[jsheard]

The system works! Just raise your concerns and they'll get around to it in [checks notes] 18 years

https://twitter.com/cperciva/status/1785402732976992417

[CSMastermind]

Ahh I see the problem. The steps to get it resolved were not to tell the team about it.

The steps were to raise a big enough fuss that it would undermine customer trust if the team didn't fix it.

[swyx]

twitter support tier is the highest of all!

[treve]

In the same timespan Microsoft released Windows 1 all the way up to XP

[DaiPlusPlus]

Why have things stagnated?

[ranger_danger]

People put up with it.

[SSLy]

actual innovation has just moved to different problems, now that the desktop OS has been mostly "solved" – until SteamOS showed a fresher way forward, that is.

[cbsmith]

In fairness, the issue was attended to within weeks after it recently got attention.

[recursive]

So, another way of saying this is, it took more than a decade to get attention?

[pavel_lishin]

We prefer to call it "eventual consistency".

[cbsmith]

Realistically, Amazon didn't have the scale/resources to mitigate/manage this problem for customers back in the day. It also wasn't a target like it is now. Even a decade ago, it was a comparatively small problem that was no doubt simpler to address this on a case-by-case basis.

Being responsive isn't about having infinite resources. It's about prioritization. I doubt at the time this was anywhere near the top of the list for them to fix even for the person who tweeted years ago.

[surgical_fire]

something something customer obsession

[hiatus]

You made more or less the exact same comment on a recent thread. What does it add to this conversation? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40221193

[jsheard]

I did, but I think it's worth stressing that this didn't actually have the quick two week turnaround you might assume if you first heard about it from the billing horror story posted on here recently. It's been known about forever and only became a priority when it turned into a PR issue.

[Quinner]

Adds historical context as to a duration of an extremely long-lasting problem?

[tyingq]

As an HN reader it added valuable context for me that I was unaware of.

[j-pb]

It gave me pleasure.

[spacebanana7]

To be fair it is quite remarkable customer service story & relevant to the article.