[m_sahaf]

As someone who worked as front-line support and turned into the authority who's asked to resolve complex cases, this is nonsense. They aren't playing Tetris ignoring the queue. It's more likely the front-line staff are overwhelmed and/or don't know how to cut through the corporate hoops/politics to find and deliver the fix, and/or too shy/embarrassed to admit ignorance and having to pass it to the higher-ups for someone who knows how to fix things. It's more likely going in circles because they want to resolve it within their levels without having to escalate it.

[krisoft]

> They aren't playing Tetris ignoring the queue.

Nobody said that.

> likely the front-line staff are overwhelmed

Which means that the company knowingly and intentionally decided to skimp on support, or have other policies which lead to their staff being overwhelmed.

> don't know how to cut through the corporate hoops/politics to find and deliver the fix

Which means the corporation decided to skimp on their training and or efforts to streamline the issue resolution.

> and/or too shy/embarrassed to admit ignorance and having to pass it to the higher-ups for someone who knows how to fix things

Same as above.

> It's more likely going in circles because they want to resolve it within their levels without having to escalate it.

And why is that? Ah yes, because the company knowingly and intentionally set the incentives as such.

I don’t have a problem with the front line support. They are just humans like you and me. But I will have zero pitty on companies who under allocate resources to their problems and then try to hide behind their overworked support line as some meat shield.

[voidfunc]

Posting on a popular forum seems to short-circuit all that and get actual results probably because it starts making some executive squirm.

If I'm running a business and losing money because your service is fubar I really don't give a damn that you're all too busy or too ignorant to solve the problem. I'm going to do what I know works and that's basically blast over HN/Twitter/Reddit that your service sucks and has been broke for X duration.

[m_sahaf]

You're right that a customer shouldn't care the staff are too busy or too ignorant. You're also right in how complaining online short-circuits all that to actually receive help. I continuously advocate for the presence of path to higher levels and short-circuits! But it isn't always "the employee of company X responded to me on HN because my post made an executive squirm!" Some people just care and willing to lend a hand in cases where they can help.

[Judgmentality]

> Some people just care and willing to lend a hand in cases where they can help.

Why don't they (whoever at the company is in a position to make a difference) care before there is bad publicity? It's either incompetence or indifference. krisoft left another comment already that explains it quite well. There is little - if any - reason to give Stripe the benefit of the doubt here, and there are a lot of reasons to believe it's intentional.

[xwdv]

When the cost of getting a new customer is the same or less than the cost of dealing with a problematic existing customer, they will become very indifferent. They do not care.

[KennyBlanken]

As someone who has worked front-line support: large companies like Stripe purposefully don't create paths in the customer support scripts for resolving issues they don't want to. They're not stupid or blind, they listen to the calls and know these issues crop up. They don't care. Having support staff deal with weird/unusual problems is expensive, more expensive than just having those customers put up with it, or go away and become someone else's problem.

Don't blame minimum wage earners for barriers intentionally thrown up by management to reduce labor costs.

[m_sahaf]

> Don't blame minimum wage earners

If that's directed at me, I am not blaming anyone. Chill. I'm saying it's a human thing.