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Comment by godzillabrennus | Hacker News Reader

Good to see this. I also really miss send later and undo send when I use Fastmail. Two major missing Features.

The biggest issue I have with Fastmail is how lousy the tech support is. I had issues with IMAP and they take days between replies to get back with you.

I started sending them hourly updates hoping for a faster response. Then I copied the CEO to the email chain. After about 20 emails to them I gave up.

A few days later someone got back to me that every time you email their support it resets their clock on when they will respond...

Literally the worst of the worst in email support. That is sad because they have good policies and a fairly robust web frontend.

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Gmail is the worst of the worst in email support: It has none.

Always had great support experiences with FastMail. Spamming them hourly seems like being a bad customer though.

I've noticed there's only ever effusive praise for Fastmail on HN, which itself probably leads to the kind of thing that Feynman warned us about re oil drops.

Spamming folks notwithstanding, I also had a terrible experience with Fastmail on the two occasions that I filed support tickets. I once wrote before: if the options are no support from a service where it's never needed, versus the illusion of support from a different service (paid, even) where the emptiness of the promise will be made evident, then the former is better.

Having said that, I don't actually use or condone Gmail; I give my money to a Fastmail competitor.

Do you mind sharing the company?

Not op, but migadu[0] and mxroute[1] are two commonly named competitors to fastmail.

[0]: https://migadu.com/ [1]: https://mxroute.com/

I also had some bad experiences with Fastmail, they're very aggressive at shutting down your account if billing fails (expired cc) with zero warnings. Ended up missing emails on two occasions because of this (I was using fastmail for forwarding). For recovery, they offered to read my emails to confirm my identity which was the final straw. Related thread here: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1021570521987731458

it's really worrisome that they offered to look through your email data to confirm your identity.

I'd be really curious to know more about what Fastmail does to safeguard customer data from malicious activity by employees.

Agreed! That's one thing that I know Gmail is _very_ good at, at least. I didn't get the impression that Fastmail cares particularly about that problem yet.

If you pay for gmail, the support is fine. Google One or GSuite have responsive support.

Fastmail has undo send. https://www.fastmail.com/help/send/undosend.html

So you started spamming their support and then you were surprised that they didn’t get back to you immediately?

I had great experiences with Fastmail support.

For anyone who find it hard to read (it has accumulated some IMO well deserved downvotes, possible from people who have served on helpdesk like me ;-)

> I started sending them hourly updates hoping for a faster response. Then I copied the CEO to the email chain. After about 20 emails to them I gave up.

> A few days later someone got back to me that every time you email their support it resets their clock on when they will respond...

I must say this sounds like a brilliant idea that lets you:

- 1. wait until people have calmed down

- 2. annoy loud complainers

- have plausible deniability for 2.

At the same time it's a horrible way to tank down time-crucial problems. World is ending now? Sure, but first wait until you've cooled down enough, even though might die in the meanwhile.

This measurement should only come after a first evaluation in priority to filter out the hot topics from the warm pockets.

I don't envy anyone whose world is ending because you have some issues with IMAP (but I guess it's not so serious that you can't temporarily use their web interface).

Also, if it actually is urgent, you don't send a support email, you call them on the phone.

Facinating ignorance.

It wasn't mentioned that this behaviour is limited to certain problems. If the customers world is burning then likely the web-interface will not work either. And who said it's only about fastmail? This behaviour is generally risky. Especially if you are a small company for whome it's a big sellingpoint to deliver better service than your competitors.

> you call them on the phone.

What phone? And why should someone call a company on the other side of the world via phone? Who even says the customer is talking and understanding australian english well enough to be able to communicate with them? Fastmail is an internet-company, not some local shop around the corner.

They do not offer phone support.

I'm sure they can have a KAM assigned for the President, the army, the navy and the air force should they happen to use it in their official capacity / for work ;-)

I've always had sub-hour responses and generally solutions. I've been impressed with how informed and empowered the support people are, as well.

It's weird that you experienced "the worst in email support" when I've experienced close to the best. Maybe we're only hearing one side of the story...

If you were my customer, I would fire you.

> A few days later someone got back to me that every time you email their support it resets their clock on when they will respond...

Sounds like a badly-implemented version of a FIFO queue.

Or a good spam prevention technique. I think it's a good idea to discourage sending large quantities of emails as a technique for contacting support fastest

Some CRM tools are a little too simple. If you are ordering tickets by the most recent update time, you will get this. Overall age and 'has agent responded' are much more valuable. This is also why I like phone calls. Now instead of being trapped in a badly ordered queue I have someone who is looking at my issue and only my issue. You can give anything critical priority in everything but name just by calling instead of emailing.

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