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I suspect, because I have been in a similar situation before, that the author is frustrated because the company first ignored/downplayed the significance of his

I suspect, because I have been in a similar situation before, that the author is frustrated because the company first ignored/downplayed the significance of his concern, then blamed his issue on user error (without accepting responsibility), and then quietly modified their documentation and addressed the issue as if they had "just discovered it". When companies behave this way it feels like you're being gaslit, which is extremely frustrating. The author may have gotten the result they initially wanted, but it would have felt like a huge, disrespectful, slap in the face.

dhc02 5y ago
Tech support gaslighting. Perfect encapsulation of the phenomenon. Someone make an urban dictionary entry.
- batch12 5y ago
  No, I didn't change anything. It just started working again.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    An easy claim to make in the world of service auto-scaling and auto-replacement :)
- SilasX 5y ago
  Interestingly enough, I vaguely remember a pg article about how Lisp was so effective he could deploy fixes during a customer support call about the issue, to the point the customer thought they had messed up instead of the application. I can’t seem to find that now, but this one is close (in praising Lisp’s speed advantage for startups): http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
  - codeofdusk 5y ago
    > I can’t seem to find that now Here you are: http://www.paulgraham.com/lwba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/lwba.html
    - SilasX 5y ago
      Thanks! Weird that for that one you have to click through to the ascii-text version and it's not in the format of the other articles.
dabernathy89 5y ago
> then quietly modified their documentation and addressed the issue as if they had "just discovered it" As he points out in the article, they alerted him to the documentation updates in the course of their emails back and forth. Fair point about being frustrated with the initial customer support experience, though. Definitely crappy.
- nrmitchi 5y ago
  > As he points out in the article, they alerted him to the documentation updates in the course of their emails back and forth. Technically, this is true. From the story though, it sounds like the PM included this information after the author reached out to the PM directly. Only after that did support say "I see we reached out to you about documentation updated!". So while yes, they did technically tell the author about the documentation update, I'm not sure I would classify it as them "alerting" the author.
  - flutas 5y ago
    > From the story though, it sounds like the PM included this information after the author reached out to the PM directly. Exactly the case, and it's because he happened to have the PMs email. Not because Stripe gave it to him or offered to send the PM his way.

dhc02 5y ago

Tech support gaslighting. Perfect encapsulation of the phenomenon. Someone make an urban dictionary entry.

batch12 5y ago
No, I didn't change anything. It just started working again.
- judge2020 5y ago
  An easy claim to make in the world of service auto-scaling and auto-replacement :)
SilasX 5y ago
Interestingly enough, I vaguely remember a pg article about how Lisp was so effective he could deploy fixes during a customer support call about the issue, to the point the customer thought they had messed up instead of the application. I can’t seem to find that now, but this one is close (in praising Lisp’s speed advantage for startups): http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
- codeofdusk 5y ago
  > I can’t seem to find that now Here you are: http://www.paulgraham.com/lwba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/lwba.html
  - SilasX 5y ago
    Thanks! Weird that for that one you have to click through to the ascii-text version and it's not in the format of the other articles.

dabernathy89 5y ago

> then quietly modified their documentation and addressed the issue as if they had "just discovered it" As he points out in the article, they alerted him to the documentation updates in the course of their emails back and forth. Fair point about being frustrated with the initial customer support experience, though. Definitely crappy.

nrmitchi 5y ago
> As he points out in the article, they alerted him to the documentation updates in the course of their emails back and forth. Technically, this is true. From the story though, it sounds like the PM included this information after the author reached out to the PM directly. Only after that did support say "I see we reached out to you about documentation updated!". So while yes, they did technically tell the author about the documentation update, I'm not sure I would classify it as them "alerting" the author.
- flutas 5y ago
  > From the story though, it sounds like the PM included this information after the author reached out to the PM directly. Exactly the case, and it's because he happened to have the PMs email. Not because Stripe gave it to him or offered to send the PM his way.