I received an great letter from Barak Berkowitz, CEO of Six Apart that makes Typepad (the blog software I use) offering compensation for outages they have been having. What struck me was the honesty of the letter offering the user a choice to get a rebate on service based on personally how much they had been affected by the outages. It is also an ethics challenge,
"… we recognize that customers have had different experiences with the service, so we want to give you the opportunity to choose more, or even less compensation. If you click the link below, you’ll get a screen that offers you the following choices:
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While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience I mainly found the service acceptable last month.
Give me 15 free days of TypePad. -
The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month.
Give me 30 free days of TypePad. -
The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month.
Give me 45 free days of TypePad. -
I really wasn’t affected and feel I got the great service I paid for last month.
Thank you for the offer, but please don’t credit my account."
If you do not have any problem with the service, what would you do? Still go for the max?
Doing the Right Thing: TypePad Has Guts
After outages affected TypePad users, the CEO let’s them pick how many days of free service they get for their incovenience. There’s a whole school of business thought that says “but wait, what if they all select the maximum amount?…