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From this forum "experience", it seems they have copied the Google model of service. They offer the support forum as a major source of support and promote heavy

From this forum "experience", it seems they have copied the Google model of service. They offer the support forum as a major source of support and promote heavy users to moderators or give them some other special flair. Mind you, normal users, without any inside access, information or capabilities. These users then spend their time flagging down support requests and blaming the posters.

wpietri 14y ago
The victim-blaming was shocking to me here. The bit where Andy Y. says, "Oh, some spammer just guessed it" was funny. As if spammers needed to do dictionary attacks against the sort of tagged addresses that 0.1% of people use. But it became hilarious when he said the same thing to the guy who uses 10-random-character tags. As if they would hit upon two different Dropbox addresses like that before the sun cooled to a cider. The original complainant is much more patient than I am. If that's what I'd gotten as "support" on a paid service when reporting a security breach, I would have closed my account and told them to get fucked.
- unreal37 14y ago
  To defend Dropbox here, those people are forum moderators and not employees of Dropbox. The first Dropbox employee to respond specifically apologized for those responses. Jumping on Dropbox for this is just going to harm other companies responding to customer support requests in a timely fashion before lawyers get a chance to review...
  - JshWright 14y ago
    And yet, those users are still wearing moderator tags...
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "those people are forum moderators and not employees of Dropbox" They're official representatives of Dropbox, even if they are unpaid. Their behavior is entirely on Dropbox, and the fact that Dropbox has farmed out its customer support to unpaid amateurs is possibly a worse realization than the fact that the clueless person was not an employee.
    - res0nat0r 14y ago
      Eh not really. They are community volunteers. The best part is that they can give free support in the forums without pay, and then when something esclates and they've done something wrong an actual employee can wash their hands of the situation (as they've done here) by stating they aren't actually employed by the company. So it's a win win for Dropbox. Free forum support for low level day to day forum chatter and easily absolvable of any wrongdoing if they screw up.
      - gokhan 14y ago
        That's the price of trying to provide a vital service free with some clueless, non-paid "customers". I mean, frontpage of HN with zillion upvotes and comments, after you fail to support customers.
      - dhimes 14y ago
        Whether it's a win or loss for Dropbox depends on the public's reaction to it. I'm totally with potatolicious here: It's a dropbox site, and these people have a special status (moderator) which I automatically assume is conferred upon them by Dropbox. So their behavior is "on" dropbox- whether dropbox wants it to be or not. Even if my assumption is wrong, it's still on Dropbox. The only question is, are people going to hold them accountable or not (by finding other solutions). I don't use them (I do my own syncing) and this display warns me off of starting to use them any time in the near future.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- niggler 14y ago
  "The original complainant is much more patient than I am. If that's what I'd gotten as "support" on a paid service when reporting a security breach, I would have closed my account and told them to get fucked." I agree with the end part of your response, but it's unknown if Forrest is a paid customer.
  - PommeDeTerre 14y ago
    Even a non-paying customer does not deserve to get treated like that when a security issue is involved.

wpietri 14y ago

The victim-blaming was shocking to me here. The bit where Andy Y. says, "Oh, some spammer just guessed it" was funny. As if spammers needed to do dictionary attacks against the sort of tagged addresses that 0.1% of people use. But it became hilarious when he said the same thing to the guy who uses 10-random-character tags. As if they would hit upon two different Dropbox addresses like that before the sun cooled to a cider. The original complainant is much more patient than I am. If that's what I'd gotten as "support" on a paid service when reporting a security breach, I would have closed my account and told them to get fucked.

unreal37 14y ago
To defend Dropbox here, those people are forum moderators and not employees of Dropbox. The first Dropbox employee to respond specifically apologized for those responses. Jumping on Dropbox for this is just going to harm other companies responding to customer support requests in a timely fashion before lawyers get a chance to review...
- JshWright 14y ago
  And yet, those users are still wearing moderator tags...
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "those people are forum moderators and not employees of Dropbox" They're official representatives of Dropbox, even if they are unpaid. Their behavior is entirely on Dropbox, and the fact that Dropbox has farmed out its customer support to unpaid amateurs is possibly a worse realization than the fact that the clueless person was not an employee.
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    Eh not really. They are community volunteers. The best part is that they can give free support in the forums without pay, and then when something esclates and they've done something wrong an actual employee can wash their hands of the situation (as they've done here) by stating they aren't actually employed by the company. So it's a win win for Dropbox. Free forum support for low level day to day forum chatter and easily absolvable of any wrongdoing if they screw up.
    - gokhan 14y ago
      That's the price of trying to provide a vital service free with some clueless, non-paid "customers". I mean, frontpage of HN with zillion upvotes and comments, after you fail to support customers.
    - dhimes 14y ago
      Whether it's a win or loss for Dropbox depends on the public's reaction to it. I'm totally with potatolicious here: It's a dropbox site, and these people have a special status (moderator) which I automatically assume is conferred upon them by Dropbox. So their behavior is "on" dropbox- whether dropbox wants it to be or not. Even if my assumption is wrong, it's still on Dropbox. The only question is, are people going to hold them accountable or not (by finding other solutions). I don't use them (I do my own syncing) and this display warns me off of starting to use them any time in the near future.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
niggler 14y ago
"The original complainant is much more patient than I am. If that's what I'd gotten as "support" on a paid service when reporting a security breach, I would have closed my account and told them to get fucked." I agree with the end part of your response, but it's unknown if Forrest is a paid customer.
- PommeDeTerre 14y ago
  Even a non-paying customer does not deserve to get treated like that when a security issue is involved.