3 ms·

I like the idea of the Ombudsman, but in this case I'm not sure that it's really applicable. I disagree that the "normal tech support processes have failed". I

I like the idea of the Ombudsman, but in this case I'm not sure that it's really applicable. I disagree that the "normal tech support processes have failed". I wanted to point out something that may have been missed by many - which is that the OP in this case is a free user. i.e. he is NOT a "customer". He is a user of free services that Cloudflare is providing. It even says so in his post that he's a free account holder and that he's not entitled to tech support, hence why he kicked up a fuss online. My company is a Cloudflare Enterprise customer - when we write in, we get a response typically within an hour by their swat team. The idea of an "Ombudsman" in this case wouldn't be an actual ombudsman in the spirit of advocating for the customer, but would be more of a "one time support fee" kind of deal. Which I think is fair, but in this case I'm not even sure the OP would have paid it. The OP had a viable option which would have been to upgrade to a Business account and get priority support. I run a popular platform with 1.5 million registered users and the vast majority of them are free users. We also have the same problem. Most of our support is just swamped with free users mostly asking questions about how to do things (and it's in the documentation, they just don't read or search for it, it's too simple to just email support or blast away on Twitter and @ mention us). I've even had to withdraw from Twitter and Facebook entirely just because I was everyone's "ombudsman" (even if they weren't paying customers).

mariomariomario 7y ago
If you read his blog you would know that he is very much so a customer. To quote his blog verbatim "Because Cloudflare deleted my domain registration I can't change the status from clientTransferProhibited through their dashboard so I don't think I can even leave." He registered his domain through Cloudflare Registrar, a paid service. I'd be concerned if my domain registrar told me to head to the forums for support for tld level issues that only the registrar can solve.
- leonardteo 7y ago
  Ok but I still don’t get why the op complains about it so publicly the same day (likely immediately) after submitting the ticket without even giving the company a chance to triage and resolve the issue. (Yes he apologized) He paid $10 for a .org domain, which for Cloudflare is at cost. Goodness... It’s not like Cloudflare is refusing him support, just that he’s not on a tier where someone will respond in real time. In any case, it’s resolved for him now and he got the attention of the CTO (maybe I should try some public outrage sometime instead of paying for ent support heh!) Also I think there’s an issue with what the expectations for support is for. The Cloudflare service itself - the DNS, DDOS protection, ssl, CDN, etc are all premium services with a free tier for kicking the tires. As far as I understood in the post, the OP was on that free tier but had registered the domain on Cloudflare (which was probably the added complication). Sidebar - AWS offers no support even if you’re a paying customer - support is an additional product you have to add on and it is a percentage of your overall usage bill, even if you don’t contact support...
  - pingyong 7y ago
    >Ok but I still don’t get why the op complains about it so publicly the same day (likely immediately) after submitting the ticket without even giving the company a chance to triage and resolve the issue. Well the blog post isn't really primarily about his specific issue, it's about the systems being severely lacking. A ticket won't resolve that issue.

mariomariomario 7y ago

If you read his blog you would know that he is very much so a customer. To quote his blog verbatim "Because Cloudflare deleted my domain registration I can't change the status from clientTransferProhibited through their dashboard so I don't think I can even leave." He registered his domain through Cloudflare Registrar, a paid service. I'd be concerned if my domain registrar told me to head to the forums for support for tld level issues that only the registrar can solve.

leonardteo 7y ago
Ok but I still don’t get why the op complains about it so publicly the same day (likely immediately) after submitting the ticket without even giving the company a chance to triage and resolve the issue. (Yes he apologized) He paid $10 for a .org domain, which for Cloudflare is at cost. Goodness... It’s not like Cloudflare is refusing him support, just that he’s not on a tier where someone will respond in real time. In any case, it’s resolved for him now and he got the attention of the CTO (maybe I should try some public outrage sometime instead of paying for ent support heh!) Also I think there’s an issue with what the expectations for support is for. The Cloudflare service itself - the DNS, DDOS protection, ssl, CDN, etc are all premium services with a free tier for kicking the tires. As far as I understood in the post, the OP was on that free tier but had registered the domain on Cloudflare (which was probably the added complication). Sidebar - AWS offers no support even if you’re a paying customer - support is an additional product you have to add on and it is a percentage of your overall usage bill, even if you don’t contact support...
- pingyong 7y ago
  >Ok but I still don’t get why the op complains about it so publicly the same day (likely immediately) after submitting the ticket without even giving the company a chance to triage and resolve the issue. Well the blog post isn't really primarily about his specific issue, it's about the systems being severely lacking. A ticket won't resolve that issue.