Ask Slashdot: How Long Do We Give an Online Service To Fix Issues? 113
ncc189 writes "The Funimation Roku channel has been basically unusable during primetime for about a month now. With very little feedback from the company and no improvements to the service at all, I canceled my account. My question to Slashdot users is: how long do you give a service to fix issues before you cancel the service, and how much leeway do you give the service's representatives in communicating issue with us? It seems to me that a few days is more than enough in the internet age; 3+ weeks is beyond reason. How long do you think is fair for services like this?"
That depends (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That depends (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the "online service" Oracle?
No. It's just a collection of badly translated and hacked up anime that makes the fans cry everytime the logo "Funimation" splashes across the screen. There's websites dedicated to warning fans of what their next production will be, so they can snap up the fansubs before they vanish from the ethers.
Hearing Funimation is picking up your favorite anime is to an anime geek hearing that JJ Abrams is going to direct the next Star Wars. It's a KHAAAAAAAAAN! moment. Oh, and apologies to Star Trek fans... he got to you too. :(
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It might not be complete, but you have multiple sources and you dont pay anything.
What exactly is this channel? (Score:3)
More anime than what Funimation has on Netflix perhaps? Now you've given them free advertising, and I might just go sign up.
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Want Anime? Go check out crunchyroll.
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Crunchyroll is the latest anime from Japan, subtitled. Funimation has a larger selection, especially of older anime, and most of their stuff is available either dubbed or subbed. I am normally a subbed person, but I must admit that Funimation has made an art out of dubbing Anime, many times with the English dub actually being better than the Japanese original soundtrack.
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Probably not. Funimation puts lots of their stuff on different outlets (Netflix,Youtube, Hulu, etc.), but I usually notice that the things other sites are a subset of what they have on their own site.
For the shows Funimation doesn't license, Crunchyroll has a good selection in the states (and actually has some stuff for Europeans to watch). Seeing as you probably already watched most of the (worthwhile) Funimation shows, CR will probably keep you busy for a while, if you don't mind that it's subbed.
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What do you mean "mind if it's subbed?" that's the preferred format.
Ever notice how anime has different voice actors in every show and for every character, while dubbed shows use like 3 voice actors for every show? Nobody in their right mind would watched dubbed anime unless they are illiterate.
Cruchyroll's just fine the way it is. There's also Crackle for some dubbed/subbed shows if you don't mind that.
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What do you mean "preferred"? Subtitled is the ONLY acceptable format.
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Those are philistines. They don't count.
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I'm not going to pay money for subtitles. I prefer dubs, and I can already tell there are too many little kids posting in this thread below from the looks of it. Anybody who thinks dubs vs subs is anything more than personal preference and opinions needs to just grow up. I'm not going to argue any more about it, so back to what's important here. The selection on Netflix is limited, and I've watched most everything good there already, so I am looking for more sources (that doesn't involve torrents....), but
Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
If I pay for it, they better be telling me something reasonably accurate
If I dont, then they dont owe me squat and it will be back when its back
Re:Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
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Plus they've got you locked in contracts.
That is like calling rape, "sex" simply because they have you locked into the sites of a gun. Either way, you are getting screwed, but the contract doesn't make it less offensive, it makes it more so, since you would expect it to be updated quickly, as you are paying money AND doing so under a contract.
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If I pay for it, they better be telling me something reasonably accurate
There should be clauses in your SLA defining what they have to tell you and when, as well as financial penalties for failing to deliver uptime and/or information. If you don't have an SLA then what are you doing paying for it?
Re:Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
If I pay for it, they better be telling me something reasonably accurate
There should be clauses in your SLA defining what they have to tell you and when, as well as financial penalties for failing to deliver uptime and/or information. If you don't have an SLA then what are you doing paying for it?
It is called "Customer Service". I don't really care if there is an SLA, if the service isn't good, I will contact them, and if I'm satisfied I will continue, if not I will cancel
Case in point is Sirius Satellite Radio. last year just before I paid for the next year they dropped a station that happened to be what I mostly listened to. When I called them up, they offered a reduced rate. This year when it was time to renew, I called them up and they again offered me a discounted rate. I'm still with them because I am paying what I consider is fair for the service. If they do not offer me a discount next year I will drop it. How long you will wait, or accept unacceptable service is up to the individual. I know some that will cancel at the drop of a hat. I tend to be a little more patient, but once I cancel, I don't bother going back, ever
If more people voted with their feet, these companies might get the message.
Re:SiriusXM (Score:5, Informative)
Case in point is Sirius Satellite Radio. last year just before I paid for the next year they dropped a station that happened to be what I mostly listened to. When I called them up, they offered a reduced rate. This year when it was time to renew, I called them up and they again offered me a discounted rate. I'm still with them because I am paying what I consider is fair for the service. If they do not offer me a discount next year I will drop it.
I found that if you disable auto-renew, then when it's renewal time they don't cut you off for a few weeks while they try desperately to contact you. After a week or so, finally answer the phone and tell them their service is too expensive. Every year, they "check" with a retention supervisor and then offer me a reduced rate of ~$6/mo if I prepay for a year. That's less than 1/2 of their regular rate.
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I don't use auto-renew, but get an email a month before the renewel is up.
I think they are pretty desperate to keep subscribers, I don't know anyone yet, who has been refused a discount
Of course, I do not mind kicking them to the curb if they fail to offer me one. :-)
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Always ask if there's an underwriter in the building. There never is, there will be giggles, they will put you on hold while they grab a coffee from the machine, they will offer a lower price on their return 'from talking to the underwriter'.
It's a game. You have to play. There's no risk of losing.
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Just be aware that when you do drop them, they will call you incessantly for a month. We used to have subscriptions for two cars, then the driving habits changed and we dropped one car. They called for two months quite frequently at all hours asking me to resubscribe. Dropped the other car out of pure spite for such harassment. The fun part is, the driving habits changed because we moved east through a couple time zones but I kept the cell phone number with the CA area code. They called at 11PM several
it took me 3 years to get earthlink to fix my dsl (Score:4, Informative)
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I too am a DSL user (up in the great white north) the lines are over 50 years old here so we have the bell guy up a ladder at least 3 times a year. They usually get to it within a day but they never really fix the problem.
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You get and keep phone books?
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You're lucky. I have to use dial-up modem on crappy copper phone lines. It only goes about 3 KB/sec even on 56k modems (only connects at 28800). :(
Re:it took me 3 years to get earthlink to fix my d (Score:5, Interesting)
You give it as much time as it's worth to you (Score:5, Insightful)
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I assure you there are folks who would give any service of their choosing as much time as they like if they think it's worth while to wait. Can be three weeks like for you or it can be maybe a few months even. Loyalty is a personal thing, but companies that do poorly with service tend not to have many clients/customers unless they offer something unique and/or interesting. And loyalty is very fickle.
Well, yeah. This.
But I don't think it is loyalty, exactly. More of a dedication, or a trust. And it's easy to maintain that trust through good communication, status updates or accurate repair timeframes. Having a status report filled with "progress" updates that don't really mean anything isn't deceptive, because the medium IS the message - the content is irrelevant.
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Only Online Services? (Score:1)
One of the problems that irks me is that companies are doing the same thing with their hardware products also. They're sold as firmware upgradable but then there are many companies that even if they do deliver a token "upgrade" here or there, they're still full of bugs. Without loss of generality here, I'll mention that I faced this problem with the original WD TV HD. Sold as firmware upgradable but had lots of bugs. I held out for firmware upgrades to address my A/V sync issues, other bug fixes, and maybe
I would want some kind of compensation to stay (Score:3, Insightful)
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A word of warning about AT&T (as if my story is going to come as shock to anyone here). I had problems with something and they promised a reduced rate for 6 months. I had to call them back when the price didn't change the next month. Then it went sky high. (They had "upped" my speed without my permission.) Then it went way low. Then I had to call them again when the bill on the Internet didn't match the bills on paper.
tl;dr Reduced bill from AT&T may mean several headaches afterward.
They want to fix it? (Score:2)
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See facebook, that have for years privacy issues, and instead of fixing them they keep getting worse. Now, ask the people that is still there your question.
FTFY/p
Netflix (Score:1, Interesting)
I cancelled my Netflix account immediately after they raised my rates sans authorization and their CEO said in the newspaper "Let them drink large lattes."
I give corporations zero leeway. I pay for a service. If it changes sans authorization/notification, they can fuck off. If they lose the ability to provide the service, they can fuck off.
SLA (Score:1)
It's called an SLA, if the service doesn't provide one go somewhere that does.
It's market forces (Score:2)
If there are alternatives, then the wait will probably be short. If there aren't, then you should suck it up as long as you can.
Keep in mind, if you pay for service and they don't provide it, you are due a refund. This is quite separate from whether or not you choose to do business with them in the future.
How long? (Score:3)
This is such a vague question that it cannot be answered in a sensible way. It depends on the service, and alternatives. If I have no alternatives, I am out of luck. On the other hand, if there are dozens of options, I'd switch as soon as I believe the alternatives would provide better value for money. If it is a critical service (depending on the application), even a few minutes might be catastrophic.
The re-compensation issue should be dealt with in the service level agreements/TOS (including no-cost cancellations).
As for communicating problems, I'd expect to be kept in the loop - each time they make a new estimate of restoration time, I should be send a notification by my medium of choice. It is unacceptable that a paying client have no idea when service would be restored. Obviously, as problems are discovered, the estimate will be modified. But I still would want to have the latest estimate (especially for work-related services).
Inspiration.... (Score:1)
Depends on price. (Score:2)
If I pay for a service, then my willingness to put up with outages depends entirely on their willingness to not charge me during downtimes.
Now, if I need the service in question, they only get a few days before I find someone else to provide it, regardless of free or not.
Note that this assumes having no real contract i
A number of factors (Score:5, Interesting)
My willingness to give them a chance would depend on a number of things:
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This. Stuff happens - but if companies aren't communicating with me and giving me some sort of consideration for my lost value (if warranted, and it seems warranted here), I have every right - morally and legally - to wander elsewhere.
you answered (Score:1)
your own question
"about a month"
It's all a question of elasticity (Score:1)
Then snitch on Comcast (Score:3)
I have Comcast, and they're too cheap to use [proper materials for the climate]. They have a government-granted monopoly in the city where I live so I can't replace them.
When you reported Comcast's failure to use proper materials to the local government, what reply did you get?
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In my case, I talked to a high-level employee with the city and a city councilman. David Kerr, the city of Bellevue's franchise manager, said there was nothing the city could do because they have a long-term contract with Comcast that doesn't specify a relief for nonconformance. I asked about it at a city council meeting, and Grant Degginger said he would look into it. He's a great guy that has done good things for residents of the city, but in this case, he got nowhere. Comcast claims that because I l
OH! This Isn't About Bank of America (Score:5, Interesting)
At first glance, I thought this was about Bank of America's day-long outage yesterday. On the first of the month, phone, ATM and online access was gone until late in the evening Eastern time.
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I also got screwed by that too. BoA also had trouble with some of the back-end processes. My first direct depost paycheck from my new job bounced. Paychex charges a good bit for rerunning payroll so I'm stuck until Friday Feb 15 until I get paid. Also, my unemployment deposit from WA for the previous week did not go through. That's going to be a huge hassle to get fixed. This is the first time I've ever not paid my rent on time, so I am pissed at BoA.
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I also got screwed by that too. BoA also had trouble with some of the back-end processes. My first direct depost paycheck from my new job bounced. Paychex charges a good bit for rerunning payroll so I'm stuck until Friday Feb 15 until I get paid.
It is your company's legal responsibility to pay you right fucking now! They should ask Paychex to rerun the deposit at no fee or reduced fee, and if their rep can't/won't do that, they should pay to have it rerun then take up the matter of being compensated for that expense with BoA. You, as well, should make sure that BoA sends a nice letter on your behalf to any account you paid late, explaining that it was their fault.
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> It is your company's legal responsibility to pay you right fucking now!
Not in this state. The Department of Labor here can allow a company to refuse to write paychecks and require direct deposit. Several companies have gotten away with not paying low-level employees that don't have bank accounts. My brother was never paid by Tatley-Grund construction. He worked as a low-level construction site janitor, and he didn't want to open a bank account because he owed back taxes.
The allowing pay only on reg
nt (Score:2)
I'd prefer to make it a race between them and the competition
depends if i can replace it real soon (Score:1)
Depends on the circumstances (Score:2)
I lost all service from my cable provider for 10 days in November last year.
That was a serious inconvenience. However since it was due to a natural disaster I could hardly blame them.
Timeline (Score:2)
48 hour updates on how the issue resolution is going
After 1 week a full month refund with no questions
Down time longer then two weeks, ask the community for help.
Honesty and Competence (Score:1)
Things have been quirky for more than a month (Score:5, Informative)
Funimation has had ongoing problems with their website for over a year. They continually have problems with site performance, video player performance and have pretty routine crashes. They have been calling their website Beta since 2011.
Website may be beta but... (Score:1)
... the Roku channel in question is most certainly not termed as "beta" in any shape or form. Neither is their Android app (can't say about the Apple one, no Apple product here).
I do see the same problems... anytime after 6pm of a weekday evening the Roku app is slow to load, and does crash my Roku (yes, it's a N1000 but it still gives good service for a device that initially came out just for Netflix). The Android app at least is more stable but its interface is quirky and requires some figuring out.
Funim
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A friend of mine has an issue where someone is posing as her on Facebook with a well-photoshopped picture of a woman standing in just panties with my friend's face shopped on (lighting and shadows added). The fake account keeps making friend requests to her real friends. This has been going on for nearly a week, and she and many others have reported the profile as fake, impersonating her, and the profile picture as against FB policy, but no one from Facebook is doing anything, possibly because some tier 1 flunky sees the names don't match and assumes no impersonation is occurring. How long before this become's FB's problem from a legal standpoint since they're tacitly supporting the behavior?
Our AC friend has a good point here. We're tempted to say "you get what you pay for" in regard to a free service, but actual harm (to finances, reputation, person, property, etc.) is quite a bit worse than nothing. My father-in-law said this very thing happened to him a couple weeks ago -- minus the photochopped sexy, fortunately. The impostor was friending (re-friending?) his friends and ultimately asking for money. I think my father-in-law was tipped off by another pastor that he went to seminary with who
verizon is terrible, but i'm stuck (Score:2)
Depends on the payment / trial cycle. (Score:2)
Generally, I'll sample during a trial because that's a freebie. If I've paid in, they get that cycle to sell me.
Why an SLA? (Score:2)
I signed up with a virtual private server vendor, who had a super-good price on a Xen-based Debian server. I noted that they had what seemed to be a fairly good SLA (99.9% uptime). I signed up originally on month-to-month to see how they performed, and was pleasantly surprised, so I then switched to semi-annual on the Xen server. I needed another node for another project, and determined that one of their OpenVZ slices would do the job at a lower price. A few weeks after signing up for the OpenVZ slice, I wa
It's a cartoon channel (Score:2)
It's a cartoon channel. You expect a SLA for that?
However, they are unusually clueless. www.funimation.com [funimation.com] is nothing like valid HTML. It's an obfuscated Javascript file with a starter bit of Javascript to execute it. But it doesn't work because the character coding is wrong. I'm not sure whether their site has been hacked, or whether their site is a hack.
Ask Netflix or Time Warner (Score:2)
This year Netflix was down 30 hrs and Time Warner had a 39 hour outtage. That seems about right to burn their offices down and kill them all.
Timely Article (Score:2)
According to their website... (Score:1)
Isn't the Roku channel still beta? (Score:2)
I mean, you have to manually add it - it's not in the channel shop, or at least it wasn't last time I checked.
That being said, if you are paying for a service, whether in beta or not, the company needs to be on top of it. If the service doesn't work - or doesn't work properly during certain times, the company should give users at least a partial credit if they can't get the service restored in a couple of days.
I am actually really sad to hear about this - I installed the Funimation channel a couple of month
What is this "service" That You Speak of? (Score:2)
Re:It seems to me that a few days is more than eno (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but 100% wrong. Yeah, timely feedback (including the magic phrase "prorated refund for downtime") will buy you a few days (at most). But if I actually pay for your service, I don't give two shits if your only datacenter just got hit by a Tsunami - Get your service back up now, or by next week your competition will provide it for me.
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There is no room for empathy in the business world. If you can't provide for any reason, your competitors will be happy to take over your place. Survival of the fittest and all that...
Re:It seems to me that a few days is more than eno (Score:5, Insightful)
Empathy has nothing at all to do with it. I can feel bad for a destroyed data center owner but that feeling does not negate the reason and purpose for using them in the first place. the bottom line is that there is no reason to have an ISP that doesn't allow you to get online, there is no reason to keep buying bus tokens when you do not ride the bus, and there is no reason to continue paying for an online service when they cannot deliver whatever it is that you needed in the first place. In most cases, if the service or whatever was needed, it will likely need to be usable therefore replicated when the service isn't provided. Being sad or feeling sorry for the service doesn't change that.
Re:It seems to me that a few days is more than eno (Score:5, Insightful)
"Empathy" means the ability to understand and share the feelings of a fellow human. Mitt's assertions to the contrary aside, "businesses are [not] people too". So empathy has nothing to do with it.
A business exists solely for the exchange of goods and/or services for money (or other goods and/or services). If a business can't provide me with the goods and/or services I want, they have no reason to continue to exist for all it matters to me. I would only even give them that few days I mentioned to restore service, as a matter of convenience to me - If I could realistically switch ISPs, for example, 15 seconds after discovering my internet had gone down again, Verizon could kiss my hairy white ass goodbye.
Now if you want to talk about loyalty - I have loyalty to my friends. I have loyalty to my family. I have loyalty to people that have given me a reason to care about them. The company that, despite my opting out of everything possible on their privacy policy still has their "partners" send me life insurance offers once a month? Yeah, not so much loyalty there - More like "simmering resentment" that such complete bastards manage to have the best game in town.
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Well, to be fair, many of the US *people* didn't give them much empathy either. It wasn't as bad as it is portrayed on TV, but it was pretty bad. And many of the people who were most abusive were in very powerful positions. Which means that the actualy suffering was considerably WORSE than is shown on TV.
OTOH, there are currently more AmerInds living than existed when Columbus "discovred" the place. (And I'm not counting the ones who have been thoroughly assimilated.) But their cultures have been large
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This is kind of situational. Overall, I would agree with what you say, but there are some limits. For example, say I have a subscription to a business. It has always had great service and customer service, and I've been with them for years. Then their data center or whatever gets hit by an earthquake, but they assure me they will be back up soon. You feel I should cut my subscription and go with a random other business I've never used, just because my preferred company is offline briefly?
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So there's no people working in the businesses on your planet, sir?
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Empathy is something reserved for tragic and unfortunate circumstances completely outside the control of the person.
If a person get's t-boned at an intersection and loses his leg I feel very empathetic towards them. If a person is doing 180km/h in a school zone, highsides his bike and then loses his leg, little empathy for me, I can only hope that he never gets on the road to spare others from his stupidity.
If a person loses his house in a fire and gets screwed over by the insurance company, I feel empathe
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You do seem to be confusing "sympathy", a feeling sorrow at another's discomfort, with "empathy" a sharing of similar feelings of any kind. It would seem to be very easy to feel "empathetic" about someone who's been careless or risked their customer's services on good luck with datacenters, without feeling any sympathy towards for their carelessness.
Also be aware that many small ISP's operate on a shoestring: Their features may be something important, such as refusing to store or sell client data to spamme
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Also be aware that many small ISP's operate on a shoestring
Then they should be providing a service at the right cost. I have no problem with my host being down for a few weeks. I pay on the lower scale of double dollars a year for hosting. They also provide no guarantees.
If on the other hand your advertising campaign is based around uptime, availability, redundancy etc then don't be surprised if you lose a few customers when you're down for even a day.
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> since the speed of the resolution of the problem is completely dependent upon the cause
The speed of resolution is dependent upon many things, including their competency, how well they *planned* for disruptions in advance and even how many employees they have. If they're just bottom fishers, a couple of guys running a service on an old Dell in their grandmother's basement, maybe I shouldn't EXPECT a quick resolution ... but then, they shouldn't EXPECT to stay in business.
Sometimes things happen that you
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The Funimation Roku channel has been basically unusable during primetime for about a month now.
ISTM that you're an unreasonable little snot
You're a raging douchebag.
It doesn't seem to me that you're a raging douchebag, no - you are a raging douchebag.