Today’s The Day For Tech Companies To Issue Hushed Apologies
The best time to say “sorry” to your customers is when no one else will hear you say it. That seems to be the thinking at Google, Amazon and AT&T, which are all ready to grovel to you, today.
The Friday before a holiday weekend is the ultimate black hole for news, and thus the perfect time to dump embarrassing announcements. A roundup:
Google: To compensate for this week’s hour-and-a-half-long GMail outage, Google has given three free days of service to its paying Google Apps customers. The company wrote in an email we received last night, “We understand that this service outage has affected our valued customers and their users, and we sincerely apologise for the disruption and any impact.
Amazon: Company CEO Jeff Bezos has already apologised for silently deleting copies of 1984 off people’s Kindles, but now the company has made official amends, offering affected customers either a redelivery of the book or a $US30 gift certificate, the Wall Street Journal reports.
AT&T: The telecommunications company knows its wireless network is the scourge of iPhone owners, so it’s just posted a YouTube video of an empathetic, long-haired geek named “Seth” to explain how hard it has been for the company to keep up with the torrid growth in smartphone subscriptions. You know what else is hard, “Seth?” Spending $US100 per month for crappy service.
“We have heard you,” he soothes. “We are on it.” We predict a parody version of this video will be up by the end of the weekend.
(Top pic by spud murphy on Flickr)
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Seth is begging for a wedgie.
Unfortunately, I can't watch this video, Seth. See, I'm perusing Vallywag on my iPhone and when I click on the video, YouTube predicts an approximate load time of four months. Are you purposely apologizing in a format that isn't accessible?
ModernMindOfM
AT&T iPhone data plan ($30) + unlimited voice ($100) + unlimited text ($20) + GPS nav. ($10) = $160/mo.
How is it even possible to have a pre-tax $160/mo. plan? $160? Really? And why pay that kind of money to a company that can’t provide the network to support the service? (A telcom monopoly, no less.)
@Mikey-B: Seriously. Now we know where to focus our rage!
NigelAstydameia
@iplaudius: Add to that the fact AT&T is laying off like crazy, outsourcing heavily overseas, and raising the health insurance on those that remain? Really crappy stuff. And no, I'm not a CWA-er, just no love for how Ma Bell is doing things these days
Seth needs to stop tilting his head so much. A testosterone booster is in order for him as well.
Gessho
I'm not usually a harsh person, but... AT&T, I'm really not effing interested in how hard it is to do the thing FOR WHICH YOU'RE CHARGING ME MONEY. Either do what you promise to do, or get out of the business and STFU.
@iplaudius: I pay $75 bucks a month for mine, though I don't have unlimited voice or text.