Disappointed with customer service gaslighting

#1

During the great video outage of TheSufferfest, I sent customer service a ticket highlighting the issue.

To cut a long story short, I was told that SUF is a small company and cannot be expected to have streaming quality that matches Netflix and Youtube.

The problem is also apparently on my end, despite me trying to stream on multiple devices and connections. There is also apparently absolutely no way it could be an issue with the app, as, and I quote,

“streaming service is working (I am still able to stream without issue on my desktop and iOS devices), and we don’t have other Athletes writing in because they are experiencing this same issue. So, because it is localized, there isn’t a “fix” we can do - but downloading is a way you can still play your video and complete your workout.”

Since then a few members of the Sufferlandria Facebook group has posted questions about similar issues with their videos not playing, and a member who seems to be employed by SUF has admitted a problem with video streaming in some parts of the world (seems to be Asia).

There is no announcement, no apology, nothing, just gaslighting and blaming the issues on the customers’ end with no proof whatsoever. Is this really how a company should treat their paying customers?

I enjoyed the SUF app and the training programs, but this incident has left a bad enough taste in my mouth that I will be moving on to other services.

1 Like
#2

I was the one who stated this. It is the truth. And I realize that doesn’t help you if you are having issues.

For whatever it’s worth, I have not encountered any problems with their services in Chicago. But my first recourse if I ever do have issues is to send an email to their support staff instead of posting a complaint on a public forum.

I was responding to your public complaint because I thought it was unfair for four reasons:

  1. that it expected a level of service comparable to the streaming giants;
  2. it gave them zero opportunity to address the issue beforehand;
  3. it assumes that they are the problem, while it could lie anywhere between their servers and your computer.
  4. as a public complaint it will linger on the internet far longer than the temporary issue it addresses.

I was not trying to anger you, and I apologize since my comments seem to have come across in a way that I did not intend. I do what I can to give back to the community, with a goal only to help fellow cyclists and Sufferlandrians in particular.

One additional clarification, I do not work for The Sufferfest. So if you are quitting their service because of something I said, again, I apologize. I’m trying to help.

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#3

Hi @thomastsp. Welcome to the forum.

Sorry for your experience.
Please contact the official SUF support, if your experience only relies on a Facebook post.

I‘m sure they will help you figure this out.

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#4

So I am confused (which is easy to do) if you submitted a support ticket to theminions@thesufferfest.com and then Sir Brian replied to your complaint I am positive that as Brian stated he is not an employee (neither am i) so your reply here is about Brians post or are you quoting a reply from the Minions!?

#5

The only thing that solved my streaming / buffering issues since I joined sufferfest was downloading every video.

50 mbit/ ipad and windows device

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#6

One of the reasons the video streaming services work so well is that they use global Content Delivery Networks to locate their read-only content near to their users. That is probably cost-prohibitive for SUF which is why they have a downloading option.

Data centers have outages, you can mitigate them with good design, but that requires a lot of money and is not a sure solution.

In addition, if your Internet bandwidth maxes out, or worse, local conditions such as traffic demand cause slow downs, nobody in the universe can solve the problem. Remember when Michael Jackson died, or on 9/11 how everyone’s Internet degraded.

This is a problem with distributed computing that will never go away.

Connectivity is never guaranteed, you should never assume that you are always connected.

I could go into a long discussion about resource contention, the speed of light, Shannon’s Law for bandwidth capacity, network latency, and failure-based architectures, but I doubt it would matter.

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Website Issues 10th Apr 2021
#7

tenor

Messr’s Moore, Amdahl, and Conway would also like a word.

:smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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#8

8-fallacies-of-distributed-computing-1024x714
8-fallacies-of-distributed-computing-1024x7141024×714 417 KB

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#9

Actually you should have me to speak to John von Neumann. :grinning:

You have cited Deutsch’s reformulation. You might be interested in the classic paper, A Note on Distributed Computing, from 1994:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=B0AE2D520E7F2DC038700895FAB37EC6?doi=10.1.1.41.7628&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Over the years I have given so many talks on this issue to software architects and developers.

1 Like
#10

While there’s no guarantees, it is possible to employ relatively affordable technologies and services like Cloudflare ( www.cloudflare.com ) that reduce the likelihood of problems.

#11

I was the one who stated this. It is the truth. And I realize that doesn’t help you if you are having issues.

No, the same statement was made by the customer service officer.

But my first recourse if I ever do have issues is to send an email to their support staff instead of posting a complaint on a public forum.

If you read my post carefully you will notice that I sent CS a ticket. It is literally in the first sentence.

  1. that it expected a level of service comparable to the streaming giants;
  2. it gave them zero opportunity to address the issue beforehand;
  3. it assumes that they are the problem, while it could lie anywhere between their servers and your computer.
  4. as a public complaint it will linger on the internet far longer than the temporary issue it addresses.

  1. I do not expect the same level of service. I expect that the app works as it had for me since I started using it for the past year or so, and if it doesn’t I would like to know what I or they can do to rectify it, other than gaslighting me and telling me the problem is on my end.

  2. Contacting CS gave them plenty of opportunity to address the issue. Which they didn’t.

  3. It turns out they are indeed the problem.

  4. I only made it a public complaint after encountering such disappointing responses from CS.

I do not work for The Sufferfest.

I wasn’t referring to you. It was an individual with the initals A.C. - I decided not to name names because I thought that would be unethical.

#12

I did, actually. I mentioned that I sent SUF support a ticket.

Unfortunately they did not really help other than to tell me to download videos instead, they’re a small company and the problem is probably on my end. Which it wasn’t.

So much for expecting quality customer service.

1 Like
#13

I am quoting a reply from the minions.

Sir Brian here seems to be confused - for whatever reason he thought I was referring to his response in a Facebook post (I wasn’t) when I was quite clearly referring to a CS officer.

#14

Infrastructure hardware and software cannot solve these problems. It must be solved in the application software.

#15

Why not just download the videos? Even though I rarely get streaming issues I still download them to avoid the occasional freeze up. It takes a couple of minutes to download, so I just do that while I’m getting changed. Then I know it will be 100% reliable.

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#16

Ya I’m not really sure what the problem is here. Even on my 1Gbps connection I’ll get problems with Netflix or Hulu. Welcome to the internet. You’re provided a way to avoid streaming issues entirely by downloading the video, which only takes about 2 seconds to start and you can run the workout while the video downloads.

Without some in depth analysis it’s be impossible for a CS rep to know where in the chain the connection issue is.

1 Like
#17

Thanks for teaching me a new word - google and Wikipedia tells me gaslighting means:
—
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulationin which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment.
—

Is this list looking for the community to help fix an issue?
Or is it a formal complaint the the owners?
If the former, there’s a bunch of folks here who probably can with as much tech info as possible supplied.
If the latter - a serious (seems to me to be) allegation such as this would be best sent directly to the company.

Please let the community know if it’s option 1 though (or if the reason for posting is something completely different) and help will always be provided if possible.

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#18

Thank you for clarifying. I felt horrible thinking that something I had done was responsible for your angst with The Sufferfest.

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#19

Honestly I could care less with the video lagging or stopping.
What drives me nuts is when the app stops updating the numbers on the screen or even controlling the ERG correctly. That should have complete priority over video.
I often experience that when there is a step, te timer freezes for few seconds and the ERG is not adjusted.
If downloading the video ahead of time solves the problem, so be it, but the control loop should be bomb proof.

#20

@ZenTurtle I strive for the day when any code I work with is bomb-proof. Heck, the software that controls the bombs isn’t even bomb-proof!

:wink:

I readily +1 on workout mechanics over streaming, however. I would assume it does, though, since whenever I’ve experienced lag or a freeze (almost always when I forget to download ahead of time) my workout progress continues.

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