I came back to find that what I had to say had already been put eloquently here, particularly those last two lines. Withholding information is disrespectful, a

I came back to find that what I had to say had already been put eloquently here, particularly those last two lines. Withholding information is disrespectful, and is just as damaging to your customers' ability to make alternative choices that would benefit them as providing bad estimates. The author's chosen example is quite cherrypicked. I can not imagine any scenario for public transit breakdown in which the actual delay would be "5 minutes." In fact, this is so short that there's no reason to even bother with that update if that were true. It's true that promising this completely unrealistic window was detrimental - but that's because it was such a poor estimate. It's not hard to give expected-case (not best-case!) and worst-case estimates that are in the right order of magnitude, and to communicate in a way that these aren't seen as promises. "The next train will be here in 5 minutes" is the worst possible phrasing, presenting an absolute truth, and it's perfectly reasonable that customers and the response team treat it as such. Again, the solution is ~better~ communication, not ~witholding~ communication.