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Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first. I see no indication that there was any communication between 37Signals and GetSatisfaction prior to this very public post.

I've had this kind of thing done to me before, and I think it's really out of order. Essentially, 37Signals have decided, in this case, to trade politeness and "being good" for making a big noise and getting some page views and attention.

It's easy to criticise people publicly without trying to understand what's going on first. I'd love to say that I expected better from 37-Signals, but considering that their blog has been so focused on generating page views through negative disagreement, I'm not all that surprised that they do this as well.

Here's a challenge for 37-signals: Why not try to do positive things, rather than frame everything as a confrontational disagreement? Yes, being an arse generates page views, but so do other undesirable behaviour. Is that really the way you want to go in the long term?

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I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first.

Whereas I think a public statement of outrage is entirely justified. Take a look at the screenshot. GetSatisfaction has been collecting feedback under the 37signals name for at least a month. Those people who typed messages into GetSatisfaction expecting a response have been disappointed for a while. Anyone who randomly came across that page and saw lots of months-old issues -- but no post from 37signals itself -- has been subliminally convinced that 37signals never gets around to answering their mail.

This is not a theoretical issue. I believe this group of confused visitors includes me. I think I remember clicking through to this page, being puzzled by the lack of back-and-forth, and then surfing away -- not consciously angry, but feeling lost and a bit let down. This incident, and others like it, is not a trivial matter. This sort of thing is costing the company money.

How is 37signals to solve this PR problem, which GetSatisfaction has intentionally inflicted on their company, except by making a big, immediate, loud public fuss? Ideally, this message needs to reach every single person who has ever visited that page on GetSatisfaction.

If GetSatisfaction doesn't want to get into confrontational disagreements, perhaps they should have avoided designing a system that automatically trashes the public image of other companies.

Loud public fuss is usually a reasonable backup plan if asking them to change doesn't work, but starting off by asking people to resolve something lends you credibility because you've tried to resolve things amicably. If you want to put a squeeze on them, you can add, "Or we're going to lambaste you in our popular blog."

But starting off that way is just obnoxious. Granted, as noted, being obnoxious drives page views.

Loud public fuss is usually a reasonable backup plan if asking them to change doesn't work.

You still haven't grasped the problem. I'm sure that 37signals could easily have used quiet channels to remove the offending pages, messages, and marketing copy on GetSatisfaction.

But that would not have reached me. Up until three hours ago I was wandering through the world, with a faint memory of the time that I followed a Google link to a 37signals support page and found nothing but a ghost town. To counteract that bad impression, they need me to hear that it wasn't their fault, and they want me -- a potential future customer -- to know that they take their reputation very seriously.

I suppose they didn't have to put up a blog post. They could have filed a lawsuit, or obtained an injunction, and then publicized that instead. Would that have been more polite?

You knowing that that support page solves the problem for you but not for 37 Signals, or for GetSatisfaction. And that's the problem with airing dirty laundry in public. It would have been much better for Jason to reach out to Lane and talk to them about this first, as this approach makes creates adversity.

It is called etiquette-- it is also called allowing your opponent a way out. A cornered opponent always fights harder. Fortunately for Jason, the GetSatisfaction folks are obsessed with listening and responding. They drink their own kool-aid. But had it been anybody else, this could have ended really poorly.

"And that's the problem with airing dirty laundry in public."

That's GS's mission, of course.

"Fortunately for Jason, the GetSatisfaction folks are obsessed with listening and responding."

No. Fortunately for GS, 37S started off with a public complaint and GS chose to respond quickly. "Cornered" or not, GS really had nothing to stand on if they'd opted to leave things untouched and 37S had taken the legal route.

They're not scrambling to make "customers" happy, they're scrambling to avoid a company with deep pockets and a bored legal team from noticing this little story, going to GS, and seeing "My Litigious Company's Customer Support Page".

Not every wrong in the world needs to be righted. Sometimes righting an old wrong creates a new wrong. Personally, I find new wrongs to be more costly than old ones.

Not to mention that this way of addressing it has no doubt created some new enemies. Sure, it looks like some of the stuff from GetSatisfaction is a bit shadey, but do you really want them as an enemy over it? If you loudly called my startup extortionist and mafia like, I'd be more than a little pissed off, even if I had screwed up.

The startup world seems too small to want to create that kind of karma.

But again, if the post had said, "Hi folks, just to let you know, the GetSatisfaction page for 37s is not official and we've worked something out with them where they'll now offer an option to all companies to redirect to their real support page and will ask permission to use logos in the future and tone down the language." it wouldn't have been the top story on HN.

Would those down-voting comments please take the time to reply explaining why?

GetSatisfaction's opening line in the "conversation" was: "We will be using your trademarks and collateral to imply that you are not interested in supporting your customers." GetSatisfaction had already lambasted 37 Signals.

How did GetSatisfaction, and you, reasonably expect the conversation to proceed from there? Gentle pleading on 37 Signals part? What???

Remember getsatisfaction provides a public front for YOUR company. Why shouldn't they discuss it in the public. They are discussing YOUR business in public, without your permission, and trying to come off as legit.

It's a nice way to profit from a bad situation. Added would be a pack of lawyers with rows of razor-sharp teeth and large dorsal fins.

People have disagreements and confrontation all the time.

Mature people resolve those potential conflicts through calm discussion.

Immature people resort to attacking the people they disagree with.

I was surprised this 37s post didn't end with "and this is why on March 31, 2009 we filed suit against Get Satisfaction for trademark infringement and unjust enrichment". That they don't seem to have done that hurts your argument that they're being immature.

Also, calling 37signals out for going straight to the public seems like an exceptionally weak criticism in this case. GS is trading on inserting themselves into the public conversation about companies they have nothing to do with. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

On the flip side, a company like Get Satisfaction that is pushing for open dialog on support issues should be perfectly comfortable eating their own dog food here. 37Signals made what I believe to be a legitimate public complaint, Get Satisfaction made what I believe to be a quick and acceptable public response. I suppose the only loss here is that this wasn't handled on Get Satisfaction's own support site.

Why should it have to be handled on Get Satisfaction's support site?

It would improve PR for them.

Why does anyone owe GS good PR out of this?

When the harm caused is largely that of public image, I think a public explanation is a reasonable response.

Amen.

Totally OT, but aren't posts like this and other similar "I agree" posts redundant? I thought that's what the little up-mod button was for? This feels like clutter to me.

Isn't "this feels like clutter to me" what the down-mod button is for?

I don't think so unless it's pointlessly clutter (e.g. "amen"). In general I reserve voting something below 1 for things that are offensive or contain zero content.

I did down-mod it, but I see it often enough that I wanted to bring it up and see if I was misunderstanding something.

I'm in the camp that says 37Signals have a valid point. Let's assume their intention is not about traffic but is to pressure GetSatisfaction into rectifying the situation as quickly as possible (and not just for 37Signals) then as harsh as the post may have been:

1) 37Signals have used their considerable influence to achieve change on behalf of many sites who have far less influence 2) 37Signals used the open model of putting pressure on a company publicly that GetSatisfaction have built their business on 3) They've effected change and created open discussion

Could they have been 'nicer'? Perhaps. But more effective, I'm not so sure...

Bullshit (will probably get a downmod or two for my vehemence).

If Jason Fried dropped them a note saying, "I almost hit PUBLISH on the following rant-style post, but I wanted to drop you guys a line first", they would've jumped just as far, just as fast.

It would've cost him exactly NOTHING to give it a day or two on private channels before posting a rant other than the time it took to find a contact form and hit "ctrl-V".

Public rants are fun. Causing public harm to someone who has slighted you is gratifying. Getting a reaction from supporters and an apology from the rant-target is gratifying. That's the motivation of this post. Self-gratification. I generally love 37s, but not here.

Pretty disappointing.

Except that other folks on the web would have no idea this was going on. A private e-mail likely results in a private response (changing the wording on 37signals's get satisfaction page). A public exposure gets things changed... as it did.

The fact is that GS got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. To think that the wording on that banner was not carefully considered is just plain naive.

The 37 signals post is spot on. They where attempting to increase their conversion by strong-arming businesses into signing up. It didn't make it on to the site by accident. They changed the wording to something rather harsh, and received a commiserate reply in return.

I hope they've learned their lesson, as I rather like their product.

I dunno if you've ever worked in a small startup, but to think that all wording that gets out the door gets vetted all the time is just ridiculous. My startup is pretty careful, but we've gotten caught with mistakes or even placeholder content once or twice. Chances are, some lowbie at the company said, "Oh, this will improve the text, I bet. I'll make sure to bring it up in the next design review".

If a private communication as I described would've resulted in change (it would've), what extra benefit do we get out of turning it into an expose'? If it's a big monolithic evil company, I get the concept of a public spanking. But if it's a small startup, can't we give people just a LITTLE benefit of the doubt and try the polite path first?

I'm currently at my third.

Even if it was placeholder content it had been on the site for more than a week, on every single non-paying customers page. That's not something that just slips by. This isn't a typo in the terms of service, it's a marketing tool.

Give me a break. Your never going to convince me this was a simple mistake.

Enjo, I back your position on this 100%. Dodgy, intentional marketing tactic from GS - no doubt about it.

It's rather irrelevant if it was intentional or not - the damage is still very real. If you accidentally shoot someones head off, you're still accountable for the action. Of course there's a difference in how to handle the mistake (murder-one or manslaughter?), but the question of responsibility remains the same. If GS handles this matter well (And so far they seem to), they might get away with some minor damage done to their own reputation, but that's not Jason' fault - That's their own.

It's not like it's an either/or decision to send a private email or post an accusatory blog post. They could have simply tried the mature way first and then posted publicly if that didn't work.

In fact, the public post would probably have had even more impact if they had been able to say "We contacted GetSatisfaction to work with them but they wouldn't cooperate." As it is, it just reads like another one of 37signal's invented controversies designed to garner page views.

Ridiculous.

As if Fried couldn't have posted the article after an interaction w/ Get Satisfaction. But then it would be a good example of quick customer service, as opposed to a hatchet job.

it would be a good example of quick customer service

37signals were not and are not customers of Get Satisfaction.

So? Clearly some of their users are.

I'm surprised to hear you take this position. If I set up a website with pages for companies including RescueTime, collected security vulnerability reports, provided statistics about them, included your logo and a comment about your commitment to secure software development, I'd expect to hear from your lawyers.

Well, if you didn't otherwise appear like an asshole, you'd hear from me first. If we couldn't come to some accord, I'd weigh the lawyer involvement with the time investment that it'd require to compel you to be more reasonable.

How about this: what's an honest answer about how pissed you'd be if:

(1) I was the top Google search result for "RescueTime security"

(2) That page linked to a site where I collected security reports from end-users.

(3) That page had your logo on it.

(4) That page had copy that might suggest RescueTime didn't take the security of your customer's data seriously.

We've established that you'd come talk to me first (actually, by your wording, we've establish that I'd be hearing from your lawyer). But how upset would you be?

Why are you creating a hypothetical situation about security? Seems like a hypothetical situation about customer support would be more appropriate. The answer is (for customer support)-- moderately. But the question is: What's the goal with a response? To make them suffer? Or to fix it? How does it benefit my business to invest extra time/money to make another company suffer?

I think the grown up / smart way to respond to feeling pissed off/slighted isn't what 37s did. And it's not calling a lawyer. Or not at first.

If it was important to my business that the issue fix itself, I'd way the costs and benefits of assorted actions. Easiest thing is to pick up the phone and take 15 minutes to politely explain our position and ask for a timeframe for resolution. If didn't feel that was going to solve the issue, I'd go the expose' route (which, as someone else mentioned-- carries a lot more weight if you can say, "I privately asked them to fix it and they pretty much told me to fuck off"). If that didn't work, I'd decide whether it was worth the $300 to spin up a form letter from my lawyer. And if that didn't work, I'd decide whether it was worth it to spin up a lawsuit (in terms of time and money).

Being "pissed off" shouldn't enter into business decisions. But, again-- I don't think 37s' decision to take this public immediately was not motivated by anything but self-gratification (unless you want to go meta and credit them for a great linkbait play).

What's the goal with a response?

As I've said elsewhere in this thread: To reach the people -- potentially thousands of people -- who cared enough to type the name of your company into a search engine, but who then read some misleading but official-looking information, came away thinking that your company is kind of lame, and will never be heard of again unless you act.

Just because your prospective customers are invisible to you doesn't mean that they don't matter.

No, I was saying: "What is 37s trying to achieve with a response?"

I think the correct answer is: "To get GS to make the site look less official/confusing and a bit less insulting".

If that's the goal, which gets their business there faster? A 15 minute phone call or a well-worded 1 hour rant on the blog?

I TOTALLY agree that GS is confusing, especially for novice users. In fact, I'll go farther and say that the changes they are making aren't enough to fix that. They need to change the page titles/descriptions so that they are obviously 3rd party in the SERP.

In short, I agree with the offense. I'm not sure about intent/malice. Because of that, I think the response falls into the self-gratifying torch-and-pitchfork vigilantism that plays so well on the internet. Humanity should be better than that and give companies the benefit of the doubt unless they have obvious malicious intent and/or a track record of evil.

For all we know, a call to GS could've gotten a response of: "Ya know-- we never looked at it that way and have been so darn focused on stuff that I think we didn't see the forest for the trees."

"To get GS to make the site look less official/confusing and bit less insulting" is only part of the answer.

The other part, as mechanical_fish has elqouently pointed out above, is to reach present/past/potential customers of 37s who were mislead by GS into thinking that 37s does not answer customer questions. Contacting GS alone would not have solved the damage GS already did. It was not enough for 37s to prevent future abuse, but also to turn back the damage already done in the past.

You left "deterring future companies who think this is a smart play" out of the calculus there.

Being able to manage "feeling upset" is generally considered a good thing, no? Or are we supposed to give in to our feelings every time we feel upset?

I'm trying to separate the legitimacy of 37signals' complaint --- which I care about --- from the "level of maturity" shown by their response. I don't care about that at all. Why would it? How does it affect me?

How does it affect me?

First of all, you also run a start-up, so it affects you because they might turn on you next, for some slight misunderstanding.

Secondly, it affects you as a customer, because people who act immaturely rarely do so in a single area. They might treat you, as a customer, with a similar level of immaturity, if you tick them off.

You walk on a very thin rope here. I don't at all buy the 'slight misunderstanding' thing concerning the case they had.

The damage to 37signals image could have been very real. Even if it wasn't done purposedly.

What is more important is, i don't get why you see 37signals as the porentially harmful actor here. If i had a startup i would be very happy that 37signals did the job to stop this company to potentially harm My work too !

Also the argument that this public response is gonna 'harm' getsatisfaction in anyway doesn't hold up at all. At the very worse, this is bad publicity, and if they're smart they can still turn that around easily.

Personally, I'm struck by the premise that Get Satisfaction, of all people, are being wronged by people publicly airing real, acknowledged grievances against them.

"I almost hit PUBLISH on the following rant-style post, but I wanted to drop you guys a line first"

No, that would have been extortion in the form of: "Nice place you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it." In case you missed it, coersion is what is being railed against.

There is a world of difference between responding to public criticism and responding on threat of public criticism.

- Hey - you are stealing my sutff! - Oh, you noticed? Sorry, I will stop now. I will go steal someone else's stuff then.

This is not to equate GS actions with stealing, but merely to demonstrate a fault in your reasoning.

Getting a reaction from supporters and an apology from the rant-target is gratifying. That's the motivation of this post. Self-gratification.

I've got to admit, I've done this before to a much larger company than GetSatisfaction with a much smaller blog than 37signals' and this was part of my motivation for doing so.

I don't understand why you weren't upmodded more, you were 100% correct on this point.

I've been complaining about this for a while now and I'd tend to agree here. The whole getsatisfaction service is sort of like a blackmail scheme to start out with: They try hard to attract all of your users to their site, to be the "Weebly support forum", and then users are disappointed when their requests aren't answered.

What's most annoying is that GetSatisfaction has a strong selection bias towards the users who have problems, and so it very negatively affects the image of the company. There is no way to respond to those users or fix their problems besides buying into the whole scam and doing support on their site.

FYI, their support system has so much more overhead than the one we use internally that I'd estimate our support costs would increase 2-3X by moving all of our support into their system.

That they have a valid point is not in question. GS themselves have acknowledged it and immediately fixed the offending badges and pages.

My point is, the way they handled conveying that point to GetSatisfaction was nasty, brutish, and totally unwarranted.

That they have a valid point is not in question.

totally unwarranted

If you agree that Jason's point is valid, I don't see how you can think his response was unwarranted.

Jason did not appear to believe GetSatisfaction simply slipped up. Instead he accused them of extortion! His response was in line with this belief and only unwarranted if you disagree with his point.

That they have a valid point does not mean that all their points were valid.

Valid point: GS wording is bad.

Invalid point: GS are evil extortionists.

Both can coexist in the same post.

That they have a valid point is not in question.

Should I have taken that to mean: "That some of the very minor points he made were valid is not in question."?

Clearly the takeaway from his post was not that he disagreed with the wording.

DHH wrote a comment that I really agree with: "Brian, that language adequately reflects the feeling we have when we discover a site that is accepting questions and requests from users who expect an answer there - and will be disappointed when they don’t get it - is taunting the conversation with words like we haven’t committed to an open conversation and then have a price tag to make that go away.

GS’ is certainly helping to turn that image by being quick to respond here, but that doesn’t really change how the situation arose."

I think it might have been more polite to privately discuss this with GetSatisfaction first, but this needed to be discussed publicly.

The only difference between an official support page and an unofficial support page is the added announcement at the top that says the page is unofficial.

The official support pages also says it is supported by employees, but I don't really know what that means by itself. Does it mean that the product is only supported through Get Satisfaction, or does it only mean that company employees read the questions there?

Just check out the pages for officially supported products and unofficially supported products. Photosynth is only officially supported by GetSatisfication. The NY Times has its own customer support. The only big difference I see is that the NY Times has the added message that it is unofficial.

Photosynth:http://getsatisfaction.com/livelabs/products/livelabs_photos...

NY Times:http://getsatisfaction.com/nytimes

GS is advertising itself as a one stop customer support solution.If I believe that a company solely uses GS and try to contact that company, I am going to treat any response as an official response.

With 14k+ plus support pages on GS, I am sure that there are a few companies out there that don't even know they have a GS page. So if GS is not clearly saying that those pages are unofficial, any lack of correspondence will hurt that company.

GS was basically hijacking some companies customer service. If I have a problem with a product, and I incorrectly believe that I am being ignored, the company will end up worse off. At the minimum, I will seriously consider not buying from that company again, and I might mention my bad experience to other people I know. And if my problem was severe, I might think of filing a chargeback.

I really doubt 37Signals spends a lot of time scouring the internet looking for people infringing on their IP. So probably this was brought to their attention by their own customers. So while they could have go about this in a less confrontational manner, I really don't think they were being an arse. This problem deserved public attention.

What? Some random guys put nonsense like "37 signals is not committed blah blah blah" and 37signals should be polite with those bastards? And in case you missed the news, 37signals' main income is not ads on their blog, they have pretty successful web app business. Posting that for "generating page views" sounds ridiculous if you know at least a bit about the company which posted it.

Right, because none of their customers came from their blog :/

If I were them, I would have send an email asking for the page to be removed, and moved on.

It's also bad form to publicly masquerade as an official support forum for a company without discussing it in private first.

37signals public response seems commensurate with the amount of private discussion GetSatisfaction appears to have had with 37signals about placing that badge on their fake support page.

Did you discuss this in private with 37signals before attacking them in public?

I think the extortion was pretty blatant, and the counterattack was proportionate.

The BS response given by GetSatisfaction's people is so bad it proves the point.

The handful of times I've contacted getsatisfaction, they've responded quickly and like a startup that cares about its customers and what they think. I agree this could have been emailed first.

Agreed. Pretty bad form to not email first with concerns/questions etc.

But as you say, if they had resolved it privately, people wouldn't be reading about it on their blog.

37signals absolutely has a valid point and I agree with their decision to make this public so all can be aware of the tactics being employed by GS.

FYI-GS is using the same type of extortion that the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has used since inception to scare companies into becoming a paid member. The general public has no idea how dishonest many of these client attainment methods really are.

I had no idea about the BBB. Can you tell us more?

Here's an intro article: http://yourbiz.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/13/996827.aspx

But the sentiment is pretty clear: you can pay to stay in the BBB's good graces. If you're naturally OK, you should be fine, but if you're bad, you can pay to get OK.

Well, you don't necessarily have to pay. Just that your local BBB will be a lot less annoying if you do, and they'll also give you a shiny seal of approval and a better grade that doesn't mean squat.

I have no idea why so many people I know are so willing to jump to file complaints with them before some more logical ways to solve a problem...like, oh, calling up the business in question? BBB don't have any authority over businesses and their tactics are annoying on both ends. I've been burned by the BBB from both a business and a customer perspective by being ignored and told to go around in circles and do things I already attempted to do.

What was that issue I had as a customer? The alarm company I went with not providing service, which we discovered after routine monthly testing..can you say negligence? They wouldn't stop billing us and they even billed us for the equipment they gave us originally after we got a new company in to replace everything and told the old company to give us an address to at least send this back, or have someone pick it up (but they never did). The local BBB told us "tough, deal with it, talk to them" even though we filed an online complaint and the old alarm company kept hanging up on us before we could talk to anyone in charge of billing, at the least. So what happened? We sued the company and the owner and the situation ended happily for us, except if you go to the BBB and look up information on this business that still exists, there's nothing bad about it. Good job BBB, really, good job.

The business one was even more preposterous, where the BBB informed me that a customer had a complaint for something that wasn't even our problem, it was user error. She had never told anyone about it, she never called, she never visited again, she just went and filed a bullshit complaint that we went to unreasonable lengths to resolve to her satisfaction. What do we get for dealing with user stupidity? A lower grade on the BBB website? They're insane. You'd be hard pressed to find a business that doesn't hate them, especially smaller ones who don't want to pay extortionate rates for a stupid BBB "approval" when they already provide stellar customer support.

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