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Comment by pseut | Hacker News Reader

Guys, you've made a lot more money than me, so you don't need my advice. But if you want money back, you should probably be communicating in private through your lawyers. Posts like this look like you're trying to get (more) attention.

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They ARE trying to get more attention and it's working. The only reason Heroku has prioritized this issue is because it has grown bigger than a customer complaint in a dead-end tracker. Rap Genius, by being smart and noisy, has made this issue about reputation. Heroku isn't on the line for fixing this one issue, they're on the line to do the right thing. And that's way more important to the long-term success of the company than one performance issue.

I'm super glad they are taking this public and getting tons of attention. I'm consulting for some people who are plagued with the same H12 errors. We've spent tons of time and money trying to mitigate these errors as much as possible to no avail. Bringing this problem up to Heroku through their paid support channels has always come back to them finger pointing at everyone but themselves. I'm glad someone is stepping up and pushing back.

The first post, definitely. But this one?

Maybe I'd feel differently if I were a Heroku customer, so I'll defer to people directly affected.

I think they're being "good guys" by keeping this transparent. I don't think they're really serious about getting their personal money back, as I'm sure it pales in comparison to the developer expenses in trying to optimize on bad data.

RapGenius probably don't want their money back --- they want a service that works as advertised. And making this a big, public issue is a better way to get that than legal threats.

Besides, even if a lawsuit did get them their money back, after two or three years, it might not be enough to pay back the legal fees. Nobody wins most lawsuits...

No, but people do win settlements.

Unless your supplier is a giant company where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, it's seldom wise to sue your supplier before you're ready to dump them.

Is it less wise than publicly taunting your supplier?

Heroku did false advertising of its routing intelligence. They deceived their customers and must be criticized for that. Rapgenius is having an issue that many of us also have, so it is nice that they are sharing the details.

One minor clarification: by "posts like these..." I did not mean to include their first post on these issues with Heroku. That one had a big effect because of the attention it got. But the follow-up posts come across differently (to a non-customer Heroku).

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