[antoko]

That's actually a pretty impressive response as far as it goes. Obviously there's no details at this point, but he absolutely takes responsibility, doesn't try to deflect or sugar coat it, and manages to find a tone that is both professional/serious, yet also down-to-earth and earnest. I guess the real impact will be how they go about "making it right" but in terms of a first response to the situation the tone is near perfect.

[kami8845]

No this is not impressive. This is them fucking up and misleading customers for 3 years, enjoying a great reputation and now FINALLY getting called out for their BS. They're about to lose that great reputation that they've spent the past years building up, so of course they're in major crisis mode and doing everything they can to fix this.

[antoko]

Your response doesn't really seem to be directed at my comment. In your first sentence you're using "this" as if you're talking about the blog post which is what I praise in my comment(the tone of it), but then in your second sentence "this" refers to the routing issue raised by rapgenius, I wasn't commenting on that at all - I'm not a Heroku customer I was merely commenting on a GM's response to negative press.

[kami8845]

Yeah, it's still not impressive. The only thing that I'd say is impressive in response to the situation would be:

"Hi, CEO of Heroku here.

Sorry. We've been misleading customers and only telling the truth when pressed-hard for years. We've created this financial model for all of our customers who have been overpaying on dynos because of our shitty routing and will be reimbursing them based on that.

We've also rolled out a second dyno-tier, called "dyno with non-shitty routing". It's 10x as expensive, but at least we're being honest about it. All current customers will enjoy our "dyno with non-shitty routing" for the price they're currently paying for the next 2 years. Enough time for them to migrate away, like any reasonable person would expect them to after this."

[white_devil]

This is spot-on.

Of course they're going to post something, and of course they'll make it sound as good as possible. But it's baffling how so many people applaud such meaningless damage control drivel time after time.

[antoko]

Considering how many people/companies fail so spectacularly at it, why would it be baffling? I also think you underestimate the difficulty in making things "sound as good as possible" that one quality is the basis of the entire marketing and political industries - and a large component of many others. You're basically saying "It's obvious - just be perfect!" - it is not that easy.

All that being said - I'm really not "applauding" Heroku or their actions (which are what matter) I'm waiting to hear what they'll say. In the mean time I thought their messaging (which matters much less) was good.

[kami8845]

No worries antoko. We're not really banging up on you, just pissed off at heroku :) Their wording was good, better than usual when companies fuck up. But they're deeply embedded in the startup community so good PR with us is expected, betraying our trust like this, however is not.

[white_devil]

> Considering how many people/companies fail so spectacularly at it, why would it be baffling?

It's baffling because it's always meaningless PR-bullshit-we-hope-you-won't-stop-giving-us-money, and people should be aware of that already.

[fauigerzigerk]

I would reserve judgement on this response until we learn the truth. Whether or not a response is adequate depends on what they could have said and should have said, which obviously depends on the facts. So let's just wait for more information until we assign praise or blame.

[antoko]

My comment is 3 sentence long and has 3 caveats. I am definitely reserving judgement, my praise was mostly about the tone, which I maintain is near perfect. I'm really curious if it was a case of him just writing it because a response hadn't been forthcoming and there needed to be one or if there was high-level meetings dissecting every word and phrase to make it just so - or where on that continuum it fell.

[phillmv]

Yeah, given the crowd it operates in this could be a PR nightmare. Someone seems to know what they're doing.