
Jason Fried: Get Satisfaction is "awfully close to blackmail" - ionfish
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else
======
swombat
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?

~~~
mechanical_fish
_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.

~~~
wheels
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.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Loud public fuss is usually a reasonable backup plan if asking them to change
doesn't work._

You still haven't grasped the problem. I'm sure that 37signals could easily
have used quiet channels to remove the offending pages, messages, and
marketing copy on GetSatisfaction.

But that would not have reached _me_. Up until three hours ago I was wandering
through the world, with a faint memory of the time that I followed a Google
link to a 37signals support page and found nothing but a ghost town. To
counteract that bad impression, they need _me_ to hear that it wasn't their
fault, and they want _me_ \-- a potential future customer -- to know that they
take their reputation _very seriously_.

I suppose they didn't have to put up a blog post. They could have filed a
lawsuit, or obtained an injunction, and then publicized that instead. Would
that have been more polite?

~~~
tomsaffell
Not every wrong in the world needs to be righted. Sometimes righting an old
wrong creates a new wrong. Personally, I find new wrongs to be more costly
than old ones.

~~~
wheels
Not to mention that this way of addressing it has no doubt created some new
enemies. Sure, it looks like some of the stuff from GetSatisfaction is a bit
shadey, but do you really want them as an enemy over it? If you loudly called
my startup extortionist and mafia like, I'd be more than a little pissed off,
even if I had screwed up.

The startup world seems too small to want to create that kind of karma.

But again, if the post had said, "Hi folks, just to let you know, the
GetSatisfaction page for 37s is not official and we've worked something out
with them where they'll now offer an option to all companies to redirect to
their real support page and will ask permission to use logos in the future and
tone down the language." it wouldn't have been the top story on HN.

------
ryanwaggoner
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."

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

~~~
webwright
They don't mean accident in that they fell on a keyboard and that came out.
They mean accident in that someone wrote it as placeholder (or supposed final)
copy and it didn't get reviewed/agreed to by the team before it got launched.
Clearly some writer was overzealous and the higher-ups didn't get a chance to
read it.

Happens all the time at small startups.

~~~
evgen
> Happens all the time at small startups.

ORLY? How many layers of management bullshit are there between the decision-
makers at Get Satisfaction and the people writing their core message? This is
not some random page buried deep within the site, it is top right on most of
the pages they are generating.

I have a feeling that what they mean by "accident" is that someone with a
voice decided to call them on it...

~~~
webwright
O Rly.

Have you ever worked at a startup? It's not layers of management. It's a mess
of people pushing towards similar goals with a LOT less workflow and oversight
than a normal company. Everyone at our 5 person startup has the authority to
commit copy to the site. I imagine GS is similar (I think they have ~10ish
people). Sometimes it's not great copy. Sometimes it's placeholder copy.
Sometimes a user will point out a typo in a prominent place on our site that
hasn't been touched for a week-- How could we possibly miss that for two
weeks!? <gasp>

" This is not some random page buried deep within the site, it is top right on
most of the pages they are generating."

I don't know their QA process, nor do I know the time/date of the commit of
this copy change. But I can say that it only shows for companies where the
company hasn't "claimed" the forum. So GS folks could've checked their own
forum area, and a few customer areas (which were "claimed") and never seen
that message. If one employee made the change without discussing it, it'd be
very easy to miss. For weeks at a time potentially. I haven't re-read copy on
our home page for WEEKS-- for all I know, one of my team changed it.

------
ivankirigin
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.

~~~
sachinag
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/> .

------
tptacek
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?

~~~
olefoo
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.

------
imgabe
_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.

~~~
Semiapies
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.

------
Semiapies
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.

------
thorax
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
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 :)

~~~
thorax
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
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.

~~~
warfangle
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.

~~~
oldwesley
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.

~~~
andr
You mean like <http://getsatisfaction.com/ups> and
<http://getsatisfaction.com/tmobile>?

~~~
Semiapies
Good luck if anyone passes along those URLs to the companies in question. :)

------
lsb
It sounds more like fraud and misrepresentation.

~~~
oldwesley
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.

~~~
chris11
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-...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-
else#comment_41944)

------
jrockway
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?)

~~~
Semiapies
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
"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...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business_of_extortion_2_0/Content?oid=927491&showFullText=true)

~~~
Semiapies
Hmm, then maybe it _is_ as sleazy as GS in that aspect.

Still, I couldn't reasonably end up on a Yelp page and mistake it for a
Morton's Steakhouse feedback page. That's the bigger offense.

------
mr_justin
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.

------
Semiapies
Thor Muller posts an open letter to Jason Fried:

[http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-
ja...](http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-jason-fried/)

...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."

------
periferral
sue them

------
Gibbon
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.

~~~
Semiapies
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.

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

~~~
Semiapies
Libel has to be _a_ _lie_. Someone harshly laying out their opinion on a
business's practices and saying those practices resemble extortion isn't even
in the running for libel unless s/he says something factually untrue about
those practices. Opinions aren't libelous.

~~~
Gibbon
In law, defamation (also called calumny, libel, slander, and vilification) is
the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or
implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group,
government or nation a negative image. It is often, but not always, a
requirement that this claim be false, and, or alternatively, that the
publication is made to someone other than the person defamed.

~~~
Semiapies
Fried didn't post about the private sex lives of people working for Get
Satisfaction. He accurately described their operation and characterized it
unfavorably.

While the law differs in other parts of the world, in the United States libel
has to involve knowingly false statements meant to give someone a negative
image.

Making complaints on one's blog and having the party you're complaining about
show up, act highly apologetic, and immediately start rewriting parts of their
website to address your complaints is about as far from "defamation" as you
can get.

~~~
Gibbon
Any statement can be grounds for defamation if it can be proved true or false
in a court.

A statement made as a fact (for example "The site also hosts, without
permission, company support pages for over 14,000 companies.") is potentially
actionable.

~~~
Semiapies
By your persistence on this point, I assume you're both British (or otherwise
only familiar with UK law) and think UK law is relevant on this point.

It's not.

I'll leave you to ponder the question, "If Fried's complaints in his blog post
are 'defamatory', what exactly are all the consumer complaints _on_ Get
Satisfaction's site, then?"

------
shiranaihito
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!

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

~~~
shiranaihito
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."?

------
oldwesley
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.

------
mroman
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.

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

------
tom_rath
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
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_rath
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.

~~~
oldwesley
Yep, look-and-feel is protected as part of a company's intellectual property.
As it should be.

~~~
RWilson
You're technically right. For reference, look and feel fall under "trade
dress" [<http://www.ivanhoffman.com/tradedress.html>]. In brief, the relevant
case law is:

"To recover for trade dress infringement ... a plaintiff must prove by a
preponderance of the evidence: (1) that its trade dress has obtained
“secondary meaning” in the marketplace; (2) that the trade dress of the two
competing products is confusingly similar; and (3) that the appropriated
features of the trade dress are primarily nonfunctional."

Continuing ...

"Strength of ... trade dress depends upon the interplay of two elements, the
uniqueness of the trade dress and the investment in imbuing a trade dress with
secondary meaning."

... which makes trade dress difficult to prove, even to only a preponderance
of the evidence.

