[jacquesm]

You should be unforgiving. I have no idea what the root cause behind this is but testing roll-over is obviously part & parcel of the level of reliability required in the financial world.

Allowed: scheduled downtime announced ahead of time for reporting, unscheduled downtime with localized effect due to 'acts of god'. Not allowed: customers can't access their funds when they should be able to.

When you disrupt the banking industry you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department.

Let's hope they have it fixed very quickly or it may well kill Simple.

Imagine being in a bar somewhere right now and having just bought a round finding out that you can't pay for it. You'll hear about that one for years.

[zaidf]

you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department.

Easy to say but I think it is unreasonable to expect a company that is couple years old to have as much reliability as ones who have had decades to figure it out.

I think the Simple customers have every right be absolutely pissed. For some, they may even realize that the downside of going with Simple isn't justified by the upside. Hopefully, for the majority of Simple users the upside will make the rare downtime bearable.

My view would change if this becomes a regular occurrence with Simple. But that does not seem to be the case.

[jacquesm]

Try explaining how less reliability is acceptable to the guy that is out of gas trying to get home.

Payment systems have an impact that is unlike any other system.

It's very well possible that lives depend on your system working. You may never know about it but you should definitely build as though they do.

You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.

[zaidf]

You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.

No one is arguing that you should be able to do that. And it is kind of insulting to imply that that is how the folks at Simple look at development without some source.

Systems break for many reasons, and you can't simply assume the cause to be a social fad attitude of the dev team.

[gojomo]

I highly doubt Simple's invite-only early-adopters are dependent on their Simple card as their only way to buy beer and/or (your downthread example) gas for the drive home. (And I hope they're not using their card for both on the same night.) #firstWorldProblems

[jacquesm]

You really should have a look at how Simple bills itself. They bill themselves expressly as a replacement for your bank. The whole idea is that you absolutely rely on simple to do their thing or you might as well not use them.

http://simple.com/

If Simple is used the way they intend you to use them those scenarios are playing out right now. You really can't shift the blame for that onto those that believed the Simple proposition and acted as though simple was going to deliver.

Ordinary everyday people do not do single-point-of-failure analysis on their wallet, they simply expect it to work.

[gojomo]

And as noted in my other comment, my giant banks have failed in similar ways, leaving my to my own other options or simply shit-outta-luck for a few hours. You seem to have a similar complaint above about 'Rabobank'.

I don't see any marketing claim on the Simple site that they'll have fewer outages than the Rabobanks/BofAs of the world. (Where do you see that claim, or actual delivered level of service, from any actual existing bank?)

[jacquesm]

For me their homepage has text on it like this:

'get ready to leave your bank'

'unmatched security and support'

'replace your bank'

'use the simple card for all your purchases'

Those set the stage for some pretty high expectations, they make it plain simple expects to be your sole provider.

Rabobank fucked up once in 20 years, and then only on a peripheral part of their service (ATM and point-of-sale still worked). If they had dropped the ball on either I'd be out of there for sure.

[gojomo]

Not one of those implies "fewer brief outages" than traditional banks.

[jacquesm]

It's resolved now.

Almost four hours isn't brief. And I've never had a point-of-sale or ATM outage like that, ever. (other than the power blackout a few years back in the North-East, but not being able to pay for stuff was the least of your problems back then. By the way, our gas station was the only one running for 75 miles around because I had actually thought through how we'd operate in a situation like that).

It looks as if we hold our payment service providers to different standards. I expect mine to be there when I need them, you're ok with whatever your definition of 'brief outages' is.

It makes me wonder what it would take for you to start wondering if you've got your money parked with the right institution.

For me not being able to get at it when I need it is the one thing that would do it.

Anyway, great for 'simple' that they have it resolved, this will likely slow their adoption for a bit (though sync is on the ball in this thread and turning lemons into lemonade) and it will hopefully cause some serious introspection inside simple to make sure stuff like this will never happen again.

And maybe I'm wrong and old fashioned in my attitude towards payment services and we should just cut all those banks some slack and accept periodic outages. But my mid 80's bosses would fire my ass very quickly if I displayed that attitude on the job and I think it is too far ingrained in me to let go of.

Doesn't worry me in the least.

[bonzoesc]

Guess what?

https://twitter.com/Skroob/status/285932353765908480

https://twitter.com/mrlanphear/status/285916924599205889

[gojomo]

This just in: people tweeting also sometimes embellish their situations for dramatic effect!

For example, in surrounding tweets @Skroob jokes about paying with Bitcoin, mentions his dining party has other options, and then despite some disappointment concludes with sympathy for @Simplify. He further says that Simple's "company policy of ignoring the s* out of HN, especially during outages" is something that "just makes me love you guys more".

So: while non-customer HNers with crazy-high standards whinge, real customers can laugh about the situation (and even laugh about HN's negativity-bias).

[zaidf]

Exactly. No one is denying this isn't a terrible thing. I don't think we have to convince Simple that this can't be happening. And I don't think one major downtime is reason enough to call for their heads as several of the comments imply. At the least let's wait for them to do the detail write up about the outage.