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Comment by antoko | Hacker News Reader

Your response doesn't really seem to be directed at my comment. In your first sentence you're using "this" as if you're talking about the blog post which is what I praise in my comment(the tone of it), but then in your second sentence "this" refers to the routing issue raised by rapgenius, I wasn't commenting on that at all - I'm not a Heroku customer I was merely commenting on a GM's response to negative press.

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Yeah, it's still not impressive. The only thing that I'd say is impressive in response to the situation would be:

"Hi, CEO of Heroku here.

Sorry. We've been misleading customers and only telling the truth when pressed-hard for years. We've created this financial model for all of our customers who have been overpaying on dynos because of our shitty routing and will be reimbursing them based on that.

We've also rolled out a second dyno-tier, called "dyno with non-shitty routing". It's 10x as expensive, but at least we're being honest about it. All current customers will enjoy our "dyno with non-shitty routing" for the price they're currently paying for the next 2 years. Enough time for them to migrate away, like any reasonable person would expect them to after this."

This is spot-on.

Of course they're going to post something, and of course they'll make it sound as good as possible. But it's baffling how so many people applaud such meaningless damage control drivel time after time.

Considering how many people/companies fail so spectacularly at it, why would it be baffling? I also think you underestimate the difficulty in making things "sound as good as possible" that one quality is the basis of the entire marketing and political industries - and a large component of many others. You're basically saying "It's obvious - just be perfect!" - it is not that easy.

All that being said - I'm really not "applauding" Heroku or their actions (which are what matter) I'm waiting to hear what they'll say. In the mean time I thought their messaging (which matters much less) was good.

No worries antoko. We're not really banging up on you, just pissed off at heroku :) Their wording was good, better than usual when companies fuck up. But they're deeply embedded in the startup community so good PR with us is expected, betraying our trust like this, however is not.

> Considering how many people/companies fail so spectacularly at it, why would it be baffling?

It's baffling because it's always meaningless PR-bullshit-we-hope-you-won't-stop-giving-us-money, and people should be aware of that already.

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