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I can't help but notice the attitude you show when filling out the support form. The guy on the other end reading it probably isn't the one at fault for the lac

by gizmo 17y ago

I can't help but notice the attitude you show when filling out the support form. The guy on the other end reading it probably isn't the one at fault for the lack of clarity in the error message. Answering messages like yours all day long really sucks. Cryptic error messages are frustrating, but there's no need to be nasty.

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
Heh, it wouldn't even let me submit the form. Note the error message in the top left. That's when I got nasty and took the screenshot.
Xichekolas 17y ago
I agree about his tone, but he does have a point about the API complexity. On the surface, FPS is quite simple, but when researching all the ways to use the marketplace API, it seemed like, more often than not, the only way to figure out if the API could do what I wanted was to ask in the forum and hope the FPS people answered me. Thankfully, they often do, so at least we know they care. (The last time I seriously looked at this was almost a year ago, so take my anecdote with a fist-full of salt.)
- MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
  The lack of a full-featured web console means that you're pretty much still right. They need a way to log into your account and run some of the API operations, like making a Caller token. As it is, you have to script up some kind of kludge. You end up spending several hours just getting off the ground.
moe 17y ago
Cryptic error messages are frustrating, but there's no need to be nasty. Wrong. If you want to achieve anything then be nasty. Be an asshole. Be the goddamn pestilence. You want the two little red up-arrows in their ticket tracker, not the blue "deferred" orb icon or the green auto-responder checkmark. You don't want to increment a number in the monthly customer service report sheet. You want the head of customer service walk up personally to his manager and wince something like "Yelp, the users are raising living hell over this issue". There are ofcourse exceptions, some companies have excellent customer support and don't need that kind of treatment. But when dealing with a behemoth like amazon then that's the only way to get anywhere, in my expirience from both sides of the frontline. Remember the poor helpdesk guy can not judge that this is a brown paper bag bug. A failed payment transaction should obviously provide more information than "Error. Period.". But how could he possibly know that? He can't. So what does he do when the inquiries about insufficient error messages begin to pile up? He walks up to his manager, who doesn't have a clue about the technical pecularities either. He can only judge the inbound corpus by volume and intensity. Unless you represent a large customer your volume will always be 1. Hence your only leverage is in the intensity knob.

by gizmo 17y ago

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago

Heh, it wouldn't even let me submit the form. Note the error message in the top left. That's when I got nasty and took the screenshot.

Xichekolas 17y ago

I agree about his tone, but he does have a point about the API complexity. On the surface, FPS is quite simple, but when researching all the ways to use the marketplace API, it seemed like, more often than not, the only way to figure out if the API could do what I wanted was to ask in the forum and hope the FPS people answered me. Thankfully, they often do, so at least we know they care. (The last time I seriously looked at this was almost a year ago, so take my anecdote with a fist-full of salt.)

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
The lack of a full-featured web console means that you're pretty much still right. They need a way to log into your account and run some of the API operations, like making a Caller token. As it is, you have to script up some kind of kludge. You end up spending several hours just getting off the ground.

moe 17y ago

Cryptic error messages are frustrating, but there's no need to be nasty. Wrong. If you want to achieve anything then be nasty. Be an asshole. Be the goddamn pestilence. You want the two little red up-arrows in their ticket tracker, not the blue "deferred" orb icon or the green auto-responder checkmark. You don't want to increment a number in the monthly customer service report sheet. You want the head of customer service walk up personally to his manager and wince something like "Yelp, the users are raising living hell over this issue". There are ofcourse exceptions, some companies have excellent customer support and don't need that kind of treatment. But when dealing with a behemoth like amazon then that's the only way to get anywhere, in my expirience from both sides of the frontline. Remember the poor helpdesk guy can not judge that this is a brown paper bag bug. A failed payment transaction should obviously provide more information than "Error. Period.". But how could he possibly know that? He can't. So what does he do when the inquiries about insufficient error messages begin to pile up? He walks up to his manager, who doesn't have a clue about the technical pecularities either. He can only judge the inbound corpus by volume and intensity. Unless you represent a large customer your volume will always be 1. Hence your only leverage is in the intensity knob.