4 ms·

> think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors This is so true. Whenever

by leon_ 15y ago

> think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors This is so true. Whenever I have a sale of one of my apps and lower the price to $1.99 or something in that range I'm tempted to disable my support mail account. Cheap people tend to get a huge sense of entitlement when they pay you one or two bucks.

zobzu 15y ago
To be fair they did buy it. If you disable your support account then also write a fat bold and _short_ statement such as: THIS IS PROVIDED WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY AND NO SUPPORT WILL BE GIVEN. And don't hide that inside 1, 2 or 50 pages of text of course. Then it's all fine. If you don't, then support is going to be expected, no matter the price and that makes complete sense to me.
patio11 15y ago
I call them pathological customers, and they're drawn like flies to low prices. See hnsearch.com [pathological customers] for more on the subject.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  I had pathologicals with a free service I offered for a few years. It's an odd, odd mindset.
  - rickmb 15y ago
    If a serves offers stuff for free, or against ridiculously low prices, the rule "if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you are the product" usually applies. These aren't customers with an "odd mindset", these are people that believe that they are an essential part of your product, usually in the form of advertiser fodder, and therefor you owe them. The assumption that you somehow profit from offering something for free is not a strange one, hence there is nothing pathological about these people demanding service and respect in the same way paying customers do. However, paying customers know more or less exactly what to expect, because they can relate it to the amount of $$$ they pay. Customers of "free" services have no idea how much they are worth, so they tend to "negotiate" by aiming high. Yes, this is unpleasant, but it's very naive to be surprised about it, and a little disingenuous to be offended by it.
    - Vivtek 15y ago
      Maybe you see it that way, but you're not pathological. I had people demanding such or so or they were going to demand a refund. ... Granted, not many. Also, the principle "you're not the customer, you're the product", while well-known to you cynical kids today, had not yet really been invented in 1999.
- jbooth 15y ago
  Yeah, and feel free to fire your pathological customers. But what they did was close this guy's account and delete his backups without warning. It seems they then did the same to his friend for shooting his mouth off on twitter. That's beyond "handled poorly", that's unprofessional and unethical.
  - tjogin 15y ago
    It wasn't awesome. But we're talking about a $3/month host here, is that something you should rely on for backups, even before your account is terminated? If the abusive customer didn't keep a local copy, well, now he's probably learnt to keep a local copy. Having said that, if you choose to run a low cost hosting service, you should know that your customers are going to be greedy entitled bitches, and you should deal with that fact in a professional matter. Otherwise, just get into some other line of business.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Again, it's worse than "not awesome", it's unprofessional and unethical. If you commit to provide a service, whether you're charging $1 or $100k per month, there are some minimum standards of behavior you should hold yourself to. This isn't "you get what you pay for" because the host went down. Maliciously deleting backups that you're supposedly responsible for, over a twitter slapfight, is unethical. No matter what.
      - n09n 15y ago
        Do you know that he was actually responsible for backing up this data? This hosting plan costs less than some places charge just for maintaining backups.
        Vivtek 15y ago
        They did have the backups - and said so - and then deleted them just to be assholes. So it's moot whether they were responsible for backing up the data; the issue is they deleted it on purpose just to hurt.

by leon_ 15y ago

zobzu 15y ago

To be fair they did buy it. If you disable your support account then also write a fat bold and _short_ statement such as: THIS IS PROVIDED WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY AND NO SUPPORT WILL BE GIVEN. And don't hide that inside 1, 2 or 50 pages of text of course. Then it's all fine. If you don't, then support is going to be expected, no matter the price and that makes complete sense to me.

patio11 15y ago

I call them pathological customers, and they're drawn like flies to low prices. See hnsearch.com [pathological customers] for more on the subject.

Vivtek 15y ago
I had pathologicals with a free service I offered for a few years. It's an odd, odd mindset.
- rickmb 15y ago
  If a serves offers stuff for free, or against ridiculously low prices, the rule "if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you are the product" usually applies. These aren't customers with an "odd mindset", these are people that believe that they are an essential part of your product, usually in the form of advertiser fodder, and therefor you owe them. The assumption that you somehow profit from offering something for free is not a strange one, hence there is nothing pathological about these people demanding service and respect in the same way paying customers do. However, paying customers know more or less exactly what to expect, because they can relate it to the amount of $$$ they pay. Customers of "free" services have no idea how much they are worth, so they tend to "negotiate" by aiming high. Yes, this is unpleasant, but it's very naive to be surprised about it, and a little disingenuous to be offended by it.
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    Maybe you see it that way, but you're not pathological. I had people demanding such or so or they were going to demand a refund. ... Granted, not many. Also, the principle "you're not the customer, you're the product", while well-known to you cynical kids today, had not yet really been invented in 1999.
jbooth 15y ago
Yeah, and feel free to fire your pathological customers. But what they did was close this guy's account and delete his backups without warning. It seems they then did the same to his friend for shooting his mouth off on twitter. That's beyond "handled poorly", that's unprofessional and unethical.
- tjogin 15y ago
  It wasn't awesome. But we're talking about a $3/month host here, is that something you should rely on for backups, even before your account is terminated? If the abusive customer didn't keep a local copy, well, now he's probably learnt to keep a local copy. Having said that, if you choose to run a low cost hosting service, you should know that your customers are going to be greedy entitled bitches, and you should deal with that fact in a professional matter. Otherwise, just get into some other line of business.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Again, it's worse than "not awesome", it's unprofessional and unethical. If you commit to provide a service, whether you're charging $1 or $100k per month, there are some minimum standards of behavior you should hold yourself to. This isn't "you get what you pay for" because the host went down. Maliciously deleting backups that you're supposedly responsible for, over a twitter slapfight, is unethical. No matter what.
    - n09n 15y ago
      Do you know that he was actually responsible for backing up this data? This hosting plan costs less than some places charge just for maintaining backups.
      - Vivtek 15y ago
        They did have the backups - and said so - and then deleted them just to be assholes. So it's moot whether they were responsible for backing up the data; the issue is they deleted it on purpose just to hurt.