither has it stopped the USA from being so.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#99

Post by jacques_chester »

res0nat0r wrote: post #94
Karunamon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You mean..they changed their marketing speak. Marketing speak is not allowed to be misleading or flatly untrue (as it was in Heroku's case). This can and has been the basis of successful lawsuits.

I don't know how "intelligent routing" can be defined to mean anything. It can be interpreted a million different ways. This is probably one of the reasons why they used it in their marketing because it sounds cool and is a generic term that could be applied to anything. I don't see much of anything in a lawsuit unless specific metrics related to SLA's that were agreed to were broken.

The documentation used to say that requests were routed to the next idle dyno, but the behaviour was silently changed to be random distribution, which is substantially worse for the customer. There seemed to be previous cases where Heroku were aware of the discrepancy but didn't act to fix it.

That's generally considered uncool.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#100

Post by jrockway »

dandelany wrote: post #96
jrockway wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first line in the article "Rap Genius founder Tom Lehman says Heroku misled him and cost his company money." I have to imagine they're involved based on the number of articles I've read about them over the last week. Their own article, tech blogs interviewing them about the article, and now the founder's picture at the top of this article.

Granted, the article is poorly written and seems to imply their involvement. But it explicitly states, near the end, that the law firm involved has yet to find any plaintiffs: He’s spoken with one customer, who has since backed off. “That being said, I am in the process of drafting a complaint, in case their feet warm up,” he told us. Furthermore, Tom (the dude pictured) commented in a thread above saying he didn't e…

You're right. I wish I could delete my comments.
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