Icelancer, typically when users have any issues we offer a refund if they wish to leave the service, I can say that one was offered in this case as well. I do take issue with our "CSRs lying" though. Reading through the tickets, it is absolutely accurate that our dashboard was misrepresenting the data. It was showing Tedivm's data as still being there (or available), when in reality it was deleted weeks before the license was purchased for the account (after a trial expires we maintain data for 7 days, then remove it, though we do send alert emails stating that the trial is ending and the data will be removed). In Tedivm's case the license was purchased over 20 days after the trial expired.
Our CSR didn't understand the issue that was occurring, because he had not experienced this particular problem before. The CSR was not deliberately trying to mislead anyone, and in truth once the issue was escalated and we realized was going on, we learned that Tedivm had a legitimate complaint, that we had a visual bug that was showing the data as still being there when it was not. Once we realized what was going on, we acknowledged the issue and we've since fixed that glitch as well, so now expired trials with their data deleted show that they have 0 files available online.
I can go in to further into detail, but we try to keep all customer information/support queries private. We did do a bit more training with the CSRs about identifying atypical issues like this one, so hopefully they can be found out earlier in the support process instead of after a bit of back and forth as was the case this time.
I think Yev put it well, but I just want to add that customer support has two distinct jobs (Tedivm's issue fell under #2):
1) Answering basic general questions like "how much does it cost"?
2) Debugging live customer issues. For example, if crappy anti-virus quarantines one of the Backblaze executables, what the heck is happening and why? Of if a customer's client cannot contact Backblaze's datacenter, which firewall is blocking it (maybe it is the software firewall on the computer, or maybe it is the router not allowing HTTPS through)? Etc....
In the process of debugging problems, the customer service reps are dealing with a truly insane array of possible issues and symptoms and they go back and forth with the customer asking for log files, ask if specific symptoms are happening, and in general COLLABORATE with the customer to get to the true bottom of the issue. Nobody lied. These are good, honest people that are really looking out for our customers and take their responsibilities seriously.
No no, I want to be clear, people lied. I never claimed the CSR lied, I just claimed he sent useless form letters and didn't understand the problem. There was no dishonesty there, just a frustrating customer experience. However, the Twitter team made numerous false statements trying to downplay the issue to other people and blame the issue on a policy misunderstanding, rather than a bug. This is what prompted me to post pictures of the dashboard online so they would have no choice but to acknowledge the issue publicly.
This is the kind of thing that happens when dealing with Backblaze. It's constant misrepresentation on the public side of things. Their twitter account people twist things around and misrepresent things and their employees come into discussions like this and defend the company by claiming I said things I didn't say.
Yea, we addressed our twitter folks about this as well. They aren't in support so typically have no context for tweets they are seeing. They just respond in the best way they are able to. In this case I believe that the social team saw that you were having issues with a restore and with data not being there, so they assumed that it had something to do with our 30 day retention window, which is most commonly the case when users are experiencing issues with the dashboard not showing what they think is accurate (typically this is with an unplugged hard drive or something similar).
Once we realized what was going on we told the social folks to try and defer to the support folks. It's hard to have a long conversation on twitter as well, it's not a great medium for full-on support, but it's great for sending links to FAQs and stuff like that.
I do honestly think that the conversations you had with our team on multiple fronts were misinterpreted on both sides which led to a lot of confusion. We've also gotten better at making sure that the social team asks our support folks for guidance if they see a tweet or post that they are not familiar with.
Our CSR didn't understand the issue that was occurring, because he had not experienced this particular problem before. The CSR was not deliberately trying to mislead anyone, and in truth once the issue was escalated and we realized was going on, we learned that Tedivm had a legitimate complaint, that we had a visual bug that was showing the data as still being there when it was not. Once we realized what was going on, we acknowledged the issue and we've since fixed that glitch as well, so now expired trials with their data deleted show that they have 0 files available online.
I can go in to further into detail, but we try to keep all customer information/support queries private. We did do a bit more training with the CSRs about identifying atypical issues like this one, so hopefully they can be found out earlier in the support process instead of after a bit of back and forth as was the case this time.