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Thinking about customer support as a ‘differentiator’ or a way to drive profit is depressing. You should simply strive to do what’s best for your customers. The

Thinking about customer support as a ‘differentiator’ or a way to drive profit is depressing. You should simply strive to do what’s best for your customers. The sort of feedback you’re getting is golden and in the right hands can be put to use rather than be dismissed. Assuming that people who disagree with your pricing model just don’t understand how business works is really telling. You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money. Your support strategy is missing an outlet for needy users to ask questions, effectively blaming customers for a structural flaw in your own setup. You could easily spin up a forum where power users help each other and devs can occasionally jump in to help or note pain points. Furthermore, your development and QA processes clearly need scrutiny. The reason bug reports feel like a ‘waste of everyone’s time’ is likely because you don't have the right error logging or telemetry built into the app itself. Having to wait for a manual bug report from a user is already a failure. It’s completely okay to define your product however you want and to reject feature requests, but to say you’ve singularly thought through every problem in an armchair, in comparison with the distributed minds of the rest of us, is pretty arrogant.

philipswood 3mo ago
I find this: > but to say you’ve singularly thought through every problem in an armchair, in comparison with the distributed minds of the rest of us, is pretty arrogant. Somehow incredibly ironic when applied to you comment itself...
- zmgsabst 3mo ago
  How so? I’m missing the irony.
  - brazzy 3mo ago
    The comment is basically doing exactly what it accused OP of doing: behaving as if the commenter has "singularly thought through every problem in an armchair" and knows better than OP who actually tried doing it.
    - card_zero 3mo ago
      Could be an armchair, could be a toilet, either seems a reasonable standard for a commenter on a messageboard, are we expecting a focus group or something?
      - braiamp 3mo ago
        No, but pointing out the irony of the situation is still helpful to anyone reading it.
miki123211 3mo ago
> you don't have the right error logging or telemetry built into the app itself. Which is exactly why HN's anti-telemetry stance is so unjustified.
- bloak 3mo ago
  Why exactly? "Error logging" is mentioned there as an alternative. I would have thought that if you can do telemetry you ought to be able to generate a local log file that is readable enough for the customer to feel confident about sending part of it back to you without breaking the law or their contracts with other parties.
michaelt 3mo ago
> You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money. And for some subscription situations, you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you. There's a 'PhotoSync' app that offers a premium option for either $1/month or $24 for life. Presumably because they looked at the average subscription duration and found it was in the region of 2 years. Modulo the time value of money and per-transaction processing costs. Personally I much preferred the one-off purchase, even though it's not clear I'll be using the app in 24 months, because it fits a lot better with my (somewhat chaotic) way of managing my money.
- jwr 3mo ago
  > you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you There is no such price, because there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions. You can't go to a local bakery and pay $24 for life to get fresh rolls every day. Every one-time price is a gamble, where somebody is betting on something. It's a way to close your eyes and pretend ongoing costs do not exist.
  - true_religion 3mo ago
    We like to think of physical products as one offs where what you buy tomorrow is the same as what you buy today. But I have run a bakery for 5 years, and you get better day by day, you introduce new techniques, find different flours, optimize bake times for fluffiness, crispiness, and taste. The croissants we make today are much better than what we made during our first month. We improved our product just like how software improves, but we did it without a croissant subscription, but by selling its own version as its own thing day by day. What software companies need to do is sell versions, where the life time of the version usefulness is actually limited. In the physical world, we have wear and tear, or in the case of croissants, decomposition or consumption which limit customers from using the same product forever. Can the same not be found for many software products? To use iOS as an example, the OPs app Castro charges for night mode, but night mode via OS controls didn’t always exist in iOS so a theoretical Castro v1 could have been released without before it, and v2 would include that new feature. Or when inevitably, v1 no longer works on new iOS versions, people would have to upgrade.
michaelt 3mo ago
> The reason bug reports feel like a ‘waste of everyone’s time’ is likely because you don't have the right error logging or telemetry built into the app itself. Having to wait for a manual bug report from a user is already a failure. Yes and no. You want enough logging and telemetry that you can roll out an update to 2% of users and know if something is terribly wrong before you roll it out to the other 98%. On the other hand, you probably don't want enough telemetry to detect that customer Jim Smith has trouble with WebRTC when joining calls without a microphone while using Firefox and Cloudflare Warp with split tunnels enabled.
- kmoser 3mo ago
  Also, logging and telemetry only tell you what the app is (or isn't) doing; unless the logging includes user input, screen captures or video recording, it won't tell you where the user failed to understand the UI.
ozim 3mo ago
None of these categories seem to build any meaningful rapport. Any honest answer I give is deeply unsatisfying to both parties, and we typically have better data from telemetry or crash logs than the emails provide. It’s certainly useful for us to receive them, but there’s not a helpful response I can give. I don't know how you read the blog post but it seems your interpretation is uncharitable to say the least. He wrote he already has good enough telemetry, there is just not much he can write in an e-mail to customer, besides generic "we know the issue thank you for the report" that would be useful for the customer and for themselves.
fredsters_s 3mo ago
> You could easily spin up a forum where power users help each other tell me you've never run anything without telling me you've never run anything...
- dabluck 3mo ago
  After a long day answering emails, I love kicking back and moderating my support forum.
  - hn_acc1 3mo ago
    Especially in 2026 with the majority of traffic being bots..
mcphage 3mo ago
> You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money. I think the article was very clear that they had already accepted that, and had already decided it was worth never getting their money.
timcobb 3mo ago
OP's post clearly described his thought process and experience. What are experience are you basing your assertions on?

philipswood 3mo ago

I find this: > but to say you’ve singularly thought through every problem in an armchair, in comparison with the distributed minds of the rest of us, is pretty arrogant. Somehow incredibly ironic when applied to you comment itself...

zmgsabst 3mo ago
How so? I’m missing the irony.
- brazzy 3mo ago
  The comment is basically doing exactly what it accused OP of doing: behaving as if the commenter has "singularly thought through every problem in an armchair" and knows better than OP who actually tried doing it.
  - card_zero 3mo ago
    Could be an armchair, could be a toilet, either seems a reasonable standard for a commenter on a messageboard, are we expecting a focus group or something?
    - braiamp 3mo ago
      No, but pointing out the irony of the situation is still helpful to anyone reading it.

miki123211 3mo ago

> you don't have the right error logging or telemetry built into the app itself. Which is exactly why HN's anti-telemetry stance is so unjustified.

bloak 3mo ago
Why exactly? "Error logging" is mentioned there as an alternative. I would have thought that if you can do telemetry you ought to be able to generate a local log file that is readable enough for the customer to feel confident about sending part of it back to you without breaking the law or their contracts with other parties.

michaelt 3mo ago

> You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money. And for some subscription situations, you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you. There's a 'PhotoSync' app that offers a premium option for either $1/month or $24 for life. Presumably because they looked at the average subscription duration and found it was in the region of 2 years. Modulo the time value of money and per-transaction processing costs. Personally I much preferred the one-off purchase, even though it's not clear I'll be using the app in 24 months, because it fits a lot better with my (somewhat chaotic) way of managing my money.

jwr 3mo ago
> you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you There is no such price, because there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions. You can't go to a local bakery and pay $24 for life to get fresh rolls every day. Every one-time price is a gamble, where somebody is betting on something. It's a way to close your eyes and pretend ongoing costs do not exist.
- true_religion 3mo ago
  We like to think of physical products as one offs where what you buy tomorrow is the same as what you buy today. But I have run a bakery for 5 years, and you get better day by day, you introduce new techniques, find different flours, optimize bake times for fluffiness, crispiness, and taste. The croissants we make today are much better than what we made during our first month. We improved our product just like how software improves, but we did it without a croissant subscription, but by selling its own version as its own thing day by day. What software companies need to do is sell versions, where the life time of the version usefulness is actually limited. In the physical world, we have wear and tear, or in the case of croissants, decomposition or consumption which limit customers from using the same product forever. Can the same not be found for many software products? To use iOS as an example, the OPs app Castro charges for night mode, but night mode via OS controls didn’t always exist in iOS so a theoretical Castro v1 could have been released without before it, and v2 would include that new feature. Or when inevitably, v1 no longer works on new iOS versions, people would have to upgrade.

michaelt 3mo ago

> The reason bug reports feel like a ‘waste of everyone’s time’ is likely because you don't have the right error logging or telemetry built into the app itself. Having to wait for a manual bug report from a user is already a failure. Yes and no. You want enough logging and telemetry that you can roll out an update to 2% of users and know if something is terribly wrong before you roll it out to the other 98%. On the other hand, you probably don't want enough telemetry to detect that customer Jim Smith has trouble with WebRTC when joining calls without a microphone while using Firefox and Cloudflare Warp with split tunnels enabled.

kmoser 3mo ago
Also, logging and telemetry only tell you what the app is (or isn't) doing; unless the logging includes user input, screen captures or video recording, it won't tell you where the user failed to understand the UI.

ozim 3mo ago

None of these categories seem to build any meaningful rapport. Any honest answer I give is deeply unsatisfying to both parties, and we typically have better data from telemetry or crash logs than the emails provide. It’s certainly useful for us to receive them, but there’s not a helpful response I can give. I don't know how you read the blog post but it seems your interpretation is uncharitable to say the least. He wrote he already has good enough telemetry, there is just not much he can write in an e-mail to customer, besides generic "we know the issue thank you for the report" that would be useful for the customer and for themselves.

fredsters_s 3mo ago

> You could easily spin up a forum where power users help each other tell me you've never run anything without telling me you've never run anything...

dabluck 3mo ago
After a long day answering emails, I love kicking back and moderating my support forum.
- hn_acc1 3mo ago
  Especially in 2026 with the majority of traffic being bots..

mcphage 3mo ago

timcobb 3mo ago

OP's post clearly described his thought process and experience. What are experience are you basing your assertions on?