Way to Address Product Design Failure
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
core77.comOtherstory
supportivepositive
Debate
20/100
Product DesignCustomer ServiceBrand Loyalty
Key topics
Product Design
Customer Service
Brand Loyalty
The article discusses how a company effectively addressed a product design failure by responding personally to customers on social media, and the discussion highlights the importance of customer service and brand loyalty.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Moderate engagementFirst comment
4d
Peak period
6
90-96h
Avg / period
3.3
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 3, 2025 at 7:59 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 7, 2025 at 1:22 PM EDT
4d after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
6 comments in 90-96h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 7, 2025 at 9:16 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45121776Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 6:36:47 PM
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Honestly, it's been disruptive enough that I'm considering adding the site to a personal blocklist, just to avoid running into it again. In the few times it's happened, the only way to recover was force-closing the browser, or waiting an excruciating amount of time and with a poorly responding browser try to close the tab.
When you go back from an article, the previous page reloads from the top and your position is lost.
It isn’t working that well on mobile, overall.
I purchased a domain with Google Cloud a year ago for a business domain. There is no way to manage it. I get emails from SquareSpace noting they manage the domain. However, logging into SquareSpace they show no owned domains. Google Cloud says to go to SquareSpace. SquareSpace's AgentBot chats quickly give up and re-direct me to their FAQ, even after going thru a long process of uploading drivers licenses etc. The FAQ suggests I should contact the AgentBot. Meanwhile, the domain is up for rewnewal in 3months, so the problem has lasted for 9months no w/o resolution. Some online docs say Google Cloud domains got purchased by SquareSpace, others say only Google Domains got purchased by SquareSpace.
Meanwhile, not a single person responds. You cannot reach a human. You cannot contest it. I totally see the risk of going with Google for any other enterprise products.
Once, it was an issue with the installation of a legacy product I didn't work on that failed on a specific platform. I was handed a RDP session and had 30 minutes to figure it out. Somehow I pulled through, found the bug in the installer and fixed it live. Apparently the customer was at the end of their wits because they were bouncing back and forth with support for the past three months or so.
Another time, it was random crashes in a legacy product I didn't work on (again) that happened only with a specific combination of hardware and operating system. In three days, I've root caused it to the product's platform abstraction layer where the pthread mutexes were not created with the recursive flag. The bug was introduced over 10 years ago and the undefined behavior only triggered with a recent version of glibc running combined with a recent generation of Intel processors.
In both cases, I can't help but sympathize with the customer, who hit a real critical bug and had to escalate it all the way up until it reached me, the person you call when there is no one else left to call.