That’s the biggest mistake I see in that thread: all of the apologies are immediately followed by responses which are, at best, dismissive or, at worst, defensive bordering on vindictive.

That person probably got testy because they were being treated so poorly.

I don’t think I saw any validation of a reasonable concern—which is like customer service 101—let alone any type of attempt to win the user (back) over. This is classic, stereotypical techie behavior and it needs to die. And I say that as a developer (who has been plenty guilty of this tendency myself…)

I think it's more just fatigue. The user was getting really combative in their responses, and eventually you learn to just shut down emotions when you encounter that.

Skimmed the thread and it didn't come across all THAT dramatic. The user was obviously frustrated, staff apologized repeatedly, and did a fair job answering most of his technical questions.

His key beef is they neglected to mention the change in their release notes, and the optics of the oversight could be perceived as a covert move to push people toward their cloud service. I'm surprised they didn't apologize for the release notes oversight (whether or not it was inadvertent) - they kind of act like it's just another benign collateral effect that will only impact a handful of people.

Sure, maybe he's on a free plan, but when I shilled free trial versions of my software I tried to treat all [existing or potential] customers with white gloves - even the irritating ones.

@TroyHunt are you out there; any thoughts on the software change?

Where was the user getting combative? They seem to have done a stellar job in talking with support in a polite and informative way.

Whereas the company literally removed a non-trivial piece of functionality without a single mention of it in Release Notes, and then disengaged from the topic once other people came in and pointed out that this is a) bad, and b) probably a blatant attempt at pushing people into the subscription model.

Overall, I know what password manager I'm not touching now.

Having dealt with a number of interactions like this, it definitely felt like the user was trying to lead the support staff into a pothole. Its just the way the questions were asked.

Interesting. I feel that's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" case. Is there no middle ground between being completely helpless and "trying to lead the support staff into a pothole"? How would a proper support request from a person who understands the product and their own use cases look like?

Perhaps. I asked my roommate how she felt about the thread and she described that same feeling. Us humans can sometimes pick up on things weirdly I guess!

The user got combative when they didn’t address a core piece of his concerns: that they didn’t provide notification. I empathize with not wanting to deal with a combative user but when that user happens to actually be right and when the negative consequences are all of your own making, my empathy starts yielding to my low tolerance for “tomfoolery”. If they were fatigued they did it to themselves.

Additionally, this is asynchronous communication. Take a breath. Recover. Do it right.