
Is the customer always right? - anujseth
After this email exchange I couldn’t really sleep last night. I am posting this here for advice from people more experienced than me, on how to deal with customers who just don’t seem to be ok with whatever you do. Maybe I was in the wrong and it is me who doesn’t get it. Please share suggestions, opinions, whatever.<p>In no way is this an attack&#x2F;vendetta thing on the person&#x2F;company and I have anonymised it to the best extent possible.<p>I have also not posted previous email exchanges with the said person because they are long and have him calling me “pissy” our design opinions “stupid” and the like. They are also not about this particular bug (more below) but other features in the app.<p>This particular bug is in the iOS version of our app, Tabata Stopwatch Pro (a Tabata and HIIT Timer) https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;id664563975 and affects just 1 thing. The voice announcements get reset if you swipe up to force close the app. Till date 4 people have complained about it and it is not a priority at all. In all cases I tell people to not swipe up to force close the app.<p>This is not an us versus them thing. I am genuinely not sure how to best accommodate our growing needs of users who just ask for feature after feature, and want their bugs fixed right now. Saying no just really makes some people un-happy.<p>The emails yesterday (edited slightly to make them more readable) are in a text file on this link (they are above the HN character limit to be posted directly and not sure if posting them in parts in comments would be right) https:&#x2F;&#x2F;1drv.ms&#x2F;t&#x2F;s!FpBqmKEOgVTliBxLajRtRVpuVlpxZyQM
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taejo
Can we banish "Have an awesome day" and the like from email signatures
forever? _Especially_ in support emails. It's at best insincere (you didn't
even write it yourself: a machine added it to your email automatically) and at
worst - in cases like this, where you're essentially telling the customer to
piss off - infuriating.

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onion2k
You have _completely_ failed this customer.

You've been incredibly rude to him, you've effectively just told him to go
away and stop bothering you, and you've sold him a broken app. He isn't wrong
- there's a bug in your app that you're refusing to fix, so if you get a
negative review you absolutely deserve it.

 _Saying no just really makes some people un-happy._

You didn't say no. You CC's in the guy's HR department to try and get him some
sort of disciplinary action in his job. That's a long way past saying no.

You really need to stop doing support yourself and hire someone who's actually
good at it.

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anujseth
Alright fair. But this is after offering refunds and explaining our position
repeatedly. Still not ok?

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onion2k
_Never_ OK, regardless of your position.

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CyberFonic
He's not a customer, he is a egotistical, self-entitled jerk!

You did the RIGHT THING! offering a refund and staying polite.

We all get such jerks pretending to be customers from time to time. Not worth
losing any sleep over nor wasting more time with emails.

If you can, set-up an auto-responder for that email domain:

"We are disappointed that our product fails to meets your needs. Please
uninstall the app and accept our refund and you will no longer have any more
problems with this app."

~~~
anujseth
Have been offering a refund from day 1 (months back) and the person just keeps
finding more problems/feature requests but won't take their money back.

We rarely get these, most users love our apps and repeatedly tell us our
customer support is exceptional. I will consider the auto responder thank you.

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Cypher
You're really bad at support. I don't know why you didn't just fix it in the
time you spend responding to emails, its not really that hard.

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DanBC
I didn't read the emails, the link is dead.

You might want to search HN for "toxic customer", which returns some
submissions and some useful comments.

~~~
anujseth
I didn't think anyone would be interested in the emails anymore. It's back up
[https://1drv.ms/t/s!AJBqmKEOgVTliB0](https://1drv.ms/t/s!AJBqmKEOgVTliB0)

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anujseth
No new comments in a few hours and the post is now buried. Link to mails is
now dead.

Thank you for your suggestions.

