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Post Apathy OP here - I was definitely being an ass when I first tweeted about it (IIRC, this was after I e-mailed them). I was generally frustrated with some

Post Apathy OP here - I was definitely being an ass when I first tweeted about it (IIRC, this was after I e-mailed them). I was generally frustrated with some wider issues around building my website so I decided to blow some steam by tweeting about it. I actually thought "that was too harsh" considering I had nothing but praise for how user-friendly Ghost was (and how great Ghost support was - shoutout to Sarah, whoever you are, you shouldn't be there). The one thing you don't expect is that a CEO of a company would take the annoyance of an account with circa.350 followers seriously and respond with what is apparently vitriolic rage, not only cussing me out, but then immediately going to shut my website down even though I was talking to a support rep at Ghost about upgrading and getting migration underway. The main problems are this: 1. An automatic upgrade within 7 days that triples in price is sleazy, there's no two ways to look at it. I don't know if it's an American thing, but in Europe, a company would be crucified for doing this. You always have offer and acceptance before agreeing to something. It would be very easy for Ghost to simply put a popup stating "you cannot add more staff users as you are on the basic plan - please upgrade here to do so". Again, no excuses here, it's clear that some customers are being caught out by these automatic charges, judging by the dozen people that have expressed similar issues with Ghost since I published my post. So much for being a non-profit. 2. Something I forgot to add to the story - the main reason I went over the 2 staff users I was permitted to have on my account was because I had invited Ghost support in as a staff user to help with migration. This made me really annoyed as I had some friends on to help with setting up the website and I had to kick them to avoid being charged triple - for bringing Ghost in to help with some stuff. 3. The CEO going from cussing on twitter to deleting my website (all within 15mins, as I was working on it) is unacceptable, again, from any POV. The people here talking about this being an acceptable practice to deal with "toxic customers" have clearly never actually been in a customer-facing role. You wouldn't last in such a position if you dealt with every disgruntled customer in such a manner. Stop LARPing. Anyway, that's my side. I understand the cynical mood of Hacker News so I won't say more and let the people here make up their own minds. Feel free to subscribe to the Post Apathy newsletter. I promise you it's enriching.

arnvald 6y ago
> An automatic upgrade within 7 days that triples in price is sleazy, there's no two ways to look at it There are two ways to look at it. I use a tool that reports errors in my web app. After one of releases we started receiving a lot of errors and we reached the maximum on our plan. What would the proper response be? To just block all the incoming error reports until end of the month? Or maybe to send me an email saying "hey, you've reached your limit, if this continues we'll upgrade you to higher plan automatically"? There's no clear answer here, that depends on your context (I used the app for work and having proper error reports was more important than the cost for me), but there are two ways to look at it. > respond with what is apparently vitriolic rage not defending CEO's response (it was very inappropriate), aren't you doing the same right now? You're retweeting stuff like "F* Ghost and F* their CEO" with their accounts tagged.
- postapathy 6y ago
  What a load of nonsense to justify a shady practice, to be quite honest. If this was necessary, other website builders would be doing this. Apparently, they all fare well without it. > CEO directly cusses out and then wipes a customer's website > I retweet a post saying "f* Ghost" > you are the same!! yes, all things are now in balance in the universe!
  - arnvald 6y ago
    > If this was necessary, other website builders would be doing this I didn't said it was necessary, I've only said there are 2 ways to look at. > you are the same!! Again, something I didn't say. I said you are doing the same about the "vitrolic rage" response, not about deleting the site. CEO's actions were inappropriate and unprofessional, and I do not defend him here, it is unacceptable to delete client's content (and as I wrote in another comment under this post, it makes me feel uneasy as their client). What I'm saying is that this whole thing blew out of proportion and neither action justified the next one - the email didn't justify the outrage; the outrage didn't justify deleting content; deleting content didn't justify spreading hateful tweets.
- realmod 6y ago

arnvald 6y ago

> An automatic upgrade within 7 days that triples in price is sleazy, there's no two ways to look at it There are two ways to look at it. I use a tool that reports errors in my web app. After one of releases we started receiving a lot of errors and we reached the maximum on our plan. What would the proper response be? To just block all the incoming error reports until end of the month? Or maybe to send me an email saying "hey, you've reached your limit, if this continues we'll upgrade you to higher plan automatically"? There's no clear answer here, that depends on your context (I used the app for work and having proper error reports was more important than the cost for me), but there are two ways to look at it. > respond with what is apparently vitriolic rage not defending CEO's response (it was very inappropriate), aren't you doing the same right now? You're retweeting stuff like "F* Ghost and F* their CEO" with their accounts tagged.

postapathy 6y ago
What a load of nonsense to justify a shady practice, to be quite honest. If this was necessary, other website builders would be doing this. Apparently, they all fare well without it. > CEO directly cusses out and then wipes a customer's website > I retweet a post saying "f* Ghost" > you are the same!! yes, all things are now in balance in the universe!
- arnvald 6y ago
  > If this was necessary, other website builders would be doing this I didn't said it was necessary, I've only said there are 2 ways to look at. > you are the same!! Again, something I didn't say. I said you are doing the same about the "vitrolic rage" response, not about deleting the site. CEO's actions were inappropriate and unprofessional, and I do not defend him here, it is unacceptable to delete client's content (and as I wrote in another comment under this post, it makes me feel uneasy as their client). What I'm saying is that this whole thing blew out of proportion and neither action justified the next one - the email didn't justify the outrage; the outrage didn't justify deleting content; deleting content didn't justify spreading hateful tweets.
realmod 6y ago