The Psychotic Non-Customer

Discussions
#21

Yes, because whatever business value he could get from adding your app his website is so obviously and most certainly not worth that insane 63K (MINIFIED!!!) increase in page size, bandwidth, and DOM performance.

On a side note, I wonder if he has fever dreams about all of the inefficient WordPress sites basically running the internet today…

Or maybe it’s just that his side project is a browser extension that blocks any website larger than 64K in total size and your app would have put him over the top.

Seriously, wow.

#22

My experience is that a very small subset of ecommerce owners look down on app developers as not “real” entrepreneurs, hence feeling the need to educate them forcefully.

#23

That’s pretty fascinating. Do you know why they feel that way?

#24

Ecommerce owners deal with a lot of stuff (sales tax, logistics, suppliers, B2C support, etc). They may perceive selling some code at a fixed monthly price as easy in comparison. Granted, a Saas is probably a better business, at least at scale.

#25

The lead delivered on his promise and installed my app just to leave a 1 star app review. He also contacted Shopify to get my app banned, just like the other 1-star reviewer I had back in August.

At least it’s a 1 star review, prefer it that way now. I have yet to receive a 2/3/4 star review. People either love us (138 5-star reviews) or hate us (2 1-star reviews).

Oh well, the record growth we were on this month will not continue now… hope the guy is happy.

#26

I feel your pain. But I think most people now know to ignore the top and bottom 10% of ratings. Certainly I do when I look at rating on places such as amazon and tripadvisor. Some people won’t be happy whatever you do. I found my skin thickened up quite a bit during my first year running my own business!

1 Like
#27

Yeah I care way less about this one already than the previous 1 star review.

#28

That’s just awful - what a piece of work and what a twisted sense of justice/vengeance. I truly feel for you.

Can I ask for the sake of the conversation here what the basis was for his review and why he felt your app should be banned from Shopify?

I’m just completely stymied over the fact that someone would throw such a shit fit over adding 63K to their page size?

(That and that these people we’re talking about apparently have nothing better to do than to just pick on someone’s software product almost to the point of harassment without regard for how it affects peoples’ livelihoods. But that’s more of an existential quandary, I suppose.)

#29

You can read the review here: https://apps.shopify.com/judgeme#reviews-heading

What it comes down to, our approach is a bit unique in that we make our app look super fast by storing the review HTML and initial CSS inside Shopify Metafields (= they become part of the theme) and then use our JS file, which we render from KeyCDN, to apply some custom settings and deal with review submission etc.

Using this setup we completely avoid making a database call for rendering reviews, which no competitor managed to do. Our JS file is 100% static, same for every shop.

But so yeah, if we’d go calling the database each page load and prepare the styled review widget in our backend server, we’d have less JS code. But we’d also have over 10 million database calls per month, and would be as slow as our competition who sometimes takes 2-3 seconds to load the reviews.

We explained our point of view before this guy even installed the app (he complained first over email) but he’s extremely focused on the JS file size.

#30

Agree with Andy - when I am looking at TripAdvisor / Amazon reviews etc if I DON’T see some Muppet ranting with a 1 * review I actually get suspicious that they are fake or curated.

One idea that may or may not work is when you get the spidy sense that they are going to be a PITA is to perhaps pick up the phone. You already invested quite a lot of time explaining things in the forum/email for him and whilst it goes against everything we want to do most people do behave very differently the more personal the communication is - in person > phone > email > forum - all downhill!

2 Likes
#31

The review reads like a rant of an idiot. It will soon be buried.

1 Like
#32

I agree with Steve that review will be buried quickly. It is obvious that overall people are quit pleased with your product.

#33

Thanks. But actually this guy has been editing his review multiple times now to stay on top of the new (all good) reviews that have been coming in. I have a call with Shopify about this issue later today.

#34

It looks like you have found < deep voice > Someone with No Life

1 Like
#35

It seems to be a feature of app stores that companies can be held to ransom by a tiny minority of idiots who give 1 star reviews. But anyone with any sense is going to give more weight to the many positive reviews.

Bad luck on getting the wrong side of a psycho with too much time on his hands. Hopefully he’ll soon lose interest and go and annoy someone else. I just hope it isn’t me!

#36

pjc could this person be one of your competition?

1 Like
#38

I’d ignore it, aside from dealing with Shopify and keeping them happy. They at least now know there’s someone with an axe to grind, in case other similar reviews pop up.

If the person persists, contact their manager. Seems to work for a company, the management of which I imagine don’t want to be seen as petty.