I think it is a result of the impersonal "contact us" intake forms companies have all moved to. You have no indication that you aren't just screaming into the wind. There is no personal touch. So you take to social media where your are sure at least someone hears you. It also scratches the justice itch: if the company doesn't pay attention it looks bad in public and you get some vindication for being ignored.
I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing to do, but I understand it.
> It also scratches the justice itch: it the company doesn't pay attention or looks bad in public and you get some vindication for being ignored.
This is an interesting point. There is some satisfaction from the likes, the comments, and the assurance that _someone_ is seeing your frustration even if the company does nothing.
I admit my second message was terse, but the correct social media response for a critical outage is "we're looking into it". Not "if you want support, go here".
Like I said, I do not have time to hunt for whatever support channels exist and file a ticket. I pay $50 a year so they can deliver a working product, including triaging their own issues.
> the correct social media response for a critical outage is "we're looking into it". Not "if you want support, go here".
I strongly disagree.
For those reading who may not be on X, here's Fastmail's response:
> Hello Andrew! Can you please contact our support team so we can look into this for you? http://fastmail.com/support
That seems entirely appropriate to me, for several reasons:
- it's extremely unlikely that the person managing their social media profiles is a technical expert
- their contact page likely feeds into a ticketing system, which means they can track the issue and actually make sure to respond to you
- it's entirely possible that response was automated
There are many reasons why reaching out to support will be more effective. Logging may be tied to accounts, support systems may upload client side logs where appropriate, an event may be tracked to determine a point in time when you had the problem so relevant logs can be checked.
Their messaging probably could have been better here to say "we're looking into this. If you have time, please file a support request".
On Fastmail.com, the support request is two clicks away, under the big ? button in the upper right and "Contact Support". I'm not sure how much time you have but it took me less than 1 minute to find this button and submit from my logged in account.
I'm not a Fastmail user, but... if I were paying a company to read my emails and they shipped a new build that broke that feature due to a lack of basic testing, I'd be publicly "shaming" them.
I don't know. I'm always confused when social media accounts ask to report issues over different channels when it's so much easier to just reply to customer and ask for additional (non PII) information there. In this case it's unlikely that this was the only or even first report about this issue. So why place the initial burden on a paying customer? If your social media is just a marketing channel, at least make that clear so i don't even bother reporting issues that route.
Companies make it clear how to report issues by having a separate support system. If you clicked a "Support" link and it took you to Twitter, I could better understand your confusion.
As for using social media to take issue reports: What will you do when you need PII or have to reassign the issue or reassign part of the issue and those people need to be able to contact the user?
"Why place the initial burden on a paying customer?" Because it creates a better service for everyone to have a known way of doing things.
"Things Happen", in production, to the best of us (and FM's pretty damned good at their job). Pretty sure someone's pager duty has been going off like mad.
A little over half an hour ago, the mail UI broke for me on Android, and then I panicked and went to desktop web and it broke there too. Also on different networks.
As far as I can tell, stuff from their CDN is 404-ing, and a JSON api POST request appears to be going in infinite loop with 200 OKs.
The webmail piece seems to be borked... Calendar, Files, Notes etc. are at least rendering.
The design refresh is actually one of the few I don't hate, I got it yesterday and it is decent. But the blank emails thing started today and this... is a problem.
I disgree. Other people were saying it's broken too. Reasonable company behavior here would be 1 tweet "we'll look into it", and then either "we reproduced and are working on a fix" or "looks good to us please contact support so we can investigate your particular issue". But there's no reason to initially make users jump through hoops.
That response is probably standard support procedure. I think it’s pretty reasonable behavior. Could it be better? Sure. Is the person handling Twitter interactions doing their job? Also sure.
This comment section's been illuminating to see who has probably never worked public-facing support or service industry.
There's no amount of money you can pay to make this behavior not shitty. Shitty behavior is never a good look, but sometimes it's understandable. If you refrain from being shitty, you won't have to worry about whether or not it's understandable.
Also, the only reason that someone can be shitty and get results is because other people aren't. (In this case, "submitting" a bug report via Twitter and still getting a resolution is possible because other people reported it through the proper channels.)
It didn't break anything for me. However, I am failing to understand the point of this design "refreshment". There is nothing new out there, just minor UI changes with no purpose?
It makes access to the calendar, contacts, etc., one less click, which I think is nice. Would have preferred all that was set to buttons at the top instead of a thin side bar though.
Maybe they don’t realize how important you are. This is a failure in their VIP program, imo they should expedite that over a bug that effects all users.
It started out as not being able to search, but the situation is quickly deteriorating and now I'm unable to open pretty much any email message.
Some content seems to briefly show up and then it quickly disappears and after that, it's as if cache has been invalidated and you can't get back into it.
Luckily for me the Drafts folder's showing, so I was able to send (well, I assume it's sent) the Single Most Important Email I need to send today, which I'd spent about half an hour getting right just as the interface imploded...
Readit News
I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing to do, but I understand it.
This is an interesting point. There is some satisfaction from the likes, the comments, and the assurance that _someone_ is seeing your frustration even if the company does nothing.
I admit my second message was terse, but the correct social media response for a critical outage is "we're looking into it". Not "if you want support, go here".
Like I said, I do not have time to hunt for whatever support channels exist and file a ticket. I pay $50 a year so they can deliver a working product, including triaging their own issues.
I strongly disagree.
For those reading who may not be on X, here's Fastmail's response:
> Hello Andrew! Can you please contact our support team so we can look into this for you? http://fastmail.com/support
That seems entirely appropriate to me, for several reasons:
Their messaging probably could have been better here to say "we're looking into this. If you have time, please file a support request".
On Fastmail.com, the support request is two clicks away, under the big ? button in the upper right and "Contact Support". I'm not sure how much time you have but it took me less than 1 minute to find this button and submit from my logged in account.
As for using social media to take issue reports: What will you do when you need PII or have to reassign the issue or reassign part of the issue and those people need to be able to contact the user?
"Why place the initial burden on a paying customer?" Because it creates a better service for everyone to have a known way of doing things.
Is this snippet from their Twitter bio clear?
"If you need assistance, please submit a ticket: http://fastmail.com/support"
"Things Happen", in production, to the best of us (and FM's pretty damned good at their job). Pretty sure someone's pager duty has been going off like mad.
A little over half an hour ago, the mail UI broke for me on Android, and then I panicked and went to desktop web and it broke there too. Also on different networks.
As far as I can tell, stuff from their CDN is 404-ing, and a JSON api POST request appears to be going in infinite loop with 200 OKs.
The webmail piece seems to be borked... Calendar, Files, Notes etc. are at least rendering.
Back to business as usual.
And following FastMail's reply
> Hello Andrew! Can you please contact our support team so we can look into this for you? fastmail.com/support
They say:
> Don't have time. Consider my tweet the bug report.
Sorry but this asshole behavior. Bugs happen. No need to do public shaming and being rude to the company for that.
Personally I don't really use their web interface, but I tried it now and it all works just fine (on both prod and beta).
There is far too much assholery in the world. It's never OK.
There's no amount of money you can pay to make this behavior not shitty. Shitty behavior is never a good look, but sometimes it's understandable. If you refrain from being shitty, you won't have to worry about whether or not it's understandable.
Also, the only reason that someone can be shitty and get results is because other people aren't. (In this case, "submitting" a bug report via Twitter and still getting a resolution is possible because other people reported it through the proper channels.)
As soon as I realised that both my webmail and my phone app were buggered, it was probably not just a Me Problem.
It started out as not being able to search, but the situation is quickly deteriorating and now I'm unable to open pretty much any email message.
Some content seems to briefly show up and then it quickly disappears and after that, it's as if cache has been invalidated and you can't get back into it.