Tell HN: Calendly should disable account if you ghost | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Calendly should disable account if you ghost

2 pointsyieldcrv4 comments

When someone outsources their planning and scheduling to Calendly - basically letting other people pick a time on your schedule instead of having a back and forth conversation about it - that service should penalize them if they get a meeting in one of their available times and don't join it.

Basic plans are free, so those should just get disabled until payment is made to re-enable it.

Higher tier plans should just have a fine, or rise in price.

This is something I want to happen, not an existing company policy, if it wasn't clear.

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That's not realistic.

Calendly has no way of knowing if you joined the meeting or not. Even linking your zoom to schedule the call doesn't mean you'll actually have the call on zoom and not face to face.

Then, they actually want people to use their system and pay for it when they're ready. Being in a situation where the company says "you're not using this right, now pay us", would mean in practice that I'll drop that account and never want to interact with them again. You can't be hostile to your users.

> You can't be hostile to your users

That seems to contradict the behavior of most big tech. Or anyone making someone fill our a re-captcha to use their site. Most companies hate their users and optimize to select those they can treat the worst. "Nudges" is another word for it.

A company like calendly telling people how they are supposed to use it as the post suggests, should be a non-starter, but experience suggests it's exactly the kind of thing a tech company would do.

That's a misunderstanding of the business. All the bad stuff that happens has some reason behind it. Nobody adds recaptcha to the site because they think the users should be solving it. It takes time and money to implement, so it's done for specific reasons like spam prevention.

If you can't connect the change to "how will it benefit the company", there's no reason for the change like one described here to happen.

Disabled might be a bit harsh. But ratings might help. Then if you see a low ratee on your calender you can proactively cancel if you want.

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