I know this will be of very little comfort, but having read your explanation I tested it, and it works fine for me. Maybe you really did put the wrong email address in your profile page. Did you ever test it?
That's interesting. I tested it very carefully; when I created the testing account, I made sure that the email address was entered correctly. Requested a password reset and... nothing.
So I and others have tested it and it worked for us. That means the sending system does correctly send emails to at least some addresses.
You say that when you created the testing account you checked the email you supplied quite carefully, so that means that you most likely did enter the correct email address.
The problem is either that
1. HN fails to send to a small subset of addresses, and yours is in that subset, or
2. the email that was sent to you has been hidden from you by your email system.
Option 1 seems unlikely. I would investigate using Yahoo or something to set up a temporary email address and create another test account. If you have two known addresses that fail to get reset messages then you definitely have a case for emailing PG again.
If that other test email address does receive the reset, then the problem is with your true email address, either in the receiving in general from HN, or with HN specifically getting it wrong for that particular address.
Search diligently for the email among your various folders. I don't use gmail so I have nothing to suggest, but I know others who never received emails because gmail silently decided they were spam and put them somewhere unexpected.
I've searched thoroughly, and have not found any emails, but I do of course receive emails fine from the @ycombinator.com address of the staff member I spoke to. I'll try redoing the test with a different email provider though.
This is something I believe you should have done in the first place. You write that your e-mail setup must not be wrong as you are using Google Apps for your domain- but in the end exactly that might be the problem (wherever it stems from).
Try a mail address you have full control over it (see the /var/mail/mail.log to verify exactly there is no connection made by ycombinator.org).
I am not a ycombinator staff member (I even have no own business or live in USA or speak English native) but this site is a friednly free-to-use service, not Paypal or Starbucks where you can blame the staff for delivering the coffee too hot.
Not sure I agree with "the site is free so don't expect any service" attitude. The site may be free but if you can't support it then don't provide it. Granted this site doesn't host ads like Gmail, but I expect a level of service from Google. As such, HN is part of a bigger game plan and so I don't think it should be regarded as totally free...
It's not about entitlement, but if you can't support something then either don't provide it or have some other means of supporting the product. There's a million and one forums out there where the forums are self moderated through super users.
There's too much of a "oh well, it's free so what do you expect" attitude. It's because of this attitude I have had so much difficulty in getting some open source products adopted in some places I've worked at.
I would understand if this was a one man band operating out of his bedroom in his spare time but HN is slightly bigger than that.
Besides, support replied, they just had to follow up a little more and be a bit customer service focused (granted we don't necessarily have all the details)
So basically, I can pick up hitchhikers and then ditch them 20 miles away from civilization at 03:00AM. I provided the service for free, after all. They have no reason to complain.
Yeah, you can do that if you want. That's (one of) the reason hitchhiking is considered "unsafe" and strongly discouraged to most peoples daughters.
The OP demonstrating quite a bit of hubris assuming HN is broken just because they aren't getting their email - there's quite likely a very easy way for HN (is pg doing all this himself?) to see many many password reset emails going out every day and successful logins from those accounts shortly after. If _I_ were seeing that at my end, and still having someone insist my end's "broken", I'd hover between assuming they're either not competent enough to be worth spending (free service) customer service time on, or they're trying to social engineer access to someone elses's account. And I'd politely brush them off - just as HN did…
This goes without saying, but just to check off a possible cause: Did you try gmail's 'all mail', 'spam', 'notifications', etc... labels? Gmail seems to find new and inventive ways of hiding automated emails in different folders.
Have you tried setting up an email account with another service and testing it using that to see if it makes any difference?
If another email account works fine and Gmail doesn't then the problem is probably closer to your end, if neither work then it's probably closer to the HN end.
There are some awfully bizarre ways that emails can fail without the sender or receiver really having done anything wrong.
It works for me too. Received the email in under 5 seconds.
Maybe there's a DNS problem somewhere. In any case the title seems awfully presumptive. The likelihood of the bug being on HN's end seems unlikely.
So let's assume it is not a bug in HN, as other users are stating that it works for them. How do you expect them to help you with your problem? I ask because you said their attitude was wrong, but just curious to know how you think they should have addressed it. Also, the title is very presumptive, as already stated.
I think it would be better if some semblance of effort was made to investigate the cause of the issue instead of repeatedly restating that nothing could be done.
It doesn't, but you are verifying that a) a bug actually doesn't exist b) showing the "customer" you have actually done something/investigated and not just replied with a standard email template.
The freaky thing is that the YC rep appears, from these transactions, to have no idea how to communicate with the HN production database. (Perhaps the costs are so high that they simply refuse to do so.) They appear to have made no effort to check.
So for example they say "we can't authenticate you." That could mean one of two different things: it may mean "we can't verify that you are who you say you are," or else, "we can't change the system to reflect the fact that we have confirmed who you say you are."
In the former case, it's pretty straightforward to see that username `delan` has an `about` section which contains just one link, and has three times submitted posts of content on that domain name. Clearly they identify with the owner of that domain. And hey, the owner of that domain appears to now be contacting you, wanting access! So in this case, with less than five minutes' inquiry you can see that this is probably a legit request.
Since they say things like "well, maybe we don't have an email for your account?" rather than, "I checked and you forgot to set an email for your account," it seems rather like the latter -- they just don't have database or admin access, period. That sounds crazy, though.
The password reset works but the process is a massive cluster fk ... when I set up my account initially, I would log in using Google open id, so either I never had a password setup or didn't remember my correct one ... either way I was fine since I use HN so often that my login just doesn't expire.
Eventually I needed to set up HN on my ipad and of course I tried to reset my password, but it didn't work, even though it kept telling me that my password was sent ... eventually I figured out that I had entered my email incorrectly (I had just put in my twitter handle, but HN didn't complain about the entry), and changed it using my logged in laptop.
T'was definitely a very frustrating 2 hours of my life
I don't understand why the process can't be a bit more user friendly, the customer support messages on the OP made me cringe ... very very poor.
Totally agree on your last point. Free or not, that's defo not customer support! Sounds like it was sent by a developer or something, cos it's probably how I would respond, lol.
My reset attempt went unanswered too, and this occurred when setting up an account on an iPad after having login automatic for months (?years). In the end, after several reset attempts I made a new account.
Hm, well it works fine for me as well - reset my password and got the email instantly.
So the lesson learned here is, rather than write a blistering criticism of a free service, make sure you are right. A better way to handle it would be to have posted here a question asking others if password emailing worked for them or if it was just the OP. This would have done a bunch better job of determining if it was broken at the HN side or somewhere between there and one's mailboxes.
Whilst I agree with your point, the problem is a quest (like "Ask HN: Does the password reset work for you?") would probably have sunk to the bottom without anyone seeing it.
Not a judgement on HN, but rather a judgement on human nature!
I did do this, in fact. My second last email describes how I created a new account and made sure that the associated email address was entered correctly, but still no email was received.
This is neither here nor there, but there is one surefire way to blame the user that always works: "It's your fault for choosing us."
This is [a certain company]'s last-line response to suggestions of unfairness or anything broken in their walled garden. You didn't have to choose us :)
And I gotta say, on some level I can't argue with that...
This has just given me a (potentially stupid) idea: If a site has a public issue tracking system, thats great, a case like this could be handled. However, lots of sites/services dont have public ticketing systems. At best I can fire off a bug report via email and hope for a response.
How about a site that is a public issue tracker for all sites (or at least ones that dont have their own). So this user could go to this service and issue a bug report for news.ycombinator.com. Other users could look at the bug and say "hey I am having this issue too". Repeatable bugs get floated to the top etc...
Of course, its only good if someone looks at it and responds. But, if this site had enough users, the community would be able to comment and help, and eventually, any service provider that cares about their users might want to be involved (and they can 'claim' their domain somehow).
I think the key point is that you would not expect a response 100% of the time, so the service provider does not need to take time to respond to all issues, only those were several people experience it.
Yes thats interesting. In fact stackoverflow is an example of what I mean. Even if the service provider does not choose to use stackoverflow for issue tracking, people will still ask questions (and indirectly report bugs) because of the community. Any technical service provider who cares about users would be stupid not to monitor stackoverflow for discussions about their product and jump in.
However, you are right, stackoverflow is not for the type of issues we are talking about, like "I cant login", "This form gives me an internal server error with this input" etc...
Arh... but with that, the service provider has to opt-in.. they have to choose to add get satisfaction. I am talking about a place you can go and register issues you are having with a service, even if they have not added any formal issue tracking (either because they are too lazy, too busy or simply dont want to know).
Of course, the trick is to get the service providers to take a look, but with enough user engagement, maybe it would work.
Maybe I misunderstand what getsatisfaction is.... could I go there are report a bug on hacker news for example even if hacker news have not joined getsatisfaction?
Maybe I misunderstand what getsatisfaction is.... could I go there are report a bug on hacker news for example even if hacker news have not joined getsatisfaction?
Arh yes. Thats almost exactly what I was talking about. I think its a good idea, although getsatisfaction's implementation (language, high fee to remove competing ads) is not great.
It seems that you created a new account with the same email delan@azabani.com. I have tested and I can link my HN account with that email as well. So it means that the email field is not unique.
Also, I'm not sure about Name.com's configurations, but the Pingdom DNS Health test is failing with fatal errors.
They are relatively immune to criticism of having poor customer service. Similar to how one would be foolish for getting angry at Craigslist over something similar.
YC surely derives some indirect financial benefits from running HN but they just as surely leave a whole lot of money on the table by not running ads or seeking to monetize in any direct way. To that end they, like Craigslist, are doing a community service, and earn a whole lot leniency for these types of things.
Your first email to them was perfect. Asking for them to do you a favor by even looking into it. Being respectful of their time etc. When you decided to go down the path you did of sucking up more and more of their time and even slinging insults, you crossed the line. For all you know it was pg or some other YC partner replying to you. But you treated them like some taxi driver who took a wrong turn and made you late.
Then you make it worse with this post. I think you owe them an apology.
I believe that my discourse was civil, formal and I certainly did not 'sling' any insults at YC. If you could point out, specifically, where you think I did this, please go ahead. While my last email was critical, I honestly don't think I crossed any line. In addition, to say that five emails over the course of a week is akin to 'sucking up more and more' of YC's time is quite an exaggeration.
My guess is that it's not the HN page itself but their MTA that is configured probably to restrictive.
It's probably something in your domain config (SPF, DomainKeys set right?).
If this would be your own mailserver you could easily check if an attempt is made but fails out of some other reason.
Now, the only thing to check is someone from HN in the mail relay log files or someone from google in their logs ;)
In the end, i would bet that you missed some step in setting up your domain that needs to be done for Google Apps :)
If I treated one of my employers' customers in the way that HN treated Delan then I would rightly be given a serious talking to.
I appreciate that (1) Delan is probably wrong about this feature not working, and (2) HN is a free service and Delan can therefore only have limited expectations. But HN has value to ycombinator in terms of brand awareness and goodwill, and HN clearly has value to Delan (community? learning?). Treating him or her in a way that ignores this value represents a failure.
You were never blamed for the possible bug (which might exist at hn or with the mail service, still not sure). If there is nothing that can be done, then there's nothing that can be done. That's what you were told in very simple and direct terms. I'm sorry for your loss.
I launched an application which sends you an email a few months back (https://emailprivacytester.com/). It alerts you in real time when the email leaves my server and hits your MX or is rejected by your MX, keeping you informed on the page of any permanent/temporary rejection messages or the accept message from the remote MX.
I figured it would be useful for people to know if the message was still in my queue attempting to be delivered or if it had been rejected/accepted by their MX.
I've just tested this with a Yahoo! email, and the password recovery works, and with a new Gmail email, and it works too. Looks like it's just my email account, which indicates a problem with my Google Apps and/or domain setup, as correctly pointed out by a few commenters.
68 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadSo I and others have tested it and it worked for us. That means the sending system does correctly send emails to at least some addresses.
You say that when you created the testing account you checked the email you supplied quite carefully, so that means that you most likely did enter the correct email address.
The problem is either that
1. HN fails to send to a small subset of addresses, and yours is in that subset, or
2. the email that was sent to you has been hidden from you by your email system.
Option 1 seems unlikely. I would investigate using Yahoo or something to set up a temporary email address and create another test account. If you have two known addresses that fail to get reset messages then you definitely have a case for emailing PG again.
If that other test email address does receive the reset, then the problem is with your true email address, either in the receiving in general from HN, or with HN specifically getting it wrong for that particular address.
Search diligently for the email among your various folders. I don't use gmail so I have nothing to suggest, but I know others who never received emails because gmail silently decided they were spam and put them somewhere unexpected.
Good hunting.
End debug mode.
I am not a ycombinator staff member (I even have no own business or live in USA or speak English native) but this site is a friednly free-to-use service, not Paypal or Starbucks where you can blame the staff for delivering the coffee too hot.
There's too much of a "oh well, it's free so what do you expect" attitude. It's because of this attitude I have had so much difficulty in getting some open source products adopted in some places I've worked at.
I would understand if this was a one man band operating out of his bedroom in his spare time but HN is slightly bigger than that.
Besides, support replied, they just had to follow up a little more and be a bit customer service focused (granted we don't necessarily have all the details)
The OP demonstrating quite a bit of hubris assuming HN is broken just because they aren't getting their email - there's quite likely a very easy way for HN (is pg doing all this himself?) to see many many password reset emails going out every day and successful logins from those accounts shortly after. If _I_ were seeing that at my end, and still having someone insist my end's "broken", I'd hover between assuming they're either not competent enough to be worth spending (free service) customer service time on, or they're trying to social engineer access to someone elses's account. And I'd politely brush them off - just as HN did…
If another email account works fine and Gmail doesn't then the problem is probably closer to your end, if neither work then it's probably closer to the HN end.
There are some awfully bizarre ways that emails can fail without the sender or receiver really having done anything wrong.
or they could have said "I just tried with a test account myself and see that the e-mail is being sent"
So for example they say "we can't authenticate you." That could mean one of two different things: it may mean "we can't verify that you are who you say you are," or else, "we can't change the system to reflect the fact that we have confirmed who you say you are."
In the former case, it's pretty straightforward to see that username `delan` has an `about` section which contains just one link, and has three times submitted posts of content on that domain name. Clearly they identify with the owner of that domain. And hey, the owner of that domain appears to now be contacting you, wanting access! So in this case, with less than five minutes' inquiry you can see that this is probably a legit request.
Since they say things like "well, maybe we don't have an email for your account?" rather than, "I checked and you forgot to set an email for your account," it seems rather like the latter -- they just don't have database or admin access, period. That sounds crazy, though.
Eventually I needed to set up HN on my ipad and of course I tried to reset my password, but it didn't work, even though it kept telling me that my password was sent ... eventually I figured out that I had entered my email incorrectly (I had just put in my twitter handle, but HN didn't complain about the entry), and changed it using my logged in laptop.
T'was definitely a very frustrating 2 hours of my life
I don't understand why the process can't be a bit more user friendly, the customer support messages on the OP made me cringe ... very very poor.
So the lesson learned here is, rather than write a blistering criticism of a free service, make sure you are right. A better way to handle it would be to have posted here a question asking others if password emailing worked for them or if it was just the OP. This would have done a bunch better job of determining if it was broken at the HN side or somewhere between there and one's mailboxes.
Not a judgement on HN, but rather a judgement on human nature!
[1] http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4082564
This is [a certain company]'s last-line response to suggestions of unfairness or anything broken in their walled garden. You didn't have to choose us :)
And I gotta say, on some level I can't argue with that...
How about a site that is a public issue tracker for all sites (or at least ones that dont have their own). So this user could go to this service and issue a bug report for news.ycombinator.com. Other users could look at the bug and say "hey I am having this issue too". Repeatable bugs get floated to the top etc...
Of course, its only good if someone looks at it and responds. But, if this site had enough users, the community would be able to comment and help, and eventually, any service provider that cares about their users might want to be involved (and they can 'claim' their domain somehow).
I think the key point is that you would not expect a response 100% of the time, so the service provider does not need to take time to respond to all issues, only those were several people experience it.
This probably exists though?
Obviously, these are for technical problems using a public service - user account issues aren't really appropriate though.
However, you are right, stackoverflow is not for the type of issues we are talking about, like "I cant login", "This form gives me an internal server error with this input" etc...
Of course, the trick is to get the service providers to take a look, but with enough user engagement, maybe it would work.
Maybe I misunderstand what getsatisfaction is.... could I go there are report a bug on hacker news for example even if hacker news have not joined getsatisfaction?
Yup - you misunderstand, and yes you could just report something for a company that's not joined getsatisfaction. A chunk of people see this as a bad thing - see http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else and http://sachin.posterous.com/get-satisfactioncom-is-blackmail... for example.
Also, I'm not sure about Name.com's configurations, but the Pingdom DNS Health test is failing with fatal errors.
http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=azabani.com
YC surely derives some indirect financial benefits from running HN but they just as surely leave a whole lot of money on the table by not running ads or seeking to monetize in any direct way. To that end they, like Craigslist, are doing a community service, and earn a whole lot leniency for these types of things.
Your first email to them was perfect. Asking for them to do you a favor by even looking into it. Being respectful of their time etc. When you decided to go down the path you did of sucking up more and more of their time and even slinging insults, you crossed the line. For all you know it was pg or some other YC partner replying to you. But you treated them like some taxi driver who took a wrong turn and made you late.
Then you make it worse with this post. I think you owe them an apology.
You've used the same mail address again, so this wasn't the smartest move, because you can't assume that the problem is on the side of ycombinator.
If this would be your own mailserver you could easily check if an attempt is made but fails out of some other reason. Now, the only thing to check is someone from HN in the mail relay log files or someone from google in their logs ;)
In the end, i would bet that you missed some step in setting up your domain that needs to be done for Google Apps :)
I appreciate that (1) Delan is probably wrong about this feature not working, and (2) HN is a free service and Delan can therefore only have limited expectations. But HN has value to ycombinator in terms of brand awareness and goodwill, and HN clearly has value to Delan (community? learning?). Treating him or her in a way that ignores this value represents a failure.
This can be seen as an 'ease of use' benefit, but it really fails when problems like this arise.
I figured it would be useful for people to know if the message was still in my queue attempting to be delivered or if it had been rejected/accepted by their MX.
I've just tested this with a Yahoo! email, and the password recovery works, and with a new Gmail email, and it works too. Looks like it's just my email account, which indicates a problem with my Google Apps and/or domain setup, as correctly pointed out by a few commenters.
I owe the person I contacted at YC an apology.