Toodledo/rackspace outage, customer reaction
toodledo.com
toodledo.com
Summary: due to a combination of a rackspace oopsie and some sub-optimal data engineering, the online task management service at toodledo.com was off air for 16 (!!) hours. The story is the thread in their customer forum relating to the event.
Aside from the technical explanation, the thing that makes this story interesting is how their users (a significant portion of which can barely function without the site, being twitchy GTDers) reacted to all this. The predominant feeling in the forum responses is "Hey, these things happen, never mind".
In my experience, the toodledo folks could give lectures on customer-company interaction - their handling of their user forums has always been impeccable in the year I have used them. I think this goes to show that if you treat your users right, they will really cut you some slack when the Bad Stuff happens.
A lesson some other services I use could usefully learn...