jesus christ...

[boodie]

I swear LJ users are among some of the most whiney, self entitlement people around, LJ was out of service for what, seven or so hours, nothing that SixApart could have forseen, a major power failure in the SF area, LJ have kindly said that will be offering compensation for the time that LJ was down, probably a days extension on paid accounts, going by previous efforts, and YET the majority of people have done nothing but whinged, either about the power going out, or the time it took to get the database back up, or the fact that SixApart, for good commercial reasons concentrated on getting their main cash flow business up and running first.

I swear I have never come across a more whiney bunch of lUsers.

Comments

[svashtar.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it was not their fault. Quite a number of web services were cut off yesterday because of a glitch with PG&E. Granted, they shouldn't have their eggs all in one basket for a service that is worldwide, but as far as I can tell, Six Apart is only located in San Francisco.

Actually, this kind of outage is exactly why Genentech is spreading out its operations and moving facilities to other parts of the country. But then, Genentech can afford to do this. Six Apart may not have the funds to create new facilities elsewhere just in case there's another outage.

Hell, I've had my regular DSL service down for a day before. I pay a hell of a lot more for that than anyone on LJ pays for their service. Didn't gripe about lost interweb time. Just went off and did other things until the service was back up.

It isn't the end of the world.

[kuangning]

The problem wasn't just the outage. If you'll look at http://status.sixapart.com/, you'll see that power was restored to the data center five hours or so before LJ was brought back up. In that time, they fine-tuned *commenting* on TypePad blogs and brought TypeKey back up, before they bothered bringing LJ back online. This is why people are angry, not the power outage that was out of their hands, but the fact that they let LJ rot without even the courtesy of a specific update long after the power was back.

[svashtar.livejournal.com]

I still maintain that you'll live. It was only a minor inconvenience.

Did I miss posting? Sure. But I went off and did other things. When I got back, LJ was back up. No harm, no foul.

I don't see any reason to get pissed off at them.

Generally, if it's vitally important to find out about a service I want, I call the company. Usually, there is a recorded message saying what is going on.

I liken this to massive power outages here in the Bay Area; PG&E will restore power to areas as fast as they can, but it takes time. TypePad is kind of like a neighborhood that was restored power first.

Easy to live with, really.

[kuangning]

I didn't say I wouldn't live, I'm just saying that when you as much as tell people who are paying you, however much or little, that you can't be bothered giving them even an update on their service until you've ironed out every little thing with this other, *important* service over here, that people are going to be upset with you over it. It's not about whether the site was running or not, it's about the way you treated your customers. SixApart didn't treat their LJ customers well yesterday, and they shouldn't be surprised if their customers let them know about it today.

[svashtar.livejournal.com]

Jesus. They're working on a way to compensate those who pay for this site. What more do you want? It isn't as if the amount of money you pay for LJ is exhorbitant. What, ten bucks for a year? Sorry if I can't muster any sympathy.

If you don't like the service, just cut it off entirely.

See, this is what I don't understand. People bitch and complain about how horrible the service is, yet they continue to use the service. If I'm unhappy with a service, I stop using it, even if it means I may be a bit inconvenienced by it.

Including changing cellphone numbers because Cingular pissed me the hell off and did far worse to me what LJ did to its paying customers.

Your last post is the sense of whiney entitlement the original poster was talking about.

[kuangning]

See the part where I'm a permanent account holder, and the part where I've been using the service since 2001, and all but 4 months of that as a paid user. I've given paid time to lots of other people over the years as well, and I think that if I say "they could have given a *status* update on this service," I've shelled out enough cash that I can say that -- not that the amount of cash is really the point beyond the free/paid divide. I think a couple of lines of text saying "your service is down but we're working on it" would have helped the situation a lot, would have been *free* for them, and the lack of respect and consideration from the company isn't something you can fix by throwing a little extra time on the account.

[svashtar.livejournal.com]

You couldn't google their phone number, and call?
It's the first thing I'd have done, had I cared enough about missing out on posting here.

[kuangning]

Erm, you think that every LJ paid customer should have Googled them and made a phone call? ... I admit, the results might -- well, would -- have been amusing, but really. No, really.

Lots of other sites were down yesterday. Netflix, Craigslist, you name it. All of the other sites I use -- and Craigslist is free, mind you -- gave helpful status reports, because they knew people would want to know how things were progressing, and if possible when they could expect service to resume. Netflix stopped giving time estimates after the first three passed, but that's okay, it was apparently a rough road to restoration. You'll notice that no-one's angry with Craigslist or Netflix, including me. Why? Because they were as courteous as could be expected, under the circumstances.

A message is not a huge investment of time or effort on the company's part, and it keeps the customers happy. Why should anyone assume that they have to call this company for a status update? Why should anyone need to? I'm not screaming OMG 6A sucks, never use them again it's the end of the world. I worked yesterday just as always. I found other things to do with my time -- I don't post every day anyway. But when I say the company was selectively rude to a portion of its customers, that's a statement of fact. They screwed up.

And the best way to not have them make the same mistake again next time is to let them hear that people noticed it *this* time. You probably wouldn't sit and say nothing if you walked into your favourite cafe and ordered a cup of coffee and they served everyone else's orders and came back to other people's tables for a second round before they bothered pouring your cup, right? Why would you be upset? Because it's *rude.* You'd probably, hopefully, let them know it was rude, and you might even go as far as to ask for a manager, not because the cup of coffee was vital, but because the level of service was bad in a place you actually cared about. (When you don't care, you walk out after five or ten minutes and never come back.) It's not whiny or a sign of entitlement to speak up -- I'm not talking about heated invective, not name-calling, just speaking up -- when there's actually something wrong.

The "you have no right to criticize ever unless you're shelling out big bucks or it's bad enough that you're going to walk" argument only *sounds* like it does the business a favour. I can guarantee that however hard a time they have with the criticism today, they prefer it to having everyone downgrade to free accounts. Next time they'll (hopefully) handle things better than they did yesterday, and that will do them more good than if everyone chose to walk instead of complaining, this time or the next.

[svashtar.livejournal.com]

Addendum, I actually did see a page saying "LJ is experiencing a power outage and we're working on it".

Maybe that was just my computer, but I find that rather difficult to believe.

[kuangning]

It said "LiveJournal is down due to the aforementioned power outage." And it continued to read that way hours after the note on the TypePad status section that said power was back up.

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

I rarely need worry about LJ failures - I'm usually asleep!

count me in that number.

[kuangning]

They have paying customers here too. I don't think a free user gets to demand speed of service, but LJ is not all free service, and once you've taken people's money, they have a right to expect you'll do your best. Concentrating on *commenting* on TypePad while LJ users had no service or even a update saying they were working on restoring service at all seems a little contemptuous on their part.

If I weren't a permanent user, I'd've gone back to being a free user after yesterday -- a company that doesn't think the service I pay for is important enough to restore for more than 3 hours after the outage was over is one I don't need to be paying.

Re: count me in that number.

[kuangning]

This line of argument really baffles me. Do you usually walk out of a store that's given you bad service before you complain? Or do you complain, see what they do, and *then* decide whether to stay? And where else *would* you complain about LJ's service? On Blogspot? That's like going to Wal-Mart to tell them about the bad service you got at Target.

Customers who care enough to complain are customers who are giving you a chance to make things right, and the ones you want to spend at least some time listening to -- there's profit still possible there if you can satisfy them. The ones who walk and tell all their friends how terrible you are, are a loss, and you may as well write them off -- you don't really have to listen any longer because you've had all the profit you're going to make from them already. The fact that this business happens to be Internet-based doesn't change the fundamental rules of customer service and interaction.

[svashtar.livejournal.com]

It's worse than that. Craigslist and Yelp were down. Oh noes! How can I possibly complain about local businesses, or look for a job.

People take their tubez seriously. The internet is serious business.

[discordia-eris.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, most people seem upset that other things like typepad and Vox were back online quickly while LJ languished like the red-headed step-child. But seriously, it's only because they are a fraction of the size of LJ. LJ is a behemoth compared to those sites. *I'd* hate the task of trying to get something this big up quickly.

[wizarth.livejournal.com]

People whine on Live Journal? No, I can't believe it.

[dharawal.livejournal.com]

unpossible, huh 8-)