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Without the original e-mail sent to Tumblr, it's hard to judge the appropriateness of Karp's response. Under most circumstances, it's rude to tell your customer

by ekidd 16y ago

Without the original e-mail sent to Tumblr, it's hard to judge the appropriateness of Karp's response. Under most circumstances, it's rude to tell your customers to go away. But if a rare customer behaves abusively—particularly towards your employees or other customers—it may be the correct decision to politely decline their business. Of course, if lots of your customers are behaving abusively, you've got bigger problems, either with the service you provide, or with the customers you've chosen to serve.

theDoug 16y ago
In my experience as someone who has paid to appear in Tumblr's Directory a half-dozen times, all downtime has been pro-rated/refunded. Customer support has always been prompt and kind.
- robyn_b 16y ago
  Remember though that his query wasn't just about the downtime per se, it was about the overall level of service. Intermittent technical issues with features like backup and queuing but to name a few. Anyway - David's response might have been prompt but it certainly wasn't kind was it...
  - rhizome 16y ago
    David's response might have been prompt but it certainly wasn't kind was it... I know I probably feel differently when I'm on the other side of this fence, but as the saying goes, you have to earn respect.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
samengland 16y ago
Just got in touch with William to ask if I could post up the original e-mail in its entirety - and he said that was fine. I've added the original email to the bottom of the article. http://postdesk.com/debates/should-tumblr-care/ http://postdesk.com/debates/should-tumblr-care/
- larrik 16y ago
  In the original email, William clearly says he wants to leave and that the lack of an export feature is the only thing stopping him. That part makes a HUGE difference in the framing of David Karp's.
  - samengland 16y ago
    ...and the friendships he had created
- ekidd 16y ago
  [Edit: Substantially rewritten in light of #2, below.] Thank you. It looks like Postdesk started a public controversy while leaving out two critical pieces of information: 1) William's actual e-mail, which expresses his disappointment in a reasonably polite fashion. Normally, this sort of e-mail should merit a polite response and a refund. 2) The allegation that William send the email to the entire engineering team (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203). This changes the context of Karp's remarks significantly, because it means that Karp had to weigh two things: The feelings of a disappointed customer, and the morale of his already-stressed engineers. In this case, I actually sympathize a bit with Karp. He needs to take care of his customers, but he also needs to take care of his people. That puts his remark "...we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team..." in a rather different light. That's not an easy situation to resolve well. I wish that Postdesk had provided more facts (and less editorial comment) in the original article.
  - clojurerocks 16y ago
    Im sorry but this doesnt hold water when tumblr has 40 million in vc funding. If they were bootstrapped then yes maybe. But if his team is stressed out maybe they could start hiring people. Instead they are causing situations like this to happen. Also im sorry but i dont care how stressed out you are. As a ceo you have a responsibility to treat your customers with respect. Especially since what the customer was asking was so simply and basic and straightforward. Its not like the emailer sent a nasty mean email calling everybody names and asking them why the service isnt working in harsh ways and being disrespectful. He sent a very polite email to the people working there. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. Its part of doing business and doing customer service. The response frankly was absolutely ridiculous. At the very least the response could have been more polite and simply said we apologize and are working on it.
robyn_b 16y ago
It appears that the original e-mail has just been posted
seanalltogether 16y ago
“…we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team” Something about that response tells me this wasn't the first email sent by this user.
- samengland 16y ago
  Surprisingly - it wasn't, and we're still not sure how William was in fact discouraging their entire team...
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    I'm getting cross-eyed from the double negatives, so just to clarify, William hadn't sent any mail prior to the one quoted?

by ekidd 16y ago

theDoug 16y ago

In my experience as someone who has paid to appear in Tumblr's Directory a half-dozen times, all downtime has been pro-rated/refunded. Customer support has always been prompt and kind.

robyn_b 16y ago
Remember though that his query wasn't just about the downtime per se, it was about the overall level of service. Intermittent technical issues with features like backup and queuing but to name a few. Anyway - David's response might have been prompt but it certainly wasn't kind was it...
- rhizome 16y ago
  David's response might have been prompt but it certainly wasn't kind was it... I know I probably feel differently when I'm on the other side of this fence, but as the saying goes, you have to earn respect.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

samengland 16y ago

Just got in touch with William to ask if I could post up the original e-mail in its entirety - and he said that was fine. I've added the original email to the bottom of the article. http://postdesk.com/debates/should-tumblr-care/ http://postdesk.com/debates/should-tumblr-care/

larrik 16y ago
In the original email, William clearly says he wants to leave and that the lack of an export feature is the only thing stopping him. That part makes a HUGE difference in the framing of David Karp's.
- samengland 16y ago
  ...and the friendships he had created
ekidd 16y ago
[Edit: Substantially rewritten in light of #2, below.] Thank you. It looks like Postdesk started a public controversy while leaving out two critical pieces of information: 1) William's actual e-mail, which expresses his disappointment in a reasonably polite fashion. Normally, this sort of e-mail should merit a polite response and a refund. 2) The allegation that William send the email to the entire engineering team (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203). This changes the context of Karp's remarks significantly, because it means that Karp had to weigh two things: The feelings of a disappointed customer, and the morale of his already-stressed engineers. In this case, I actually sympathize a bit with Karp. He needs to take care of his customers, but he also needs to take care of his people. That puts his remark "...we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team..." in a rather different light. That's not an easy situation to resolve well. I wish that Postdesk had provided more facts (and less editorial comment) in the original article.
- clojurerocks 16y ago
  Im sorry but this doesnt hold water when tumblr has 40 million in vc funding. If they were bootstrapped then yes maybe. But if his team is stressed out maybe they could start hiring people. Instead they are causing situations like this to happen. Also im sorry but i dont care how stressed out you are. As a ceo you have a responsibility to treat your customers with respect. Especially since what the customer was asking was so simply and basic and straightforward. Its not like the emailer sent a nasty mean email calling everybody names and asking them why the service isnt working in harsh ways and being disrespectful. He sent a very polite email to the people working there. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. Its part of doing business and doing customer service. The response frankly was absolutely ridiculous. At the very least the response could have been more polite and simply said we apologize and are working on it.

robyn_b 16y ago

It appears that the original e-mail has just been posted

seanalltogether 16y ago

“…we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team” Something about that response tells me this wasn't the first email sent by this user.

samengland 16y ago
Surprisingly - it wasn't, and we're still not sure how William was in fact discouraging their entire team...
- kmfrk 16y ago
  I'm getting cross-eyed from the double negatives, so just to clarify, William hadn't sent any mail prior to the one quoted?