37 Signal's moment of remorse or slap in the face?

This reminds me of the Groupon lesson: Just because a company offers a service is no reason to believe that service is right for you.

In this case, people paid $99/mo without seeing results... Probably before they even tried the free version.

The article assumes that people were complaining about lack of results. I also assume that people were asking for their money back.

Those people got what they paid for. What they didn't get was what they assumed: Results.

Marketing isn't magic, despite how it looks. You can't just throw money at it and get results. It has to be tailored to your business and/or product.