37signals' follow up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..." | Hacker News Reader

37signals' follow up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..."

37signals.com

112 pointssteamboiler140 comments

The frustrating thing about this for me is that I liked Get Satisfaction. It's a really well-done site, for the most part, and it was easy and convenient. I had never used it deeply, and only for services that were actually using it as their primary support channel, so I didn't even realize that they had pages for companies that hadn't signed up with them.

All the GS pages look pretty much identical, save for a few logos. After a while, you blow past the repeated boilerplate on each page, and you just use the functionality. I was one of the people who would never have noticed the small distinctions between official and unofficial; I would have thought any GS page was sanctioned by the company, because frankly, it never would have even entered my mind that GS would so brazenly try to unilaterally pose as a company's support channel.

This is exactly the kind of thing that trademarks are intended to protect against. I hate to say it, but all the hand-wringing over whether 37s was being rude by dropping a bomb of a blog post, is kind of silly. It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit.

"It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit."

I agree, there's a very strong case for a trademark lawsuit. What's more, I think I can almost guarantee that some other company will file a lawsuit if Get Satisfaction doesn't clean up their act. And I'd bet on whoever files the lawsuit, too. This is quite clearly trademark infringement, from my non-lawyer-but-spent-time-studying-this point of view.

Some people actually need to lose, big, in order to gain introspection.

I remember Steven King on NPR talking about the guy who badly injured him in a car accident. He was frustrated that the courts were lenient, because he said the guy continued to seem in denial about the connection between his actions and the damage he had caused. Apparently, this guy had a history of reckless driving (Steven King had been walking on the side of the road when he was hit), but he continued to view these accidents as bad luck, circumstance, things happen, and so forth. When asked what he wanted to see from the courts, Steven King said he wasn't looking for vengeance, but he wanted to see the guy placed into a situation where he'd be forced to finally confront his actions and fully acknowledge his role in the damage he had caused.

Now, obviously GetSatisfaction is not guilty of something as serious as physical harm. But I still hear the same lack of introspection, the same denial, that I think Steve King was referring to. They are still calling this a "learning experience", an "error", something to "discuss and improve on." Their tone alternates between defensive, accusatory, and chirpy.

This shows a complete lack of introspection and self-awareness. It's alien to most, but some people require a true legal defeat to develop introspection, something that strips away every final defense and puts them in a position where they have no recourse but to truly and deeply acknowledge their behavior.

As long as 37Signals engages with these folks in a blog vs blog thing, they're going to see this as a he said, she said, where there are good points to be made on each side. Personally, I don't get any indication they recognize how manipulative, deceptive, and wrong their actions really are.

I'm impressed with how Jason handled it. GS made some changes that sounded good enough to me, but after reading this post, I'm firmly on 37signals side. GetSatisfaction is a good idea but it's presented very deceptively and has the potential to hurt customers as much as it helps.

The problem is that morality comes into competition with money in this situation. The more legitimate and official and connected to the company Get Satisfaction makes their pages look, the more customers are going to use them as a way to try to get official-ish support. The more users use them as a way to get support, the more pressure there is on the company to use it as a support mechanism - whether they want to or not.

Even beyond that, Get Satisfaction is essentially operating an unofficial forum that a company can pay to co-opt. Their paid plans specifically say that you get to shape the conversation. How Orwellian! So, you'll let users post bad things about my company on your service unless I start paying you in which case I get to decide what gets posted? That's just gross on both sides. And, of course, the more official it looks, the more it matters when people are posting bad things. Plus, once a company starts endorsing it, more customers will use it meaning that they can never stop paying.

There's a huge moral hazard there. If their business plan were to offer an unofficial support system for all companies, that would be great. If their business plan were to offer a product companies could sign up for to outsource their support IT infrastructure, that would be great. But their business plan is to offer the first in the hopes that companies will feel pressure to do the second.

EDIT: I want to clarify that I don't think Get Satisfaction is maliciously plotting in this way. I'm guessing that their plotting is to give customers the best support channels possible - in cases that they can be official, that means being official, but in other cases, it means giving customers the chance to unofficially talk about the company/products. However, it also means that their profits become tied to whether companies feel pressure to make Get Satisfaction an official support mechanism and the more people that use it because it looks official-ish, the more their profits are likely to be.

As I said in a comment just posted, the user who wanted satisfaction, no pun intended, created that page on GetSatisfaction forums. If anything, the failure was technical, since GS did not notify 37Signals that a page has been created for their company.

Matter of fact, same can be said for any third-party service that lets users create pages/forums for companies they have beef with.

See, but most third-party services aren't also trying to sell themselves as a legitimate, official thing too. Sure, I can post links to Amazon releases here, but HN isn't trying to offer itself to Amazon as "pay $X and you'll have your press releases up here" at the same time. The difference is that anyone can post things on here and there's nothing any company can do about it. I could post, "Amazon's new MapReduce is a plot to steal my data" and people could vote it up. Likewise, I could post that on GS, but it's different: GS then has this option for Amazon to stop comments/posts they don't like (for a fee). That's the difference. Most third party sites have this: "we'll let users post bad things about you". GS has this: "we'll let people post bad things about you. . .unless you pay us." That's morally hazardous.

Yes, but had they not had their pages looking semi-official, there would be no reason to use GS, now would there?

As I've said somewhere lower in the comments, two things would have made a world of difference here.

1. GS should have had an e-mail notification system in place. They should notify any company, much less 37Signals, that there's been a question posted on their forums. Same can be said for UserVoice and any other third-party site who wants to get into this game. Had they notified the support people at 37Signals, none of this would have come to bear.

2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately. Had he talked to GS's admins/support through e-mail privately, there'd be no need for this hubbub. If the e-mail route did not work, then I agree with denouncing GS publicly.

All I'm alluding to here is maturity. There are good ways of handling issues and then there are bad ones. Even if Jason has a good point about GS's business conduct, it's lost, not just on me, based solely on his approach to it.

If the only way to make your product work is to co-opt the branding and identity of another company, you have a business model problem. Are you sure you're really advocating for GS here?

No, they can advocate for themselves. I'm advocating for maturity in the resolution of such problems.

I've never denied that what GS was at best misleading, however, I don't think that going public without trying to resolve matters privately is very mature. In this case, GS has responded positively, but things could have shaped differently had there been another Jason Fried on the other side.

Just a guess, but I think if GS had a Jason Fried, the "conversation" would look more like this:

37s: The Get Satisfaction business model is dangerously close to extortion.

GS: We didn't realize it, but you're right. We're doing X, Y, and Z to fix it right now. We're sorry.

37s: Also there's 10x more 37s branding on your pages than GS branding, which is misleading.

GS: You know what? You're right about that too. We thought the branding would help our users, but it's turning out to be misleading. We're doing X, Y, and Z to rebadge the pages, and we're sorry.

37s: ...

Peanut Gallery 1: GS misled the whole Internet?

Peanut Gallery 2: Yeah, and they apologized. That all you got?

Peanut Gallery 1: ...

Peanut Gallery 2: ...

Instead, because GS apparently doesn't know how to concede a point cleanly and end the discussion, they're going to remain the center of attention for awhile. And while all publicity is in a sense good publicity, the people they make money from are hearing nothing except "trademark infringement" and "customer service horror story".

I don't that that's how it'd go, for the simple reason that if Jason Fried was so outraged at the GS's behaviour, it only stands to reason that had there been another JF on the other side, he'd be outraged by the 37S's one that he'd flame him back.

You know what this is just getting too complicated.

Assuming no ill intent and simple (if major) ignorance being GS's problem, having someone around like Fried with an understanding of trademark and branding would have probably prevented the whole issue.

I'll give you that point.

> they're going to remain the center of attention for awhile.

Everyone on the Internet has a soapbox. Jason Fried/37S has a much bigger soapbox than the average disgruntled blogger/user because of their huge reader base.

Thank God. If this had happened to me, I'd have no recourse. Keep in mind, even a public flogging didn't work for GS. This is the second post. Will this work? We'll see.

The guys behind GS are not stupid... the sheer volume of evidence against them would suggest that much of this was intentional.

The initial reply from GS that promised to change the phrasing on their site seemed, to me at least, disingenuous, like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

That's just not scalable. You can't politely contact every company that's screwing you over and ask nicely for them to stop. It's a bit naive to think that a blog post was the nuclear option - this very well could have been a lawsuit.

A trademark lawsuit would have actually made more sense. The blog post was intended to embarrass GS and therefore diminish their status in the Internet world, while at the same time airing your grievance.

That can be especially said for this follow-up post. If there was no need for the original one, there's absolutely no need for this one. If Jason thought that there are design considerations GS needed to think about, this whole post should have then gone privately.

However, opting to blog about it publicly so that one of GS's founders can go and say "Right, we got it. We will include it in our redesign" is, at best, pulling rank.

Sarah Hatter had said that she answers thousands of support e-mails every year. Saying it's not scalable to send an e-mail to a company you have a grievance with is childish.

So it's better to sue someone than shame them into better behavior?

Let me offer an analogy:

Your neighbour trespasses on your farm. Moreover, he builds a small store on it with no permits and when he gets tagged for it by the inspector, he points to you as it's your farm. Do you:

a) Find him, take him to the town square and publicly whip him in front of the whole town? b) Take him to court for trespassing?

Terrible metaphor: a critical blog post is not aggravated assault.

You seem to have a bit of a fixation on criticism as some sort of injury.

Saying that someone is trying to extort money from you and that their behaviour is "mafia-like" and tantamount to "blackmail" is very heavy-handed criticism, especially on a public forum. It is intended to injure, if only their reputation.

Publicly whipping someone in a town square will cause more mental anguish than physical pain. It's intended to embarrass that person, as well as scare anyone else watching. Please point out where I have gone wrong with the drawing of these parallels.

Publicly criticizing someone, even outright denouncing them in stern but entirely truthful terms, is not even in the same league as publicly whipping someone.

This public criticism elicited awareness of the behavior for people who might have gone to GS unaware of their practices. It elicited GS to amend at least some of their practices. The only observers plausibly "scared" by this are people who want to build a business that involves impersonating other companies.

Had the phrases referring to Mafia, blackmail and extortion been left out of the piece, I'd totally agree with you.

Including such words, however, is not "publicly criticizing" someone nor "outright denouncing them in stern but entirely truthful terms". They're meant to incite the other side. They're there to show righteous anger and having as many readers as 37Signals does, it's completely out of bounds.

Combine that with the complete and utter lack of professionalism displayed by Jason and that post can, and will be, taken as public shaming of GS.

Public shaming is not criticism nor denouncement. But yes, you're right. The only companies scared will be the ones who want to follow a similar model.

Of course, I'd have preferred to have the technical issues pointed out so that those up-and-coming companies can learn from this debacle, but I guess appealing to people's fears is much better. After all, that's what most of the world's governments have been doing to their people, so why expect more from our technical leaders.

I'm afraid I have nothing further to say to you; we are speaking very different languages.

And for that, I apologize.

A trademark lawsuit would have made 37s look bad and would have taken forever to be resolved, while they were still getting damaged. A lawsuit wouldn't have been better, it just would have been justified.

The need was: their business was being hurt by the presence of the GS page that looked official but wasn't. If that doesn't count as a need, wtf does?

There is a delicious irony in your post. GS whole reason for being is open and honest discussion about products and services. Throughout their marketing materials they talk about how airing things out in a public way is better than doing it privately.

So it seems like Jason is simply playing by their rules no?

That doesn't make much sense. I've written a lot of blog posts and a lot of email and I can't say that the latter takes longer than the former.

The irony in the "this could have been a lawsuit" is that their reply could have been too, since I suspect they'd have a pretty good case for a defamation suit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law#De...

A blog post gets to more people than an email.

I wouldn't like GS's chances if they'd tried a slap-suit against 37S, even if they hadn't publicly admitted every factual point, apologized, and blamed every "misinterpretation" of their motives on their own poor communication skills.

I'm not disputing the trademark issue. I think 37s would have a pretty good case there. But 37s went beyond there to call them extortionists and other implications of illegal activity (not connected to trademark infringement), which is where they crossed the (legal) line.

I think that if you carefully re-read Fried's original post, you'll note that he at no point accused them of actually engaging in any other illegal activities. His remarks were carefully worded; I wouldn't be terribly surprised if a lawyer had looked at it at some point.

(This is why I've been left wondering at people who saw the post as a tossed-off rant. It was a detailed, edited, and thoughtful complaint.)

From the original, "As if the threatening language and false accusations weren't enough, now there’s extortion too!"

How is that not claiming that they're engaging in extortion?

They can reasonably say they were referring to the casual meaning of the term and not accusing the GS guys of showing up at their office and making a coy speech about how "accidents" and "fires" can just happen.

You mean right after they compared them to a mafioso protection scheme?

Amusingly, if you click on the wikipedia link above, and follow the reference to the bit on per se defamation, the example given is claiming that someone extorted money that did not.

If you really believe your assertion that Fried's post was legally defamatory instead of harsh criticism, why not find a lawyer and show him/her the text of that post?

GS certainly don't seem to think they would have a case.

Of course one blog post doesn't take longer than one email. But one blog post that nips things like this in the bud going forward is a hell of a lot shorter than emails+waiting for action+follow up for however many n companies try to pull this nonsense.

I suspect this would have accomplished things real fast:

"Guys x, y and z need to change in the next week or we're going to rip you apart on our blog and possibly sue for trademark violation. -37s"

For GS. Maybe. Then rinse and repeat for other companies that pull the same thing in the future.

Plus a private email does nothing for the little guys that have no clout, who would be completely ignored if they made the same complaints. 37s helped far more people than themselves by doing this.

The latter however is a separate (and valid) point. I'm not against them being pressured; I think that was the right thing to do and I'd not have backed down until they made the change more generally, but I think that could have been done just as quickly and easily (with this specific company, not some other one that we're not talking about) in private.

I'm a founder too, so I'm mostly imagining myself in their shoes and how angry I'd be if somebody took a very public swing at my company without giving me a chance to make it right. I'm sure the 37s guys are as protective of "their baby". ;-)

"2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately."

The funny thing is, the same could be said for people using GS for airing their grievances. A company that hosts a public forum that solicits features/changes/complaints from people can't seriously expect someone to use a private channel to suggest features/changes/complaints, can they?

That's downright hypocritical in my book.

They can, if they respond to those complaints/support requests in a timely manner.

The only way GS makes sense is if you've tried to contact a company in order to register a complaint and were not successful:

1) You got a generic e-mail back, knowing that your issue will never be looked at.

2) The company does not have any sort of contact information available on their site.

If users of GS register complaints there, GS should forward those complaints to the company in question. That makes sense to me. If GS does not do that, then that's a problem.

However, that does not mean that you can air your grievance with them publicly until all other means have failed. It's logical, no?

I disagree with #2.

I think that 37signals did the right thing. This issue doesn't just affect 37signals, it affects a lot of other companies.

In my opinion, 37signals were obliged to talk about this publicly. If they sent some private mails, a lot of people and companies would still be in the dark regarding the issue. They had a responsibility to call bullshit.

This situations reminds me a bit of yelp, where there are rumors of yelp accepting money to remove negative reviews.

I think this will start to become a trend. Anonymous feedback can be overly hostile and ruin companies. However, feedback moderated by the company in question might as well be a sales page. In the middle there are companies who try to play both sides, giving the appearance of openness while also being willing to take money to moderate the feedback.

I really don't think that's the motivation at all-- but, of course, the Internet mob loves a villain, so pour on the hyperbole. Jesus, did you just make a 1984 reference aimed at a site that's trying to encourage businesses to have public support conversations!? Do you REALLY think it's Orwellian for forum software to allow the admin to delete threads?

It's not extortion to build a channel for discussion and have that channel get used enough that the company really oughta start paying attention. If it was, Twitter would be guilty. Let's bring our torches and pitchforks to all of the other forums out there that focus on technical issues with specific products.

The officialness of non-sanctioned forums (<20% of their signups nowadays, apparently) is clearly a problem which they agreed to and are addressing-- and I honestly think they need to do more than they did (notably: they need to fix how they appear in search engines when they are non-sanctioned forums).

I think you're taking a short view of profits. GS might be able to make a few bucks by faking people out on purpose and trying to extort companies. They stand to make a lot more if they do the right thing. And, if you actually take the time to read about the founders and the company, it seems like they are trying to do that.

There is a huge difference between people talking about company X on blogs, forums, or Twitter, and some other company seeking to own X's relationship with its customers. That relationship is a critical part of most businesses. If that's what GS are doing, then I hope they fail because I don't want anyone else to ever be in that position.

Of course I don't know what GS's intentions really are. I'm more skeptical than you, though. If the deceptiveness of their website were truly unintentional, I would have expected a more unequivocal response from them in both words and actions. Or maybe tptacek is right and it's just crappy PR.

It may be possible to bring money and morality into line. I'm going to find out: https://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2009-04-01

I wondered why Jason didn't just contact GS directly with his concerns. Even if his customers might be confused by GS, Jason knows who/what they are and could of raised his grievances with them directly. Instead he published some serious accusations on his widely-read blog knowing it'd get a lot of buzz. I imagine this whole story could've played out a little better if instead of jumping the gun and shouting 'malice' he'd've taken some extra time to work things out directly with GS.

Because acting this way assures that the problem will be noticed and acted upon. Private letter would achieve nothing at worst and maybe some tweaks to 37signals page on GS at best. Customers of the other companies would get the same confusing message making it easy to take GS pages as official support. As you can see I don't believe in GetSatissfaction "mistakes". All the design decisions (which eventually led to the trouble with 37s) they took look very logical.

Also, because maybe Fried doesn't give a shit about whether GS gets their act together (as long as they fix the page), but does care that the 100 other startups that have the bright idea of grabbing 37signals logos have some idea that they're going to get smacked down for doing that.

I wonder how the discussion would've been had Jason used GS' site itself to note concerns. It'd be a sanctioned and public forum.

Would people be discussing public vs private airing of grievances? Probably not.

One of Fried's original points was that they didn't want to run a duplicate support site just because another company wanted to make money off of them.

You're right. And again, this whole "public" vs "private" thing is nonsense; 37s is complaining about a very public offense commited by GS for profit. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Reposting my comment from the post itself:

"@Tom: “why call them out so publicly on it, did you try an email and that failed? Why do it so angrily and so publicly?”

This is such a weak claim, that pointing out things on blogs rather than keeping them private is somehow wrong.

A) If you, as a company, are doing something that is arguably wrong, underhanded, etc., it is entirely fair game to be called out on that in public. The best analogy I can come up with at the moment is, it’s like being angry at whistle blowers for going public instead of solely trying to resolve the issue inside the company. Tobacco, Enron, etc.

B) Doing stuff in public - and getting the momentum of other people behind you - gets things done a lot faster than being pissed in private does. It’s also a lot more transparent, which is a part of what the web is all about.

We all open up criticism of ourselves from anybody and everybody through blog comments, it’s totally natural to do the same through blog posts."

Great comment. The idea that "everything is public" is the best thing about the Internet. Transparency is awesome.

He could have also just sent a cease and desist order from his lawyers. Point is that the way Jason reacted was his choice. Notably, it was pretty much in the same form that GS promotes as a part of its service.

I don't agree with anyone who has replied here. The public rant equivalent to shouting through a megaphone, while 80,000 people who might have their own, smaller megaphones intently listen.

There was no need for this, unless the private e-mail did not resolve the problem. Refer back to what Sarah said. The user who had a problem with 37Signals created the initial page. How is this GetSatisfaction's issue and more importantly, how is it a justification for publicly slamming another business?

But there absolutely was a need for this public flogging for all the hundreds of companies who care about their customer relationship who may not be aware of GS' dubious tactics.

Perhaps GS could just shut down it's service and redirect all customers with problems or questions to send an email first?

I don't actually agree with you, but I upvoted you because I think your point is at least legitimate.

I wish people on HN would stop downvoting comments simply because they disagree with them. Different perspectives add value to conversation!

I'd had to up-vote a few people in these threads who've said things I disagreed with, but were at least valid. However, I'm clearly not the only one doing that; a lot of suddenly-downvoted stuff that wasn't outright GS fanboying has re-emerged pretty quickly.

We have an "official" page on GS. But I am astounded at how good their SEO is:

[dawdle support]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&ie=utf-8&#...

[dawdle help]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&ie=utf-8&...

But this is pretty old hat for online retailers:

[dawdle reviews]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&ie=utf-8&#...

I totally, totally get why 37signals is upset - but, sadly, what GS is doing isn't new. I'm envious that Jason has a big enough soapbox to get things changed; we certainly don't. That's why I'm thrilled he's being as public as he is.

Is it just me or was getsatisfaction nowhere to be seen on those links?

If so, go google!

Yep, google seems to have done its deed.

Wow, you're not kidding. (Now, the Google dance has hurt us negatively, but wow.)

This follow-up by Rundle gives a good dissection of the GS page design. He doesn't even mention the "Popular products & services from 37signals", where GS uses 37S's product logos as category links. Nor does he mention the fact that one of the two bits of GS branding on the page is a "Powered by" icon that an unfamiliar person would mistake for server software - or a service. Go to that page, and the word "Unofficial" and a small-print disclaimer are your only tip-offs that this is a "community".

The bad part of it all is that there's no need or justification at all for designing a customer support page that looks that official and target-company-branded if it isn't. There's no call for using another company's product logos as category links. As much as GS supporters laud that company as being a great bunch of people, I have trouble coming up for an honest purpose for these details.

I do note that they appear to have pulled down 37S's logo from the heading, though they've conspicuously left it up for other companies that don't use their support ( http://getsatisfaction.com/ups ).

Check the comments out. This started because a "very, very angry customer" yelled at them about their questions not getting answered. Still on the fence about GS?

Another problem not mentioned is this business model doesn't scale well for the companies it targets. It isn't just Get Satisfaction's pages you have to check... it's UserVoice's as well, and I'm sure there are others.

If people have a problem or a feature request and I don't choose to use those businesses, shouldn't it be the burden of those business (and not me) to make that clear to my customers if they inadvertantly end up there? Otherwise I have to sign up with them, or at least check their sites regularly...

That's the blackmail aspect for this niche, if not properly and ethically handled. "Hey, we've set up a page to catch unhappy customers. Better pay us time and/or money or we'll get them good and pissed-off at you."

Most places like Uservoice only the site owner can sign-up.

I think the question of "honesty" in business is always more complex than we'd like it to be. It's amazing how powerful is the pull to make a business model "work". And very hard to balance that with being conscious of the fairness of it. I very much like how Jason broke down the various aspects of what "customer service" can be.

I think this incident is a great reminder, that we have to be incredibly diligent in balancing the pursuit of our business goals, with creating truly healthy communication and commercial ecosystems.

Yes. I think this whole thing has been valuable in terms of discussion, which is why I'm glad Fried actually took things out into the realm of open, transparent communication in his first post.

I was considering using Get Satisfaction until I found out they would create pages for companies that hadn't asked for them.

Even if the service is good, I don't support companies that don't match my values.

Some things here still don't jive...

37Signals customer support person (Sarah Hatter) just wrote a comment stating that they've known about this for a year and that she's been friends with the founder of GetSatisfaction for a long time. I don't see how that leads to angry blog post to 80k people... What it really sounds like is Jason was in a bad mood and now they're doing damage control

One nice thing from Thor Muller in the comments:

"Very clear feedback, which we’re grateful for and will take to the drawing board. And yes, we are as serious as can be about removing all confusion. As we’re in the midst of significant design effort, we will see changes continue to hit the site regularly. It should be no surprise that we welcome public feedback about it as it happens.

My apologies again."

Yes, that's what they should have been saying all along instead of playing the poor-misunderstood-and-bullied-community-site card. However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach.

However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach.

Or they may be just throwing up smoke and mirrors. If they stopped doing their thing in an underhanded way, would they have much of a business left?

I've stayed out this for the most part because neither company are of interest to me, but Tom's comment on this follow up post is interesting. It's almost as if 37signals knew about the site, made an attempt at using it and then couldn't be bothered to continue - instead preferring to wait a while and cause a little controversy (possibly for their own benefit). That's not to say that GS were/are in the right, but why wait nearly a year to start a conversation on this?

Do you always follow such a logical path to everything you do? I know I've gotten in situations where I've reacted to bad things way after it might have been necessary, because things build up to a bottleneck. And 37signals prides itself on being a small company where the individual people matter. They aren't professional in the smooth-and-polished-and-impregnable sense, and while that leads to some immaturity, it makes their company seem more human. So I doubt there's conscious scandal-making effort here: they don't strike me as cynical enough to work like that.

http://getsatisfaction.com/37signals/topics/customer_service...

That's from 10 months ago. The guy's mad, they respond (on GetSatisfaction, mind you), and the guy gets happier. But they don't keep using GS, because they do have their own support forum for this. Apparently they got more upset responses over the past year. So the first one wasn't terrible, but when you keep getting people hating you for poor customer service, eventually you hit a point where you flip and yell at GS for not providing a good intuitive solution.

I don't think anyone said there was a scandal in the works here, but in the realm of much ado about nothing... some things dont seem to add up and they're seemingly less human and honest when they start having stories that don't match for pr and damage control purposes... thats big corporation stuff just as much as it is small company with personality (especially now that that personality is turning towards full of themselves)

Christ, I got buried. -2 in 5 minutes for something I didn't think offended people is a record for me.

they're seeming less human and honest when they start having stories that don't match for pr and damage control purposes...

But their stories don't contradict. Or are you saying they seem less human when they're not glossing over everything with PR? That's kind of an odd way to look at things. I also doubt this is damage control, considering their first post said there would be a follow-up in a few days. They're just writing about this experience for the sake of people who might learn a lesson from it.

(They've always been full of themselves. Look at DHH's famous "fuck you" slide regarding his critics a few years ago. They're cocky and think they know best, but people read them because very often they're right.)

I'm a woman, of course I'm not always logical ;)

Seriously though, I personally find that the longer I leave something the less likely I am to get worked up about it. After a few weeks it's probably gone from my mind altogether, so yeah, 10 months does seem like a really long time to wait.

I don't really know that much about 37signals apart from what I've picked up here on HN, but I believe any company - any person - is capable of spinning a story for a little drama to bring their company PR. Maybe I'm just a cynic though :)

Oh dear, nobody likes my humour :p

For whatever reason, this thread's had a lot of people very quickly downvoted. Though I've got to say, humor's always hit-and-miss on HN. I think that because you started your topic off with a joke, it stood out more than the actual point you were making.

Remember that it wasn't just 10 months for that one thing. From what this entry said, they got multiple complaints along the line of "They aren't responding to me on GS so their customer service sucks". That 10-month one was just the first.

So do I go to 37signals' website for support on GS now?

Get Satisfaction should stop creating support pages for companies that HAVE NOT SIGNED UP .

That is the end of the problem and the ONLY WAY TO GO .

37 Signals isn’t creating Basecamp accounts for companies that have not signed up, is it?

Get Satisfaction business models is very similar to Yelp = Extortion 2.0

somewhere around 95% of the 37s fanboys comments I have read in between the last 3 threads are seemingly oblivious to what get satisfaction actually provides

1. there are the small companies who would like and out of the box solution for their support to save them time / money

2. there are the large companies that have terribly supported products and the community generally has to replace them, their official support channels are usually private (so they only help 1 person), or very heavily moderated to the point where they are just a pr exercise and of very little use. (remember creative?)

the idea that companies can ban users from provided the support that they should rightly be doing themselves is just plain ridiculous

Right. and Google shound not index pages of websites that have not signed up! Google even use your name in their search results!

The point of Get Satisfaction is to give people a way to corral ignorant and unresponsive companies into taking action. This a good thing. Concomitant with doing that, though, is a bit of extra work for responsive companies who are already good at support.

Fried's demands about unofficial badging and so on would destroy the good that GS does. If he can emblazon the page with UNOFFICIAL and LOOK HERE FOR SUPPORT, then what's to stop ShittyCorp from doing the same and pointing people to their own useless support pages?

To an extent, GS has to subvert the official support pages, otherwise it doesn't work. Fried's real argument is "this whole business model annoys me", but instead of just admitting that, he's going on about badges and design.

So, you're saying 37signals should expend their own energy to help GetSatisfaction's business model succeed, simply because their competitors don't have good support? Sounds asinine to me.

If GS really highlighted the unofficial part and also linked to official support pages then companies with good support and / or people who are neutral on whether the company is ignorant or unresponsive get the check out the official support forums first and won't be confused about the nature of the GS page.

People who have already something against the support offered by ShittyCorp will stick around and use the unofficial support provided on GS - why on earth would they follow a link that they know would be unhelpful? It's only a problem if you assume a staggering amount of stupidity on the part of the target market.

As long as ShittyCorp doesn't have the option of making the GS page automatically redirect to the useless support pages all is good.

The flip side is that if a company is to create a good QA site for an another company...Wouldn't they want it to be so official looking that the user would not be able to see the difference?

Personally, I'm more on the side of Get Satisfaction on this one. There are some valid points about how GS is doing things, granted, but Jason at 37Signals seems to have problems with the entire concept of their business/service. I dont. I think its fantastic.

I think it puts the impetus on companies to either really flush out their support processes, or to find a vendor that will do it for them.

That said, I think the 'Unofficial' notification does need to be more obvious.

How can you be? I mean GS is making the 37signals page look really official and making their customers mad because 37signals isn't answering their questions. They are clearly in the wrong. This has nothing to do with support processes.

I said previously that I think the 'Unofficial' needs to be more noticeable. Once that is corrected, I dont see it as a huge issue.

People are not idiots, but they are generally frustrated about support options. If there are tons of people using GS's unofficial support forums instead of your own, that tells you that your system is broken, and needs to be repaired.

If there are tons of people using GS's unofficial support forums instead of your own, that tells you that your system is broken, and needs to be repaired.

SNAP!

Ok ok, I should have provided more substance in my post. Thank you for spanking me HN. :)

Certainly I don't feel 37signals customer support is broken, but there is a point in that quote: Would it have really been that difficult for Jason to have his people monitor a customer-created Get Satisfaction page too?

Honestly, he's probably wasted at least two full work days writing these posts — which could have been direct-from-the-founder responses to a lot of customers while he picked up the phone and had a talk with GS team. After all, all the link-backs from GS to 37signals is only going to boost their SEO overtime. There are a lot of benefits to GS that 37signals ignores in favor of an ego-driven tantrum that has turned me off yet again.

For the record, I am both a 37signals and GS customer.

I think the premise here is that it's better to stop this sort of exploitation through some short-term action than to pay off GS over the long term.

Shouldn't whether a company CHOOSES to do it be their choice? The law would say yes. I'm betting a bigco will C&D them in the near future if they don't make it company-opt-in.

How far does this extend, though? It's all well and great to say that they can monitor any one third party support site, but Get Satisfaction isn't the only one out there. Should companies really be expected to go monitor every third party support site that decides that they're going to post a page?

GS shouldn't set up anything for companies that don't want to use their service, full stop, end of story.

Users end up on GS because of a Google search. Does that necessarily mean that they looked for and couldn't find a proper support channel first? I don't think so.

I'm sure there are plenty of people (me included) who google first, and navigate the site to a support page as a last resort.

"Unofficial" isn't enough. The post itself explains why; pretty much every part of the UI suggests that the GS page is coming from 37signals. Things like "report a problem" which imply that it will be reported to someone who can do something about it (rather than GS). And using "we" ambiguously.

Furthermore, many companies offer "unofficial support" pages on their own websites, which are meant to allow people to help each other resolve problems in the case that they are waiting for an official response. GS should not allow themselves to be confused by that type of forum.

They need to remove company logos, remove excessive mentioning of the company's name, and put a big description at the top of the page that explains that GS is in no way related to the company being discussed.

People are not idiots

It sounds to me like you have not worked in tech support.

Considering that GS is a hosting site for tech support forums, my opinion is that they should be as close to idiot-proof as possible. For some reason, in my estimation a financial one, they are not.

"If there are tons of people using GS's unofficial support forums instead of your own, that tells you that your system is broken, and needs to be repaired."

Or it means that they have good placement on google results. When I search for "37signals help", the third result is the getsatisfaction page.

Now, in this case the actual 37signals page came up first, but 37signals receives a fair amount of incoming links due to the popularity of their blog. In the case of a company that doesn't play quite as well with PageRank, might getsatisfaction be the number one result? It doesn't seem that unreasonable that some people might end up there instead of the actual support avenues.

They should at least take down the page on request.

Definitely, that seems fair.

Consider the flip-side: how would you feel if Comcast went around filing crease and desist notices to take down 3rd party customer support sites like dslreviews?

GS has every right to create a forum where customers can air grievances. They should add links to the official support forum, and throw in a couple more "unofficial"s in there as well. But beyond that, they don't have an obligation to take down the whole forum. That's extreme.

The really sad part is: GS is easy to confuse with 37 signals, because they are both minimalist and elegant web sites. It's the high polish that adds to confusion.

GS should go the extra-mile to avoid confusion, but let's not lose our heads here.

Edit: It's been pointed out that I was using "DMCA request" incorrectly. I replaced it with "cease and desist."

"GS has every right to create a forum where customers can air grievances"

Yes. They have no right to make it look like they represent the company in question, though. GS's defense is that they mostly do represent such companies...and yet they use the same setup for companies that may not even know their site exists.

Consumer-grievance forums have been around for years. They don't impersonate companies.

filing DMCA requests to take down 3rd party customer support sites

No, don't confuse the issue. Copyright and trademark are not the same. (And are distinct from patents and trade secrets, for that matter.)

The DMCA is about copyright. None of the posts on GS violate copyright. [1] And, if one does, a DMCA notice can be used to take it down, but not to take the whole site down.

This GS incident is (or would be, if and when lawyers enter the picture) a trademark dispute. GS stands accused of misusing other companies' trademarks in a way that creates customer confusion: Customers see a trademarked logo and a trademarked name on the GS pages, and are misled into thinking they are visiting a site that is officially associated with the trademark holder.

You can say any damn thing about Comcast you want. [2] And I believe you can even use Comcast's trademarks in the process, so long as you do so for the purpose of commentary (and not, say, to compete with Comcast in the cable business), and so long as there isn't evidence that you're misleading people into thinking that your site is officially associated with Comcast.

P.S. I am not a lawyer. Though sometimes I wish I were. I certainly spend enough time talking about IP law.

---

[1] Well, very few, anyway. Obviously anyone could put up posts on GS that violated copyright.

[2] Well, okay, anything that you honestly believe is true. You're not allowed to defame them.

Thanks for the correction, I fixed the language in my post. But I generally agree with you: GS should be able to keep a 3rd party support forum for 37 Signals as long it makes it abundantly clear that they are not affiliated with 37 Signals.

"I think it puts the impetus on companies to either really flush out their support processes, or to find a vendor that will do it for them."

I have to say, I think you're missing the complaint. It's not against them providing support FOR COMPANIES THAT DON'T ALREADY DO IT. It's another for them to make MY company have to go to their site and look for customers who are expecting answers. Imagine if there were five companies just like GS competing... I would now be competing with them for PageRank on google searches and having to visit EVERY one of their sites to make sure I don't have any confused customers thinking they're going to get answers from us on those sites.

It's unmanageable. 37Signals HAS a support process in place and GS is putting the burden on them to go to their site and fill out their free doohicky that points people there. That's just ridiculous. It's automatically opting you in to a system that you didn't ask to be part of.

I see your point -- but you dont see it as an issue that there is a place where your own customers are posting complaints instead of your process? Clearly that means your internal support processes are too hard to find, to difficult to use, or too onerous overall. These are YOUR CUSTOMERS -- they should already know how to find you. If they dont, and they find GS instead, that says a lot.

All it says is that your customers could be bad google searchers.

Jason pointed out that depending on what you search for GS is the 3rd hit on google. It's not fair that I should have to compete with other people for my own product on Google. It would be just as slimy if a competitor was using my product name to generate business for them (which is exactly what is happening)

And that's if you're making generic "support" searches. What if customers Google something related to a problem they're having and the best match is someone's similar question on a GS page? You have customers wandering around a page that impersonates your support service!

The key dispute here is not about having a forum for individuals to provide support for each other and discuss issues with the company regardless of the company's involvement. I don't think that 37signals would argue over a resource like that. The dispute comes when GS presents themselves as the authoritative source for customer service for a company, especially when that company all ready cares deeply about their customers and tries to provide support elsewhere.

Accountability good, deception bad. It's a tough balance to strike for GS. Obviously they want to appear as the authority thus attracting customers and companies, but they risk alienating companies that have their own methods of triaging support issues.

SH in the comments explains just why she was so upset:

We found out because a very, very angry customer posted in a comment on our blog about our lack of reply to his inquiries. Now, we know as a company that years ago, we didn’t offer the same support we offer now. But I also know that I reply to EVERY email for support we receive, and I’ve done so for 2 years now. Two months ago, we hired Michael as our second support person, so we can reply with even more timely and more informative emails.

We scoured our records and found no trace of his email. I had our system administrator manually search our incoming mail logs and found nothing. Finally, the customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question. I was dumbfounded. Angry. Extremely, beyond belief, upset by this.

Customer support is my job, and I take it very seriously, and I am very, very good at it. To have another website undermine that job which leads to a customer with 1) a bad experience, 2) a bad impression of our company, 3) a bad impression of my work…well, it’s infuriating. Not only was I angry on the customer’s behalf, I was angry on behalf of our company to see our name and logo plastered all over a site we had never known about until then. (After that, there were two identical incidents over the past year.)

So that’s how we found out. Our frustration isn’t new, and it’s not unfounded. It’s based purely on the bad experiences GS has caused for our customers, and the harm it’s caused our brand. I’ve been friends with GS’s co-founder Lane Becker for years, and I don’t think he has sour intentions at all. But I do think perhaps as a company, GS is blinded to the harm their site can cause other companies.

Geez, I hope I can hire a support person that committed and thorough.

Achieving "It's better, initially, to make a small number of users really love you than a large number kind of like you" is a lot easier with a really good support person.

I'm glad Jason stuck to his guns and didn't back down. He's right.

I don't understand why this is top of HN. Sure, GetSatisfaction screwed up their text on one of their badges, but that shouldn't have been cause for Jason to go off on a rant.

Also, I think that GetSatisfaction could have notified 37Signals when the page got created as per this quote from Sarah: "customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question".

However, these are all issues that could have been handled differently, most notably NOT being aired out to the general public. If Jason Fried thought that GS has "blackmailed" him, isn't he stooping to their level then by publicly denouncing their service, thereby essentially blackmailing them into action? Seriously, let's all be adults.

I don't understand why this is top of HN.

Because apparently a lot of people need an elementary lesson in trademark law and the reason it exists.

Of course, you don't have to learn about trademark law before you build your startup. You could always learn about it after you've constructed and deployed an automated system for violating it.

Of course, had there been a bug in your "automated system" and you did not intend on violating the law in the first place, you'd still want to be publicly embarrassed just because the person who's angry with you did not have the manners to do it privately?

Every time you try to make GS out to be the victim here, you provide another hook for us to keep debating this. Look at the comment scores and the balance of comments. GS isn't winning this debate. In fact, not only are they not winning it, but 37signals has now also managed to impress a lot of us with Sarah Hatter's customer service skills, which builds a case for doing this work in-house.

There's something to learn from this, and it's not trademark law --- it's how not to handle a PR crisis.

Oh, there are many lessons to be learned, here. :) Hopefully GS is learning them, too.

>>it's how not to handle a PR crisis.

What? They've handled it as well as they could have considering the position they were placed in.

I don't care for either side "winning" this debate. This is about mature behaviour, not PR spin. Their problem can, and frankly should, be viewed from the technical perspective. Had I participated in the system development, I would advocate for e-mail notifications that need to be sent to the original company's support e-mail address. There's no reason NOT to do it.

As I've said above, GS is to blame here, as well. However, there was something that 37Signals could do that would show that they're the fantastic company they market themselves to be. Sadly, their charismatic leader chose the route of public airing of his grievances. It wasn't needed at that point in time, since 1) they knew about the problem for a while and 2) they haven't talked to GS's founders privately first.

As for scoring of comments, I really couldn't care less. I believe in my standpoint and if I don't express my standpoint clearly, let me know. If you're going to downvote me, because I'm being critical of 37Signals, then they're speaking to the right audience.

I'm not downvoting you. Comments scores aren't scientific, but they are one way to gauge the prevailing opinion at Hacker News, and from what I can see, the prevailing opinion at Hacker News --- which is a sweet-spot collection of GS prospects --- trends profoundly towards 37s on this one.

So I think that's interesting and worth pointing out. But you? I have no idea who you even are.

Ah, but it's also a sweet-spot of 37Signals' fans. I guess we know which way readers here will lean, now, don't we?

I hoped that HN readers would be more objective than this, but then again it's only a news site. Oh, well.

P.S. dude, you should totally meet me. I'm very cool in person. ;-)

I hoped that HN readers would be more objective than this, but then again it's only a news site. Oh, well.

Just remember that this type of judgmental attitude goes both ways. As likely as everyone who disagrees with you is a 37Signals fanboy, you could be a hater just looking to troll any thread to create a negative perception of the company.

You'd be quite right, but you'd have to ascertain that by looking through my comment history. I don't troll, but I will fight for what believe vehemently, even if that gets me downmodded. I'll then sit and think about what I've said and what others have said. If I'm very wrong, I'll correct it.

Fighting for objectivity on a site is something that I don't think should be looked at negatively. But, to each his own.

Fighting for objectivity on a site is something that I don't think should be looked at negatively. But, to each his own.

I don't see how accusing those disagreeing with you as being fanboys is "fighting for objectivity". Maybe a lot of people just don't think the stance you are taking has merit?

If you'll notice, I have devolved to that only after I was called a GS fanboy for no other reason than arguing a counterpoint.

My stance has no merit, only if you're unwilling to consider how this debacle might have impacted the other side. Yes, they made a mistake. A severe one. Did they do it on purpose? Everyone here seems to think so and I don't think that the peanut gallery would see it that way had there been a fair and objective view of the situation with comments provided from both sides.

The thing I was most upset with is that most HN readers did not stop to consider whether or not GS founders are really as malicious as they were being painted.

Ah, but it's also a sweet-spot of 37Signals' fans.

That's not true. There are many critics of 37S here, some of them rather harsh.

I'm no 37S fan, but this controversy is a no-brainer for me. Customer support is a critical, inalienable part of my business. If someone tried to get between me and my customers, I would be furious. If they did it using a website that fooled people into thinking it was me, I would be exponentially furiouser.

Before this, I had a vague idea of GS as an up-and-coming startup. Now my perception of them has become: I don't want them anywhere the hell near my customers. Who do they think they are to insinuate themselves into that relationship? They might as well be trying to replace parts of my code with their own.

Edit: replaced "Now I know one thing about them" with "Now my perception of them has become". I don't of course know what GS' strategy or intentions really are. But from a positioning point of view, that doesn't matter.

This is part of the benefit of taking matters public; sunlight is the best disinfectant.

You're arguing from premises that don't seem valid to me (and likely others):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542530

The whole "GS is to blame here, as well" (emphasis added) approach probably strikes people as either GS-fanboyish or 37S-haterish.

The wrong was done by GS - full stop. The repeated assertions by a few people that Fried was wrong to publicly complain about the wrongdoing aren't convincing people.

Why not?

That's my whole point. Whenever someone complains against Google, Microsoft, take your pick, they've done pretty much everything they could have to first privately resolve the issue.

Saying that 37Signals have the right to completely skip to public flogging of another company IS fanboyish. That's all I am saying. If this is supposed to be a forum of objective readers, why are they completely discarding that part?

I am not a fanboy of GS. Until this, I've only heard of them maybe three times. This is about objectivity and bullying. Jason Fried has a big enough of a forum to bully another company and he's done it.

Why is that that can't stand on its own, divorced from the argument for/against GS?

"Why not?"

Because publicly criticizing wrongful, damaging behavior is not "bullying" in the eyes of most people. That, in fact, is exactly why it's embarrassing for the people complained about in cases like this.

"Saying that 37Signals have the right to completely skip to public flogging of another company IS fanboyish."

Well, I'll cop to being a total free speech fanboy.

Sadly, quite a few people are having trouble grasping that critical blog posts are the absolute least of your worries when you break laws and infringe on others' identities. Or that being nice, smart people running a startup with some fanboys is not actually a get-out-of-jail card for your misbehavior.

being nice, smart people running a startup with some fanboys is not actually a get-out-of-jail card

Well, let's be charitable. I'm sure a lot of people are in shock. People in shock say silly and even random things.

Have you ever rooted for a soccer team, or a hockey team, and then watched them lose a very important game by scoring an own goal in overtime? I have. You tend to go into shock. You can't necessarily say anything rational, or even printable, at a moment like that.

It's never fun to watch another startup make a big mistake. [1] It's too easy to imagine yourself making a similar mistake. We all work with powerful tools that are capable of turning a small lapse of knowledge, attention, or judgement into a problem that potentially affects millions of people. The tools can be great -- they let two people, living on Ramen in a tiny apartment, make big changes in the world -- but they can also really amplify your mistakes.

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[1] Okay, okay... it's rarely fun.

"Well, let's be charitable. I'm sure a lot of people are in shock."

Hell, I was shocked. I didn't know GS operated that way. I had only vaguely heard of them and thought they were a community site, not a company that engages in the sorts of practices that they've openly admitted.

But shock is only a plausible justification for so long. The group of people who think the real problem here is that this story became public and people got unhappy at GS have had plenty of time to think it over.

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