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Have you guys considered suing Heroku to get some of your money back? Given the nature of Heroku's deception and the resulting ill-gotten gains across its entir

Have you guys considered suing Heroku to get some of your money back? Given the nature of Heroku's deception and the resulting ill-gotten gains across its entire customer bases, it would seem like you could work with an enterprising attorney to form a class-action suit against the company and get money back not just for yourselves but for the entire effected customer bases. Just a thought. ;)

minimaxir 14y ago
A Y-Combinator company suing another Y-Combinator company. Now that would be interesting.
- clicks 14y ago
  Heroku was acquired by Salesforce, so I guess it's not really a YC company anymore.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Ah that explains why they have turned evil. Usually once a company has been acquired they are no longer worth using.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      I upvoted this comment, it has been my experience this is the case.
    - malandrew 14y ago
      Normally I'd say yes, but one of the core Cedar stack engineers is a close friend of mine and I've been over at Heroku a few times to nerd out over beers. Given my conversations with him and other engineers about the designs I can guarantee to you that (1) Heroku is extremely autonomous relative to Salesforce (I bet you most of SF's influence is on the BD side of things and not on the engineering side. In fact I doubt they have much influence on engineering) and (2) there was no malice involved. Like any engineering first organization, they probably spotted an opportunity to innovate on efficiency and optimize a key process. Problem is that in this case v1.0 of their solution turned out to be a dud and they probably didn't have the instrumentation needed for this new approach in place to detect and prevent these issues. They may not have been measuring the all the right things so a modification detrimental to performance slipped through the cracks;
      - mctx 14y ago
        I think all this drama is a great opportunity for Heroku to bring out a new stack for non-concurrent apps with an intelligent routing mesh (v2.0a, perhaps). If I were you I'd go for another beer with the Heroku engineers and design/prototype it.
edouard1234567 14y ago
It'd be like suing an airline for a delayed flight.
- MediaSquirrel 14y ago
  In a way, yes––if the airline's product for sale wasn't a particular "flight," but instead a speedy "travel system" that guaranteed customers to fly on the first available (ergot fastest) flight. To further extend the airline analogy, it's as if you had bought one of these "fast travel" products and were told to buy more plane tickets to avoid delays! The tort (aka crime) committed is the deceitful way in which nature of the product was marketed to the clear financial benefit of Heroku and to the clear financial detriment of the customer. The fix offered to customers is always an up-sell effort to "buy more Heroku products." The thing about Heroku's intelligent queing system is that it lowers customers' costs and thus Heroku's profits. Switching away from intelligent queuing to random queuing was a business decision with clear moneymaking advantages for Heroku. In one fell swoop, the move made the value of a customer to Heroku skyrocket, potentially increasing its valuation upon acquisition and/or helping the founders more easily hit any earn-out revenue targets required by Salesforce as part of their acquisition.
  - edouard1234567 14y ago
    They don't really claim to be the most reliable or performant, just the easiest to deploy and maintain (arguably scale). Keep in mind they don't even have any meaningful SLA.
    - unclebucknasty 14y ago
      Yes, but false advertising may still be a claim, even if there is no concrete agreement. And the legal standard there doesn't even require overt lies. That is, even statements that are technically true but misleading such that a reasonable person would conclude something untrue can meet the test. And, in this case, documentation regarding the way their system works, as well other of their materials was overtly untrue. Beyond that, customers would merely need to show damages and also that Heroku profited from its untrue statements. Whether it intended to mislead or not, Heroku could have a real problem on its hands.

minimaxir 14y ago

A Y-Combinator company suing another Y-Combinator company. Now that would be interesting.

clicks 14y ago
Heroku was acquired by Salesforce, so I guess it's not really a YC company anymore.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Ah that explains why they have turned evil. Usually once a company has been acquired they are no longer worth using.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    I upvoted this comment, it has been my experience this is the case.
  - malandrew 14y ago
    Normally I'd say yes, but one of the core Cedar stack engineers is a close friend of mine and I've been over at Heroku a few times to nerd out over beers. Given my conversations with him and other engineers about the designs I can guarantee to you that (1) Heroku is extremely autonomous relative to Salesforce (I bet you most of SF's influence is on the BD side of things and not on the engineering side. In fact I doubt they have much influence on engineering) and (2) there was no malice involved. Like any engineering first organization, they probably spotted an opportunity to innovate on efficiency and optimize a key process. Problem is that in this case v1.0 of their solution turned out to be a dud and they probably didn't have the instrumentation needed for this new approach in place to detect and prevent these issues. They may not have been measuring the all the right things so a modification detrimental to performance slipped through the cracks;
    - mctx 14y ago
      I think all this drama is a great opportunity for Heroku to bring out a new stack for non-concurrent apps with an intelligent routing mesh (v2.0a, perhaps). If I were you I'd go for another beer with the Heroku engineers and design/prototype it.

edouard1234567 14y ago

It'd be like suing an airline for a delayed flight.

MediaSquirrel 14y ago
In a way, yes––if the airline's product for sale wasn't a particular "flight," but instead a speedy "travel system" that guaranteed customers to fly on the first available (ergot fastest) flight. To further extend the airline analogy, it's as if you had bought one of these "fast travel" products and were told to buy more plane tickets to avoid delays! The tort (aka crime) committed is the deceitful way in which nature of the product was marketed to the clear financial benefit of Heroku and to the clear financial detriment of the customer. The fix offered to customers is always an up-sell effort to "buy more Heroku products." The thing about Heroku's intelligent queing system is that it lowers customers' costs and thus Heroku's profits. Switching away from intelligent queuing to random queuing was a business decision with clear moneymaking advantages for Heroku. In one fell swoop, the move made the value of a customer to Heroku skyrocket, potentially increasing its valuation upon acquisition and/or helping the founders more easily hit any earn-out revenue targets required by Salesforce as part of their acquisition.
- edouard1234567 14y ago
  They don't really claim to be the most reliable or performant, just the easiest to deploy and maintain (arguably scale). Keep in mind they don't even have any meaningful SLA.
  - unclebucknasty 14y ago
    Yes, but false advertising may still be a claim, even if there is no concrete agreement. And the legal standard there doesn't even require overt lies. That is, even statements that are technically true but misleading such that a reasonable person would conclude something untrue can meet the test. And, in this case, documentation regarding the way their system works, as well other of their materials was overtly untrue. Beyond that, customers would merely need to show damages and also that Heroku profited from its untrue statements. Whether it intended to mislead or not, Heroku could have a real problem on its hands.