Whereas I think a public statement of outrage is entirely justified. Take a look at the screenshot. GetSatisfaction has been collecting feedback under the 37signals name for at least a month. Those people who typed messages into GetSatisfaction expecting a response have been disappointed for a while. Anyone who randomly came across that page and saw lots of months-old issues -- but no post from 37signals itself -- has been subliminally convinced that 37signals never gets around to answering their mail.

This is not a theoretical issue. I believe this group of confused visitors includes me. I think I remember clicking through to this page, being puzzled by the lack of back-and-forth, and then surfing away -- not consciously angry, but feeling lost and a bit let down. This incident, and others like it, is not a trivial matter. This sort of thing is costing the company money.

How is 37signals to solve this PR problem, which GetSatisfaction has intentionally inflicted on their company, except by making a big, immediate, loud public fuss? Ideally, this message needs to reach every single person who has ever visited that page on GetSatisfaction.

If GetSatisfaction doesn't want to get into confrontational disagreements, perhaps they should have avoided designing a system that automatically trashes the public image of other companies.

37signals has not yet committed to open conversation about its products and services. Encourage them to join and support the Company-Customer Pact.

I really have a hard time believing that this was an oversight. It is at the top of almost every page. When you consider GetSatisfaction's strategy it is even well written.

1) 37Signals have used their considerable influence to achieve change on behalf of many sites who have far less influence 2) 37Signals used the open model of putting pressure on a company publicly that GetSatisfaction have built their business on 3) They've effected change and created open discussion

Could they have been 'nicer'? Perhaps. But more effective, I'm not so sure...

You still haven't grasped the problem. I'm sure that 37signals could easily have used quiet channels to remove the offending pages, messages, and marketing copy on GetSatisfaction.

But that would not have reached me. Up until three hours ago I was wandering through the world, with a faint memory of the time that I followed a Google link to a 37signals support page and found nothing but a ghost town. To counteract that bad impression, they need me to hear that it wasn't their fault, and they want me -- a potential future customer -- to know that they take their reputation very seriously.

I suppose they didn't have to put up a blog post. They could have filed a lawsuit, or obtained an injunction, and then publicized that instead. Would that have been more polite?

The fact is that GS got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. To think that the wording on that banner was not carefully considered is just plain naive.

The 37 signals post is spot on. They where attempting to increase their conversion by strong-arming businesses into signing up. It didn't make it on to the site by accident. They changed the wording to something rather harsh, and received a commiserate reply in return.

I hope they've learned their lesson, as I rather like their product.

It's probably not intentionally deceptive, but it is deceptive and Google should fix the problem.

Default actions should not affect deleted items. Think about GMail: "All Mail" excludes your Spam and Trash.

Also, calling 37signals out for going straight to the public seems like an exceptionally weak criticism in this case. GS is trading on inserting themselves into the public conversation about companies they have nothing to do with. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

I've had this kind of thing done to me before, and I think it's really out of order. Essentially, 37Signals have decided, in this case, to trade politeness and "being good" for making a big noise and getting some page views and attention.

It's easy to criticise people publicly without trying to understand what's going on first. I'd love to say that I expected better from 37-Signals, but considering that their blog has been so focused on generating page views through negative disagreement, I'm not all that surprised that they do this as well.

Here's a challenge for 37-signals: Why not try to do positive things, rather than frame everything as a confrontational disagreement? Yes, being an arse generates page views, but so do other undesirable behaviour. Is that really the way you want to go in the long term?

FYI-GS is using the same type of extortion that the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has used since inception to scare companies into becoming a paid member.  The general public has no idea how dishonest many of these client attainment methods really are.

I'm watching to see if they are smarter than MS.