[EnderMB]

Oof, this Twitter thread looks particularly bad, especially the response from the official Gandi account.

https://twitter.com/andreaganduglia/status/12151991477012316...

While I appreciate that there are real people behind these companies that are probably having a really rough time right now, the criticism that Gandi are getting as a company is justified - and if Gandi are truly a "no bullshit" company they need to put something out to their customers asap.

[danr4]

Screenshotted in case (when) they delete it https://i.imgur.com/s3R1VVc.png

Using memes after permanently losing customer data is extremely disrespectful.

[petee]

"Julie Pelloille @juliepelloille Replying to @gandi_net @andreaganduglia and 4 others

This post was disrespectful. It's not an excuse, but this is a stressful situation and the thread was getting heated. Either way, I truly regret posting it and it was my decision alone to do so. Please don't take this as representative of the high standard Gandi sets"

"That said, for the sake of transparency, we won't be deleting the tweet -- Julie"

[K0SM0S]

I like that. Honest mistake. Simple, truthful apology. Transparency for the record. Julie's one of the good guys.

Whatever the context / stakes (doesn't change anything in this case), this is how people should behave in life (not just online).

[earlINmeyerkeg]

So what. Just because you send a retraction doesn't justify it or make the apology any better. That sounds like they allow some people too much freedom as if they ran this business in their parents garage.

[chrisseaton]

Why are they going out of their way to be disrespectful to their customers during a crisis? This is bizarre.

[throwawayhhakdl]

Probably because “they” == some individual social media rep

[chrisseaton]

There's at least two of them going out of their way to be snide and snarky there - Julie and Stephan.

[deanmoriarty]

Stephan is the damn CEO of Gandi! Unbelievable.

[gdxhyrd]

Is is what happens when a CEO thinks everyone else is just under him/her, including their own clients.

They start thinking they are beyond the normal people and that everything is a joke.

[yingw787]

...not losing data is the ONE thing I expect companies to get right. I could handle downtime, circular customer support, high prices, horrible UX, and all that. But losing or corrupting data? Heck no.

A company that loses customer data in production is the exact type I would expect to mock their customers using memes.

[EnderMB]

I don't blame the communications rep. From her perspective, she's probably been told what the CEO believes - Gandi lost data, but they never promised backups so it's not a big deal. They responded to someone that is being extremely critical. The rep (Julie) did the right thing and apologised after others criticised her tweet, and also kept the response up to illustrate the mistake. While a meme is bad taste, I can somewhat understand the reaction.

IMO, the blame lies solely with the CEO, because he is still to retract his statement regarding snapshots not being backups (despite their site selling them as backups to the end-user), and for not accepting the fact that for someone controlling business data that creating backups AND regularly testing them via restores is 100% essential. Culture trickles down, and if the CEO only accepts blame and not the reason for the blame then it's a sign that they won't learn from the problem - and that's the biggest red flag you will ever see in ANY business.

I can only see one way back for them that won't taint their reputation completely. They need to:

* Post a full post-mortem of what happened, how it happened, how they fixed it, and what they're going to do to ensure it never happens again.

* Issue a full apology for the problem. Accept full blame, and accept (including the CEO on Twitter) that Gandi failed to follow accepted industry standards.

* Sit down with the engineers that work at Gandi and hear their grievances. While I doubt that their engineers knew this would happen, I'd be willing to bet that there is at least one person there that had raised the lack of off-site backups and no recovery mechanism. That person needs a promotion, and whatever resources needed to fix Gandi.

* Issue a full refund to those that lost data - not a small discount, as already reported. A discount is a kick in the teeth, whereas a full refund is the start of a real apology for failing the customer. If you go for a meal at a restaurant and find broken glass in your food, the first thing the server will do is give you a full refund, no questions asked, regardless of how expensive your parties order was. Gandi need to take the hit, and live to fight another day.

[polyvisual]

Yeah, that's not a great way to win back the trust of your customers.

I'm going to look at moving my domain registrations away from them.

[lotsofpulp]

I am moving my business away from them. Even if I didn't care about the backup situation, the PR response is stupidly immature and not worthy of reward.

[o-__-o]

Your mouse pointer.. it looks familiar! https://i.imgur.com/XGK3tFT.png

[bscphil]

https://i.imgur.com/ekT8vOb.png :-)

[o-__-o]

KDE users unite (:

[workthrowaway]

omg wow! when will people start being held accountable for the BS they put on twitter?!!

[clSTophEjUdRanu]

Meh. It's Twitter. They lost data but arguing on Twitter circularly forever with these people solves nothing.

[johnnycab]

It has long been the platform of choice for those seeking a response or to resolve issues. The tone of those ill mannered tweets reveals incredibly bad optics and serves as a reminder for those, who haven't encountered any issues thus far, that we could be treated in a similarly shoddy manner.

[icebraining]

Yeah, but then he should shut up.

[nabakin]

Ironic considering her twitter profile's description says "Responsable #communication #socialmedia #digital #innovation ⌨️#webmarketing #inboundmarketing #qvt #GOT et #TWD fan"[1]

[1]: https://twitter.com/juliepelloille

[code4tee]

Why are they @&$ing around on Twitter when they should be fixing the damn problem. Unbelievable.

[munmaek]

It's almost as if the person managing the official media accounts is different than the person working on fixing the problem. Almost.

[zaarn]

Well, that is explainable, unlike not making backups; they have what's called a PR or media team that gets updates and details from developers while they work on this.

Additionally, data recovery is a lot of waiting in most cases, there isn't much to do as your business burns down around you

[kryogen1c]

This is god damn unbelievable

"Andrea, sorry about that and the incident. If we led you to believe that you had nothing to do on your side when warned multiple times to make your back ups, then we'll have to make it clearer, and stop assuming that it's an industry wide knowledge."

[alpaca128]

Big words for a company that's in trouble for not backing up data themselves.

[ocdtrekkie]

Most web hosts have some courtesy backups, but it does sound like the Twitter user they're responding to fundamentally doesn't understand that snapshots aren't backups, and the screenshoted page explicitly states that the snapshots are for you to back up. Which he presumably did not do.

The idea that someone would entrust their sole copy(s) of critical business data to a service provider is insane to me. Always keep your own backups.

[dwild]

> The idea that someone would entrust their sole copy(s) of critical business data to a service provider is insane to me. Always keep your own backups.

You can consider it insane, they still sold snapshot as being backup. Insane or not, it doesn't change that's what they sold wrongfully.

Can you point me where that screenshot show what you say it does? The user goes further to specify that you CAN'T download theses snapshots.

Companies should be called out when they lie about what they sell, I hope you understands why it's important.

[_Codemonkeyism]

1. He says he has made regular backups, but now needs to restore all VPSs

2. The website says "Snapshots allow you to create a backup copy."

3. He says "No they do not allow snapshots download."

[ocdtrekkie]

It sounds like snapshots are directly reachable from within FTP in a directory. Snapshots are a clean copy of the file system you can back up, but they are not backups.

He also states he has his backups, so he's mostly just whining because he's annoyed he has to reupload stuff. Which I get, but again, he should understand what snapshots are and aren't.

[dwild]

You do the same mistake as the other guy in the twitter thread, you mix Simple Hosting snapshots and the Cloud hosting volume snapshot.

Here the right one which state that they are backup: https://docs.gandi.net/en/cloud/volume_management/volume_sna...

Here's the one that you quote (which isn't the same service): https://docs.gandi.net/en/simple_hosting/common_operations/s...

Be careful next time judging with that little knowledge of the issue.

[smileybarry]

As @dwild stated, that's the other type of snapshots used for web hosting (which I assume are copy-based backups due to how little storage sites usually use). These snapshots are never reachable directly to the customer; at best, they can restore a volume back to the snapshot's state or create a new volume at that state and attach it to a VM.

> He also states he has his backups, so he's mostly just whining because he's annoyed he has to reupload stuff.

Or they're annoyed that they paid for a service, at the very least billed as backup, only to be told "welp, it's gone".

[klagermkii]

That's such an obnoxiously passive-aggressive response from the CEO. Bit of a red flag for the company culture.

[dmix]

After another support person made a joke in response to his very serious post.

This is one of the worst responses I’ve ever seen from a company, and I’m not being hyperbolic.

[balladeer]

Seeing the thread I couldn't believe they are being serious. Feels like they are playing a tasteless prank. Such crass and careless attitude is downright repelling.

[nabakin]

Sorry, not sorry.

[duxup]

The number of people who have control of social media accounts for companies who do not understand how to relate to people / basic customer service / can predict how their post will be received is shocking.

I worked at a company of 5K+ people and one of the folks in control of the twitter account(s) would come to me with questions.

Now I applauded them for coming to me for technical questions before posting, that was great, but they absolutely did not have the self awareness / understand what to say / when to say it and etc.

But hey they were tied to a high ranking person (who also had no clue) so they had access to the account.

In my early days I worked PC customer support... I feel like that comes in handy all the time.

[the8472]

> can predict how their post will be received

That's an AI-hard problem and remains unsolved.

[duxup]

if positiveReception < 100 postMemes = 0

[dcchambers]

Wow. I've never used Gandi but I have seen it recommended before as a low-cost option. I will actively encourage people to avoid it from now on. That's scary.

[dylz]

Gandi has never been a low cost option, they've always been on the high to extreme higher end of things for individual cost...

Especially for random ccTLDs, they're often significantly more expensive than the alternatives.

Random selections for domains: .ru is $1-3 most anywhere else, Gandi is $18.

[austhrow743]

High to extreme higher end would be something like MarkMonitor.

Gandi might be better than some of the other low touch, self service domain providers but its definitely still in the same ballpark. $18/year still means they're losing money if they ever need to pick up the phone for you. It's not a price point that works with "higher end".

[Eikon]

> High to extreme higher end would be something like MarkMonitor.

Being a registrar is only a side effect of their business though, not really comparable.

[corford]

They used to be very good if you wanted a non-scammy registrar with a huge selection of TLDs and ccTLDs. However, in recent years, success seems to have gone to their head and the service is nothing like it used to be (plus their latest control panel UX is an abomination).

Feels like the CEO has made his money, forgotten the company's roots in the process and is happy for Gandi to be just another generic, overpriced registrar running on auto-pilot.

[forgot-my-pw]

Guess they cut cost by not doing backups

[devit]

I don't get the criticism.

If they lost all the data, then obviously the only option for customers is to either use their own backups if they have them or accept that the data is permanently lost.

One can criticize their lack of additional redundancy, but don't see what's wrong with the response.

[blihp]

Sure, if the data is lost there isn't much that can be done to go back and fix it. However, the company response appears very dismissive/flippant which sends a bad message.

The tone any company hosting customer data should take in the event of data loss is along the lines of 'regretfully... we screwed up... unfortunately... steps we are taking to ensure this doesn't happen again...' i.e. the company should either be humble and apologetic or they should expect to lose a large chunk of their customers after something like this. This isn't merely to say the right thing, it is to demonstrate that they acknowledge this was their issue and something they need to fix going forward rather than a 'sucks to be you' customer issue. This is basic customer relations / crisis management stuff.

[behringer]

So you're saying you want the bullshit? Look Gandi doesn't have it. What more do you want from them? They lost it, they're not gonna bullshit about it.

[ben509]

The customers are being stupid and rude: assigning blame, asking redundant questions, making threats. Nothing in any of the twitter threads I've seen has any potential to solve any problems, they're yelling thinly veiled abuse at support.

The industry standard is sucking up to them and groveling, and it's led to customers being very badly behaved.

The trouble is no one has a good working alternative to the industry standard.

Gandi certainly doesn't, they're not responding in a well thought out manner, they're losing their cool and getting angry with their customers. That's a quick way to go out of business.

[icebraining]

The alternative is simple: always behave professionally, and if they are abusive, point at the ToS that forbids that and fire them as customers.

Here I'd just avoid engaging one-on-one at all, just broadcast the situation status.

[fernandotakai]

i mean, this is customer support 101. always be respectful even when your customer is angry -- they are probably angry for a reason.

answering with memes is the absolute opposite of this, specially when your customer has all the reasons to be angry.

[ben509]

It's justified in being called simple if companies are actually doing this.

I did find HubSpot[1]:

> We may limit or deny your access to support if we determine, in our reasonable discretion, that you are acting, or have acted, in a way that results or has resulted in misuse of support or abuse of HubSpot representatives.

I'm still skeptical because actually enforcing that clause seems like it could lead to an expensive lawsuit. The angriest customers are naturally the most litigious ones, too.

[1]: https://legal.hubspot.com/terms-of-service

[yibg]

I’m pretty repelled by their tone in that thread. Sweeping it under the rug (could’ve happened to anyone / shit happens) instead of just owning up to it. Throwing in that completely inappropriate meme. Contradicting their marketing material when it’s convenient (are snapshots backups?) and general passive aggressiveness.

[binarysaurus]

Julie Pelloille, responsible for comms, appears to be going a bit too far with this.

[mprev]

Wrong or not let’s be careful about using full names as it’s how these things get whipped up into pile-ons.

[rhacker]

The Cersi thing is wrong on so many levels.