DreamHost’s service not so dreamy.
Looking for audience response here: the semi-big Web hosting service DreamHost made a major billing error this week, which resulted in about $7,500,000 worth of incorrect billings. This (potentially / probably) maxed out some of its customers’ credit cards, led to accounts being shut down, and so on.
DreamHost honcho Josh Jones came clean on the issue — and how his own user error caused it — in this blog post:
Hello.. how’s your morning going?
I hope it’s been a little better than mine.
We had a teensy eensy weensy little billing error last night… my first clue something was up when I saw this morning’s daily billing report (so far): $7,500,000.
It turns out due to my excessively fat fingers, nearly every one of our customers has been seriously over-billed in the last 12 hours. . . .
The comments to the post could serve as a sort of primer on customer service, to be filed under either “You can’t please all of the people all of the time,” or “Don’t be a jerk to your customers.” To put it mildly, the opinions of DreamHost customers vary wildly, from “no harm, no foul — and thanks for the update” to “class action suit forthcoming.”
A key bone of contention is Jones’s lighthearted (or flip) tone in the post. Many of his commenter/customers say that it reflects a lack of seriousness about what is a big, bad, major, heart-attack-level issue. Jones himself seems to realize that he may be coming across badly, since the original post includes this:
If the tone of this blog post seemed a little light, I apologize I don’t mean to offend and I realize how serious an issue this is. I’ve been up since 3:50am trying to undo the damage and maybe I’m a little shell-shocked.
Shell-shocked, yes. But is that an excuse for being flip?
I’d love to hear what you think.
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I am a DH customer… and personally, I would’ve been more surprised if they’d drastically changed their usual tone to communicate this. DH has made it perfectly clear they wish to have a distinct personality as a company, and that it simply not a stuffy corporate personality. I thought the original post was sufficiently apologetic and highly detailed as to the nature of the mistake — good luck getting that from most other companies, even if they provide a more “professional” apology.
Good points, Rob. I’m not their customer, but I know they have a hanging-loose mentality. Thing is, reading the comments on Jones’s post reveals that many of their current customers don’t appreciate the tone *in this case*. You can be un-stuffy without coming across as flip - I just think that Jones didn’t strike that balance in this case.
The real test will be twofold: (1) Do people really sue, or is that just an empty threat in the heat of the moment? and (2) Do many customers vote with their feet. Ultimately the DH customer base as a whole will inform Jones whether his tone in this post was appropriate or not - in incontrovertible terms - based on whether they leave the service or stay with it.
I’m not a DH customer, and I agree that the tone of Jones’s post was a bit “flip,” but being negatively sensitive to intimidation, I think some of the replies were as “over the top” as was Jones’s attempt at humor. Since when have threats and intimidation been acceptable in response to apology? Perhaps the late President Theodore Roosevelt’s idea, “talk softly, but carry a big stick,” would be more appropriate. It certainly would keep the offended parties from being, in themselves, offensive.
Good point, Dad. I think there are maybe three things going on with the harsh comments there:
1. Barratry. We all know people who will rush to threats of lawsuit, whether online or face-to-face.
2. Some of the complaints are coming from people whose livelihood is directly threatened by the DreamHost error — people whose small online businesses are in danger because of the problem.
3. As has been remarked in many other settings, the (potential) anonymity of the Internet means that people can make idle threats without fear of reprisal.