Okay my response - Again, I think there is a bit of a cultural misunderstanding going on here. I would say most Germans understand that they are responsible for verifying their identity and using their legal name when making important purchases or doing something else official. Here, names that do not match are often a sign that the account is fake. We find hundreds of fake accounts every week. Fake accounts are very closely linked with criminal behavior, people who otherwise abuse our products, and people who do not follow our ToS. Clearly, we do not want to attract customers with fake accounts to our company. So if we find an account that seems fake, it does not make sense for us to expend extra time and energy to write to that customer and ask them if they made a mistake when they entered their name on their customer account. That would dramatically increase the likelihood that spammers and scammers would get accounts and abuse our services. It would not only hurt our customers (because it would hurt our the trustworthiness of our IPs, etc.), but it would also lead to a massive increase in abuse and to victims affected by that abuse. So, I agree that the tone from my colleague could be better here. And I will talk to him about that. And, again, for that, we are sorry. But the basic content of what he wrote is sound in my opinion. --Katie
As I mentioned in other comments, my issue is not whose mistake this was, as I'm sure we can both agree that technically I am to blame for my mistake.
My issue is that there was no attempt to amicably resolve this.
The end result was that I lost 15 days worth of labor where I was spending 10-16 hours per day trying to launch a product.
I was unable to recover from the loss of momentum that was incurred by this. (I mean, who really can maintain that type of work effort for an extended period?)
The end result was that the project eventually failed and I lost an amount of revenue that was significant to me.
Again, I am not trying to express that I am not to blame for not closer checking forms that my browser autofills for legal accuracy .. moreso I am suggesting that this could have been resolved by just sending an e-mail to double check things with me before deleting all of my data.
I also reject your idea of deleting accounts that "seem fake". If you have a valid e-mail address, and a valid credit card, which all share more or less the same name, are you really going to reach for the delete button?
This is exactly my issue, and is what cost me so much grief.
If someone gets married and changes their name, are you going to delete their data too?
This is a rhetorical question. At any rate, I can only hope your company adopts a less hostile stance towards your customers, but I do appreciate you taking the time to respond.
The marriage-name-change question is a good one, actually. If someone legally changes their name after they are already a customer with us, they can write us a support request and make sure this gets changed in their customer information. If a customer who's just changed their name legally wants to be sure they get an account, they should update their legal ID first. (But I think most people in this situation do quickly update their legal IDs. I know my husband did when he took my name.)
We do have a brand new Head of Customer Service, and I will be sharing feedback from customers about their negative experiences. And I am sure that he will talk that into consideration when he assesses our processes and how we can improve them. --Katie
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You blurred out your own name but left the other person's name in cleartext. That's not playing fair.
I've killed this comment. If you want to make another image that blurs out both names, let me know at hn@ycombinator.com and I'll be happy to unkill the comment.
You can make your substantive point about your interaction with the company without spotlighting an individual like that.
Just a note that I appreciate all of the hard work you do here to keep the conversation here civil, and will strive better to follow the example you set for all of us.
The redactions have been redone and forwarded.
I would immediately consider to move my projects to another provider if I were a customer with them.
They have an account on HN, so maybe they could clarify. I certainly wouldn't be considering to become a client with them.
I'd think twice before hosting anything with them.
