David Thorne is the closest thing to a professional shit-stirrer that I have ever come across. I guess he just doesn't know when to stop stirring.
I'm not condoning the posting of the personal info of those two people on Reddit, I think that was a pretty stupid and rude thing to do. But this does remind me of the Scorpion and the Frog story. I suspect this kind of thing (i.e. his response to the situation) is just his nature. He can't be anything other than sarcastic and cynical, at least not while wearing the persona he's created for himself on the Internet. Good luck to him, he's squandered a lot of previously generated good will.
I'm not really sure he has -- I think he might be right. The Internet is pretty much the perfect representation of "sound and fury" that I can think of. He makes a living by being an asshole and making people mad and, honestly, I thought it was pretty funny. There's so much populist bullshit on Reddit that I'm surprised that they're not just angry about everything all the time.
That said, I also think this may not be Hacker News-worthy.
Well I guess I should really just speak for myself. I am less of a fan than I was before. The fact is that good customer service does not extend to posting customer's full names and addresses on a public forum as part of some kind of fucked up dispute resolution process. Period. If I had been one of those customers, I would be pretty pissed off and justifiably so.
I have no problem with 116 orders going awry out of thousands, apparently through no fault of 27bslash6, shit happens sometimes. The way they handled things after this initial problem is what generated the majority of ire against them on Reddit (so it seemed to me at least). Just because his/their actions are in character does not excuse them. If he wants to continue his asshole persona to even dealing with people who are his direct paying customers and his customers are happy with this, then they get what they deserve. But count me out.
And yeah, I read about this story yesterday and didn't think it particularly HN relevant. But seeing as someone did post it and to me - after thinking about it - it is a story primarily about customer relations, I thought I may as well comment.
While I appreciate that there are some people upset by these minor delivery issues, I can assure you that the plan was not to steal 116 people's $22.95 and live like a king.
Some people were upset about "minor" delivery issues, but now more people are upset about staff posting personal information online.
Not once in that entire response does he apologise for his staff posting personal details (the closest he gets is saying that it maybe "wasn't wise"), and nor does he apologise for the shipping delay. While it's not his fault his old supplier dicked him around, a simple "sorry", followed by some mention of the steps he had taken to ensure this wouldn't happen again (independently of switching supplier; what happens if the new one dicks him too?) would go a long way to restoring faith.
On another note, I'm not entirely sure this article belongs on HN. It's not the kind of thing I come to HN to read about, that's for sure.
On another note, I'm not entirely sure this article belongs on HN. It's not the kind of thing I come to HN to read about, that's for sure.
Sorry about that. When I saw the post on reddit, I thought it would be good to get HN's take on it, since at its core it's a business snafu. I'll try to be more careful in the future.
If only there were some sort of voting mechanism that could be used to allow the readers of HN to determine, on a collective basis, whether a given article "belongs" on HN.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 41.1 ms ] threadamusing nonetheless? How is breaking someones privacy even remotely amusing?
I'm not condoning the posting of the personal info of those two people on Reddit, I think that was a pretty stupid and rude thing to do. But this does remind me of the Scorpion and the Frog story. I suspect this kind of thing (i.e. his response to the situation) is just his nature. He can't be anything other than sarcastic and cynical, at least not while wearing the persona he's created for himself on the Internet. Good luck to him, he's squandered a lot of previously generated good will.
That said, I also think this may not be Hacker News-worthy.
I have no problem with 116 orders going awry out of thousands, apparently through no fault of 27bslash6, shit happens sometimes. The way they handled things after this initial problem is what generated the majority of ire against them on Reddit (so it seemed to me at least). Just because his/their actions are in character does not excuse them. If he wants to continue his asshole persona to even dealing with people who are his direct paying customers and his customers are happy with this, then they get what they deserve. But count me out.
And yeah, I read about this story yesterday and didn't think it particularly HN relevant. But seeing as someone did post it and to me - after thinking about it - it is a story primarily about customer relations, I thought I may as well comment.
Some people were upset about "minor" delivery issues, but now more people are upset about staff posting personal information online.
On another note, I'm not entirely sure this article belongs on HN. It's not the kind of thing I come to HN to read about, that's for sure.
Sorry about that. When I saw the post on reddit, I thought it would be good to get HN's take on it, since at its core it's a business snafu. I'll try to be more careful in the future.
I'll have to see if I can code something up.
I wonder how much traffic reddit users are responsible for driving to his site.