Jason Fried: Get Satisfaction is "awfully close to blackmail"

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else

by ionfish • 17 years ago

291 142 17 years ago

lsb• 17 years ago

It sounds more like fraud and misrepresentation.

oldwesley4• 17 years ago

An enterprising lawyer could put together a compelling class action case if only GetSatisfaction's pockets weren't so shallow. I'd like to see them get their asses handed to them for this shit.

chris112• 17 years ago

You are not the only one. Supposedly someone is offering to pay 25k to a fund in support of a class action lawsuit. http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-...

ryanwaggoner4• 17 years ago

For what it's worth, Thor Muller (Cofounder of Get Satisfaction) responded in the comments and said the wording was a mistake and would be changed immediately:

"Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn’t come off at all. The idea is to encourage openness, and provide a badge for companies that want to be associated with it. This was just unfortunate phrasing (one small part of an ongoing redesign effort), and doesn’t reflect our values, as I think many, many people and companies who’ve used our service can attest."

JoelSutherland3• 17 years ago

The text in the badge is/was:

37signals has not yet committed to open conversation about its products and services. Encourage them to join and support the Company-Customer Pact.

I really have a hard time believing that this was an oversight. It is at the top of almost every page. When you consider GetSatisfaction's strategy it is even well written.

scott_s4• 17 years ago

I agree. The language was simple and clear. I have difficulty believing language that straight-forward was an accident.

mechanical_fish5• 17 years ago

What you say is completely true.

That said: Accept the groveling apology for what it is. GetSatisfaction has passed the first test of customer support: When the customer gets angry, you must grovel, and vice versa:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240170

donaq• 17 years ago

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but could this have possibly been deliberate? The language in the badge seemed quite unambiguous to me. Could they have done this deliberately, waiting for someone big (and somewhat vocal) like, oh, 37signals to notice and speak up, then swiftly make apologies and correct the "accident"? If this is true, then GetSatisfaction has truly played 37signals, HN and possibly many other sites as news gets around, like a flute. A publicity coup of magnificent (if a tad Machiavellian) proportions.

mmelin2• 17 years ago

That badge has been on GetSatisfaction pages for as long as I can remember, at least a year. I find it hard to believe that it could be an oversight.

mmelin2• 17 years ago

I have to say that I seem to be completely wrong here. Looking through the Internet Archive, with the previous design it used to say: "Anyone can add a company or organization

Love a company? Or hate one? Add it to Satisfaction!

Is your company or organization already here? Claim it and get involved with your customers."

It would seem as if I'm misremembering because I have spent a disproportionate amount of time on GS the last few weeks. Apologies.

knowtheory3• 17 years ago

Talking with the GetSatisfaction guys on their Ustream: http://getsatisfaction.tv/

The badge has been up for about 2 weeks according to them. It was deployed with their redesigned header 2 weeks ago.

andr2• 17 years ago

That's only half of the job. They still don't offer a way to "delist" yourself from GS. Customers will still think GS is providing support for 37Signals and will be disappointed. Even if the badge says it is not an official site many people will not read it.

Some comments in the post compared this to Google, but it is not a valid comparison, as Google offers a very clear way to get yourself out of their index.

aka• 17 years ago

Good, and they should never offer a way to delist yourself. GS is almost irrelevant to companies with good customer service - if your service is good enough that you discover your own GS page, then linking to your official support or monitoring it is better than delisting. BUT there are a lot of corps with dire service who like to avoid public discussion rather than deal with their poor service. A magic gag option would be right up their street, and would screw over their customers.

ivankirigin• 17 years ago

We switched to UserVoice because GetSatisfaction is often simply broken. Way too many links have just failed.

Try to count the steps for a new user to leave feedback. There must be at least 10.

Our UserVoice widget (http://tipjoy.com/feedback ), also has a really easy email form.

sachinag3• 17 years ago

I just logged into our GetSatisfaction account to see if I could direct people to our UserVoice. Nope, can't do it.

Until today, we encouraged people who visited our UserVoice page to go to GS with complaints (the idea was that UserVoice would be for feature requests only). I'm trying to remove that language as a result of today's brouhaha.

EDIT: couldn't figure out how to change it on http://dawdledotcom.uservoice.com but at least we're sending people to UV at http://getsatisfaction.com/dawdle/ .

periferral• 17 years ago

sue them

thorax2• 17 years ago

I don't have any strong feelings about Get Satisfaction (or any of the other sites like this), but we made http://featurelist.org available for free to anyone who wants a lighter approach to that sort of thing. It focuses a bit more on the feature request side than the technical support pieces, but it might be interesting to some of you.

Once we catch our breath from our other sites, we're going to provide featurelist.org as open source (PHP/CodeIgniter) in case people are hesitant to host their user feedback on someone else's site.

For our own usage, we really just needed a way to track feature requests and have YC-inspired feedback widgets for our own sites. So we opened that service up for everyone to use.

metachris• 17 years ago

sorry to say, but featurelist.org has a horrible look and feel, although the idea is quite nice.

i'd guess you're a couple of coders -- get a graphic designer on board! (and keep up the work :)

thorax2• 17 years ago

Thanks for commenting.

Featurelist won't appeal to everyone visually, though, neither does Reddit or HN. A lot of our users have liked the simplicity of the site, but it might not be for you.

We're not focusing on the visual aspects (not to the extent we have for bug.gd or yumbunny), so no one should expect a facelift or for it to win any awards. I'm just sharing it here so people know they have other alternatives floating around. To each their own, of course.

Thanks for your feedback.

jseifer• 17 years ago

To prefix all this: I've never really looked in to Get Satisfaction for anything except a couple of random posts on other companies pages there. I can see where 37 Signals is coming from with the whole not being committed to an open conversation thing but I think the whole article is a bit sensational. A guy from Get Satisfaction even jumps in and says they messed up with that badge. They do need to make money some how and targeted ads seem like a good idea for that. It really strikes me as a young company that's just making a couple of mistakes and I don't think they deserved this PR. I wonder if anyone at 37S tried to contact GS before making this post. If they did then it was deserved but if not I'm not so sure.

scott_s4• 17 years ago

I think having ads and being paid not to have ads is fundamentally different. The latter reminds me of protection payment.

As pointed out above, I have difficulty believing the badge wording is a mistake.

warfangle• 17 years ago

My issue with the whole thing would be the fact that they use branding, logos, and so forth from a company that they have no business relationship with. Doing so devalues the brand, and should cease immediately.

It would be like going into a storefront that has a UPS Package Store sign, and finding out it's just a counter with a guy that claims to be UPS customer support, but doesn't actually help you out with anything. And then find out it's a different company entirely.

oldwesley4• 17 years ago

Sounds like fraudulent misrepresentation/impersonation. Good luck if you try to do that with a brand like UPS. They would be down your neck in a second. A cell phone store in my neighborhood got busted by TMobile for misrepresenting themselves as official TMobile resellers. This is no different. Should be grounds for legal action.

tom_rath2• 17 years ago

Is that really Get Satisfaction's doing, or was it a 37signals fanboy who put that together without permission?

Snagging the look-and-feel (graphics, colours, etc.) of a target's site is particularly sleazy and it seems very odd if Get Satisfaction has chosen to go that route for their business.

Unless Get Satisfaction provides a prominent "request this forum be deleted" link, and actually removes a forum on request, I wouldn't touch these guys with the proverbial 10' pole if site mimicking has become their standard practice.

bobbyi• 17 years ago

Why should companies be able to "delete" 3rd party forums where people discuss their products and help each other?

If someone asks a question on Stack Overflow about using Visual Studio, should Microsoft be able to delete it? Should they be able to sue SO? Should SO not be able to run ads for products that compete with VS?

tom_rath2• 17 years ago

I don't think there's any problem with third-parties putting together support forums, Q&A pages or the like. It's when they snatch the look-and-feel of a company's site to try and pass themselves off as an official part of that company (without permission!) which sends my alarm bells ringing.

tptacek9• 17 years ago

They clearly shouldn't be able to stifle online discussions about products. Under US trademark law, the right to use trademarks you don't own for purposes of commentary or criticism is specifically carved out.

But that's a red herring. The relevant complaint for this branch of the discussion is that GS wound up sponsoring a website that was clearly and evidently confusing to the public. They ran that site for commercial gain, and in multiple ways made appeals to 37signals for payment to gain more control over that site. None of that is kosher.

swilliams• 17 years ago

It should be noted that the look and feel is the same (except for logos) for every company. See, http://getsatisfaction.com/comcast for example.

Yes, I would say that they have a similar L & F and color scheme as 37 Signals, but I would not go so far as to say it is "ripped off."

sfg2• 17 years ago

Taking the logos without permission is bad enough.

swombat6• 17 years ago

I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first. I see no indication that there was any communication between 37Signals and GetSatisfaction prior to this very public post.

I've had this kind of thing done to me before, and I think it's really out of order. Essentially, 37Signals have decided, in this case, to trade politeness and "being good" for making a big noise and getting some page views and attention.

It's easy to criticise people publicly without trying to understand what's going on first. I'd love to say that I expected better from 37-Signals, but considering that their blog has been so focused on generating page views through negative disagreement, I'm not all that surprised that they do this as well.

Here's a challenge for 37-signals: Why not try to do positive things, rather than frame everything as a confrontational disagreement? Yes, being an arse generates page views, but so do other undesirable behaviour. Is that really the way you want to go in the long term?

axod2• 17 years ago

Agreed. Pretty bad form to not email first with concerns/questions etc.

But as you say, if they had resolved it privately, people wouldn't be reading about it on their blog.

markh• 17 years ago

I'm in the camp that says 37Signals have a valid point. Let's assume their intention is not about traffic but is to pressure GetSatisfaction into rectifying the situation as quickly as possible (and not just for 37Signals) then as harsh as the post may have been:

1) 37Signals have used their considerable influence to achieve change on behalf of many sites who have far less influence 2) 37Signals used the open model of putting pressure on a company publicly that GetSatisfaction have built their business on 3) They've effected change and created open discussion

Could they have been 'nicer'? Perhaps. But more effective, I'm not so sure...

swombat6• 17 years ago

That they have a valid point is not in question. GS themselves have acknowledged it and immediately fixed the offending badges and pages.

My point is, the way they handled conveying that point to GetSatisfaction was nasty, brutish, and totally unwarranted.

webwright8• 17 years ago

Bullshit (will probably get a downmod or two for my vehemence).

If Jason Fried dropped them a note saying, "I almost hit PUBLISH on the following rant-style post, but I wanted to drop you guys a line first", they would've jumped just as far, just as fast.

It would've cost him exactly NOTHING to give it a day or two on private channels before posting a rant other than the time it took to find a contact form and hit "ctrl-V".

Public rants are fun. Causing public harm to someone who has slighted you is gratifying. Getting a reaction from supporters and an apology from the rant-target is gratifying. That's the motivation of this post. Self-gratification. I generally love 37s, but not here.

Pretty disappointing.

drusenko• 17 years ago

I've been complaining about this for a while now and I'd tend to agree here. The whole getsatisfaction service is sort of like a blackmail scheme to start out with: They try hard to attract all of your users to their site, to be the "Weebly support forum", and then users are disappointed when their requests aren't answered.

What's most annoying is that GetSatisfaction has a strong selection bias towards the users who have problems, and so it very negatively affects the image of the company. There is no way to respond to those users or fix their problems besides buying into the whole scam and doing support on their site.

FYI, their support system has so much more overhead than the one we use internally that I'd estimate our support costs would increase 2-3X by moving all of our support into their system.

mechanical_fish5• 17 years ago

I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first.

Whereas I think a public statement of outrage is entirely justified. Take a look at the screenshot. GetSatisfaction has been collecting feedback under the 37signals name for at least a month. Those people who typed messages into GetSatisfaction expecting a response have been disappointed for a while. Anyone who randomly came across that page and saw lots of months-old issues -- but no post from 37signals itself -- has been subliminally convinced that 37signals never gets around to answering their mail.

This is not a theoretical issue. I believe this group of confused visitors includes me. I think I remember clicking through to this page, being puzzled by the lack of back-and-forth, and then surfing away -- not consciously angry, but feeling lost and a bit let down. This incident, and others like it, is not a trivial matter. This sort of thing is costing the company money.

How is 37signals to solve this PR problem, which GetSatisfaction has intentionally inflicted on their company, except by making a big, immediate, loud public fuss? Ideally, this message needs to reach every single person who has ever visited that page on GetSatisfaction.

If GetSatisfaction doesn't want to get into confrontational disagreements, perhaps they should have avoided designing a system that automatically trashes the public image of other companies.

moe• 17 years ago

Amen.

swombat6• 17 years ago

People have disagreements and confrontation all the time.

Mature people resolve those potential conflicts through calm discussion.

Immature people resort to attacking the people they disagree with.

wheels3• 17 years ago

Loud public fuss is usually a reasonable backup plan if asking them to change doesn't work, but starting off by asking people to resolve something lends you credibility because you've tried to resolve things amicably. If you want to put a squeeze on them, you can add, "Or we're going to lambaste you in our popular blog."

But starting off that way is just obnoxious. Granted, as noted, being obnoxious drives page views.

jonknee• 17 years ago

It's also bad form to publicly masquerade as an official support forum for a company without discussing it in private first.

jdileo• 17 years ago

37signals absolutely has a valid point and I agree with their decision to make this public so all can be aware of the tactics being employed by GS.

FYI-GS is using the same type of extortion that the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has used since inception to scare companies into becoming a paid member. The general public has no idea how dishonest many of these client attainment methods really are.

tptacek9• 17 years ago

I had no idea about the BBB. Can you tell us more?

gills• 17 years ago

37signals public response seems commensurate with the amount of private discussion GetSatisfaction appears to have had with 37signals about placing that badge on their fake support page.

rimantas2• 17 years ago

What? Some random guys put nonsense like "37 signals is not committed blah blah blah" and 37signals should be polite with those bastards? And in case you missed the news, 37signals' main income is not ads on their blog, they have pretty successful web app business. Posting that for "generating page views" sounds ridiculous if you know at least a bit about the company which posted it.

axod2• 17 years ago

Right, because none of their customers came from their blog :/

If I were them, I would have send an email asking for the page to be removed, and moved on.

lallysingh2• 17 years ago

I think the extortion was pretty blatant, and the counterattack was proportionate.

The BS response given by GetSatisfaction's people is so bad it proves the point.

chris112• 17 years ago

DHH wrote a comment that I really agree with: "Brian, that language adequately reflects the feeling we have when we discover a site that is accepting questions and requests from users who expect an answer there - and will be disappointed when they don’t get it - is taunting the conversation with words like we haven’t committed to an open conversation and then have a price tag to make that go away.

GS’ is certainly helping to turn that image by being quick to respond here, but that doesn’t really change how the situation arose."

I think it might have been more polite to privately discuss this with GetSatisfaction first, but this needed to be discussed publicly.

The only difference between an official support page and an unofficial support page is the added announcement at the top that says the page is unofficial.

The official support pages also says it is supported by employees, but I don't really know what that means by itself. Does it mean that the product is only supported through Get Satisfaction, or does it only mean that company employees read the questions there?

Just check out the pages for officially supported products and unofficially supported products. Photosynth is only officially supported by GetSatisfication. The NY Times has its own customer support. The only big difference I see is that the NY Times has the added message that it is unofficial.

Photosynth:http://getsatisfaction.com/livelabs/products/livelabs_photos...

NY Times:http://getsatisfaction.com/nytimes

GS is advertising itself as a one stop customer support solution.If I believe that a company solely uses GS and try to contact that company, I am going to treat any response as an official response.

With 14k+ plus support pages on GS, I am sure that there are a few companies out there that don't even know they have a GS page. So if GS is not clearly saying that those pages are unofficial, any lack of correspondence will hurt that company.

GS was basically hijacking some companies customer service. If I have a problem with a product, and I incorrectly believe that I am being ignored, the company will end up worse off. At the minimum, I will seriously consider not buying from that company again, and I might mention my bad experience to other people I know. And if my problem was severe, I might think of filing a chargeback.

I really doubt 37Signals spends a lot of time scouring the internet looking for people infringing on their IP. So probably this was brought to their attention by their own customers. So while they could have go about this in a less confrontational manner, I really don't think they were being an arse. This problem deserved public attention.

plusbryan• 17 years ago

The handful of times I've contacted getsatisfaction, they've responded quickly and like a startup that cares about its customers and what they think. I agree this could have been emailed first.

pietro• 17 years ago

Did you discuss this in private with 37signals before attacking them in public?

mr_justin• 17 years ago

Garrett Dimon's comments are the only voice of reason on that page.

Posts like that are useless, yet I'm sure Jason will use all the "I agree, GS is lame" comments from his fan club to validate his reasons for posting.

Mistone• 17 years ago

Get Satisfaction got Customer Service Served by 37Signals, ouch!

oldwesley4• 17 years ago

We need someone to start up a site that provides user feedback on GetSatisfaction, using GetSatisfaction's look-and-feel. Taste of their own medicine.

Gibbon5• 17 years ago

So GetSatisfaction mildy misrepresents their association with 37Signals and uses their IP without authorization.. and 37Signals counters with a potentially slanderous letter in a public forum? Not exactly a great way to start a dialogue or build a legal case.

Most any other company would first engage with a civil, private, discussion, followed by legal action before firing off a public lambasting as a last resort (a rare event at that.)

There may be some valid points in the post, but whining in public makes you like a fool, to customers, to other businesses and to the public at large. Totally unprofessional.

Semiapies15• 17 years ago

What was slanderous (or, since it was written, libelous) about anything in the blog post?

Very simply, GS set up web pages where they appeared to represent another company in a detrimental way. That is <i>not</i> something the other company is obligated to quietly request them to stop - they are well within their rights to open up with a cease & desist order, not an annoyed blog post.

Gibbon5• 17 years ago

For starters he implied (and borderline accused) GetSatisfaction of blackmail and extortionist practices.

Gibbon5• 17 years ago

A blog post can be classified either as slander or libel, depending on the jurisdiction. Some courts have placed blogs together with other broadcast media and libel law, while others have ruled blogs are part of an ongoing conversation and fall under slander laws.

imgabe• 17 years ago

The site also hosts, without permission, company support pages for over 14,000 companies. They’ll use your logo, title the page “Customer service & support for [COMPANY NAME HERE]” and generally make it feel like an officially sanctioned place to get official support from the company in question.

If they're using your company's logo and name, and those are a registered trademark, isn't that grounds for a lawsuit? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that trademark law is supposed to prevent? (One company purporting to be associated with another when it isn't)

I know there's a reason a I can't make my own cola, slap a Pepsi logo on it and sell it out of the back of my truck. I thought this was it.

Semiapies15• 17 years ago

Or operate a "Pepsi Helpline", for that matter.

I'm amused at all the "gee, he should have just emailed them" responses. The fact that 37Signals didn't lawyer up to start with was an act of restraint.

sachinag3• 17 years ago

The whole point of trademark law is consumer confusion. GetSatisfaction has exposed themselves to an insane amount of legal liability by setting up pages for companies without their permission.

tptacek9• 17 years ago

It's funny that Thor@GS, in the comments, points out that they're continuing to use non-free logo images, on the auspices that they're using them the same way a Wiki would.

It is in fact not easy to use non-free company logo images on Wikipedia:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logos

The tests you have to meet on WP to avoid copyvio include:

* Demonstrable encyclopedic merit (you can't just upload and tag a logo)

* Noncommercial use of the mark

* No dilution of the trademark --- ie, you can't make it appear that the company sanctioned your use of the logo.

Doesn't GS flunk all three of these tests?

olefoo2• 17 years ago

Yes they do.

Which is unfortunate, because in some cases they are providing a valuable service.

This is one of those challenges that can make or break a company.

philwelch• 17 years ago

Wikipedia's content policies are a fair deal more strict and paranoid about intellectual property law than the law itself is.

Semiapies15• 17 years ago

I'm a bit amazed by a lot of these responses. I sympathize with the idea that problems should be worked out with friendliness and civility, but this sort of thing is not a question of etiquette that Fried mishandled. These are actions by Get Satisfaction that could easily lead to serious lawsuits.

I suggest that folks in web businesses who look at this and see the major concern here as the tone of an aggrieved blog post should make sure they have good lawyers to run their ideas by.

jrockway• 17 years ago

What's the difference between something like this and Yelp? (Why is this bad, and Yelp's not? Is it because people here all have online businesses, and don't want a forum where people could say something bad about them?)

Semiapies15• 17 years ago

Because when I go to Yelp and look up Morton's Steakhouse in Atlanta GA, I see clearly marked reviews, not "Complaint Department and Feedback for Morton's Steakhouse". I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money.

Seriously, you might find the linked blog post interesting.

nkurz• 17 years ago

"I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money."

Actually, this seems to be exactly what Yelp does:

Here's what advertisers receive, according to an e-mailed sales pitch that a local business owner sent to this newspaper. They can highlight a favorite review to appear at the top of the page about their business. They also show up first in search results for similar businesses in their region (for example "coffee" near "Alameda, CA"). Ads for that business appear on the page of local competitors, while competitors' ads do not appear on their page.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business...

blasdel• 17 years ago

Yelp is even worse on the extortion front, they have sales guys that make shakedown calls: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html

shiranaihito2• 17 years ago

Thor Muller 31 Mar 09

Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn’t come off at all.

According to this DoucheWeasel, GS tried to say that their page about 37signals is not sanctioned/approved by 37signals, but failed.

Instead they ended up implying that 37signals doesn't care about their customers. Whoops.

Have you ever tried to type "This space is not officially sanctioned by 37signals" but made a few typos and ended up typing "37signals is not committed to open an conversation" instead?

Gosh, that mistake could happen to anyone!

Semiapies15• 17 years ago

The GS guys are doing an amazing combination of groveling and passive-aggressive whining about being caught at the same time.

shiranaihito2• 17 years ago

You nailed it. That was just about what I wanted to say, but couldn't.

In any case, last time I checked, they had most of HN fooled with their douchery too, which is quite surprising.

Seriously.. If their "wording" was explicitly meant to state that the "space" was not officially sanctioned by 37signals, well then, why not just freaking go ahead and explicitly state exactly that?

It's obvious that GS is a shady company, and after Jason's blog post, what exactly do people think they'd do?

"Why yes, we are full of shit. You got us."?

Semiapies15• 17 years ago

Thor Muller posts an open letter to Jason Fried:

http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-ja...

...and negates 95% of the "he should have been nicer about it" complaints about the original post by saying "And while I would have preferred you sending us a note, or even posting it somewhere less trafficked than your popular blog, the fact is that Get Satisfaction is a huge proponent of public airing of grievances. You were right to bring it to our attention any way you saw fit."

mroman• 17 years ago

Those "getsatisfaction" people need to be eradicated.

TOTAL rats in suits - I wish I could tell you all who and what, but a person I know (former client) has enough on them to get them thrown in the bighouse.

Jason Fried: Get Satisfaction is "awfully close to blackmail"

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