5 ms·

Facebook's response to the guy demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the issue: I apologize for this inconvenience. Unfortunately, this is not an error

by jseifer 17y ago

Facebook's response to the guy demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the issue: I apologize for this inconvenience. Unfortunately, this is not an error on our end. You will need to speak with your email provider in order to resolve this issue. That said, I'm sure this just hasn't been a priority yet rather than something willful. That along with with browser compatibility as w1ntermute said above.

mseebach 17y ago
No, it demonstrates that they are likely to get 1000s of e-mail every day from random people claiming that their servers are down, or they send out corrupted emails or whatever, when in fact the problem is squarely on the users end. Processing all these to catch the odd legitimate one has a very unfavourable cost/benefit ration. Yeah, it is a legitimate complaint, and it'd be quite simple to fix. I want them to make their AJAX degrade more gracefully, so the site will work on my cell in Opera mobile. I would be nice with a "I know what I'm talking about" certificate that would bypass front-line support for those who really do understand what they're talking about. A secret handshake or something :)
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  I think there are ways to address a lot of issues like this when you have Facebooks financial resources but I agree with your point in that I think a lot of people don’t see the issue here. The issue with low level tech support people is they lack judgment. Nice people, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re the guy answering tech support inquiries for $10 an hour you probably don’t have great judgment. So if you give tech support people carte blanche access to the engineers they will generally pester those engineers to death. But the reverse of that is sometimes those lower level people ignore a legit problem. Now I don’t know Facebook’s policy. If I had their money I’d probably create a tree structure of some kind where more competent people supervise the less competent people and so those less competent people can pester an intermediary who can then forward worthwhile info up the chain. But even still you’re dealing with the judgment of low level people.
  - bmj 17y ago
    The issue with low level tech support people is they lack judgment. Nice people, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re the guy answering tech support inquiries for $10 an hour you probably don’t have great judgment. So if you give tech support people carte blanche access to the engineers they will generally pester those engineers to death. Yes. My employer has a help desk/tech support line, and first-level help desk (the people that answer the phones) have to escalate an issue to second-level support, who can then contact engineering, if necessary. We aren't a huge shop, either (6 engineers, 3 second-level support folks), but this works quite well, and very few calls make it all the way to engineering.
- kragen 17y ago
  Maybe not having a single company running a set of servers that service hundreds of millions of people would be a good start. If Facebook were software running on the servers of many different groups of people, then the relationships would be somewhat different; among other things, you could fix your local copy of the software to handle MIME properly, then distribute the result to other people who were running their own servers.
- zandorg 17y ago
  I once ranted to a FedEx carrier, who refused to deliver after 12PM, in the UK that 'Junk bonds bought Fred's first plane', and 'where's that spirit now?' etc etc. They were very helpful after that... They sent it out for 3PM and I got my parcel. So basically rant on about corporate history and that gets their attention.

by jseifer 17y ago

mseebach 17y ago

No, it demonstrates that they are likely to get 1000s of e-mail every day from random people claiming that their servers are down, or they send out corrupted emails or whatever, when in fact the problem is squarely on the users end. Processing all these to catch the odd legitimate one has a very unfavourable cost/benefit ration. Yeah, it is a legitimate complaint, and it'd be quite simple to fix. I want them to make their AJAX degrade more gracefully, so the site will work on my cell in Opera mobile. I would be nice with a "I know what I'm talking about" certificate that would bypass front-line support for those who really do understand what they're talking about. A secret handshake or something :)

TomOfTTB 17y ago
I think there are ways to address a lot of issues like this when you have Facebooks financial resources but I agree with your point in that I think a lot of people don’t see the issue here. The issue with low level tech support people is they lack judgment. Nice people, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re the guy answering tech support inquiries for $10 an hour you probably don’t have great judgment. So if you give tech support people carte blanche access to the engineers they will generally pester those engineers to death. But the reverse of that is sometimes those lower level people ignore a legit problem. Now I don’t know Facebook’s policy. If I had their money I’d probably create a tree structure of some kind where more competent people supervise the less competent people and so those less competent people can pester an intermediary who can then forward worthwhile info up the chain. But even still you’re dealing with the judgment of low level people.
- bmj 17y ago
  The issue with low level tech support people is they lack judgment. Nice people, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re the guy answering tech support inquiries for $10 an hour you probably don’t have great judgment. So if you give tech support people carte blanche access to the engineers they will generally pester those engineers to death. Yes. My employer has a help desk/tech support line, and first-level help desk (the people that answer the phones) have to escalate an issue to second-level support, who can then contact engineering, if necessary. We aren't a huge shop, either (6 engineers, 3 second-level support folks), but this works quite well, and very few calls make it all the way to engineering.
kragen 17y ago
Maybe not having a single company running a set of servers that service hundreds of millions of people would be a good start. If Facebook were software running on the servers of many different groups of people, then the relationships would be somewhat different; among other things, you could fix your local copy of the software to handle MIME properly, then distribute the result to other people who were running their own servers.
zandorg 17y ago
I once ranted to a FedEx carrier, who refused to deliver after 12PM, in the UK that 'Junk bonds bought Fred's first plane', and 'where's that spirit now?' etc etc. They were very helpful after that... They sent it out for 3PM and I got my parcel. So basically rant on about corporate history and that gets their attention.