SH in the comments explains just why she was so upset: We found out because a very, very angry customer posted in a comment on our blog about our lack of reply

SH in the comments explains just why she was so upset: We found out because a very, very angry customer posted in a comment on our blog about our lack of reply to his inquiries. Now, we know as a company that years ago, we didn’t offer the same support we offer now. But I also know that I reply to EVERY email for support we receive, and I’ve done so for 2 years now. Two months ago, we hired Michael as our second support person, so we can reply with even more timely and more informative emails. We scoured our records and found no trace of his email. I had our system administrator manually search our incoming mail logs and found nothing. Finally, the customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question. I was dumbfounded. Angry. Extremely, beyond belief, upset by this. Customer support is my job, and I take it very seriously, and I am very, very good at it. To have another website undermine that job which leads to a customer with 1) a bad experience, 2) a bad impression of our company, 3) a bad impression of my work…well, it’s infuriating. Not only was I angry on the customer’s behalf, I was angry on behalf of our company to see our name and logo plastered all over a site we had never known about until then. (After that, there were two identical incidents over the past year.) So that’s how we found out. Our frustration isn’t new, and it’s not unfounded. It’s based purely on the bad experiences GS has caused for our customers, and the harm it’s caused our brand. I’ve been friends with GS’s co-founder Lane Becker for years, and I don’t think he has sour intentions at all. But I do think perhaps as a company, GS is blinded to the harm their site can cause other companies.