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posted by on Monday December 19 2016, @09:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-to-run-a-business dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

After leaving a negative review and opening a support ticket about HRDSOFTWARE, a customer was told that he needed to download and install the latest version; then they would be able to provide support. He followed their directions, and once the download was installed, the program started, displayed the splash screen, and then completely shut down. After calling the support line to ask them to explain what they were doing, they informed him that he was blacklisted and the file they directed him to download blocked the software on the computer from running. PDF of ticket.

This thread on a ham radio enthusiast forum details the customer's complaint along with the expected peanut gallery postings. Discussion spread to other fora, accusations flew of favoritism and deleted posts. One co-owner pops in to say he's fixed the user's problem. Then something interesting happens on page 37. The other co-owner of HRDSoftware steps in and apologizes, reinstates the user's software, and spends the next 25 (and counting) pages engaging with the community and talking about how he can improve things going forward.

This story started out being about how users get punished for giving negative feedback, but now it is also about how to be a responsible business owner and respond to your userbase.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday December 19 2016, @05:06PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 19 2016, @05:06PM (#443203) Journal

    Did you know that this is quite easily possible with a great deal of auto-patching software you(yes you) use?

    Every single app on your phone is aware of your user identity if the company that made it wanted to fuck you over.

    Every single application with an authorization component can lock you out for little-to-no reason. While a firefox or a linux might have a really hard time doing that, in general, you can be fucked over by software companies at any time. And that's not even getting into cloud storage of your data.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 19 2016, @08:09PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 19 2016, @08:09PM (#443296) Journal

    For some reason I've never trusted cloud storage of data...and I don't use gmail...and I don't (yet) have a smart phone.

    But while I do, to the extent feasible, keep myself from being exposed to this problem, if a company ever did this to me I would use extra care to not only publicize what they had done, but to avoid all *possible* contact with them. For a much lesser transgression on the part of Microsoft I switched first to Apple and then to Linux back before Linux had a decent word processor. (I never really considered StarWriter decent. I composed in HTML using a text editor instead. But I also bought several Linux word processors trying to find something better. Eventually StarWriter improved until it was better than composing in HTML, the others either stagnated or just disappeared.

    OTOH, I wasn't able to get my wife off of Apple until a couple of years ago, and she still misses her old applications. I kept a MSWind95 machine going for her until it died this year (no internet connection, of course).

    But the key here is local control. If you don't have local control, then you don't have control. You may have promises otherwise, but promises aren't truth, and you can't enforce them. At best you can ask someone else to enforce them on your behalf. Perhaps they will. eventually, but if they do they'll charge you for the service.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:33AM (#443622)

    Did you know that this is quite easily possible with a great deal of auto-patching software you(yes you) use?

    Yes, but I also know that if such a thing was to happen, I can replace pkgtools with portage just as easily as I replaced pacman with pkgtools or rpm with pacman before that.