If I want to leave feedback I’ll do it, now stop begging me. You look sad and desperate.
What’s up with every company and developer suddenly hounding people to give them feedback?
I know this isn’t an entirely new thing. Years ago it wasn’t uncommon for stores to include an optional survey with their receipts, and many still do. The difference is though, they weren’t usually pushy about it, at most you’d have a cashier ask you to consider filling it out later and that would be the end of it.
It also wasn’t uncommon to receive a single follow-up email after receiving an online order asking “How did we do?” It was typically just one email politely encouraging you to give feedback or review your purchase. If you didn’t choose to do it, then that was that, all parties involved moved on with their lives.
Now you can’t do or buy anything without getting swarmed with emails and notifications begging for your feedback. Every app, service, and storefront begs me for a review like a homeless man panhandling to buy his next 40oz of Olde E. And it’s not just a single email or notification, it’s a constant and unrelenting barrage that lasts for weeks or even months in some cases.
By far, the most annoying service that’s done this to me is the Fidelity banking app.
I use Fidelity for trading stocks, and for that purpose it’s pretty good. Unlike Robinhood, it doesn’t have a habit of suddenly deactivating the buy/sell buttons on trending stocks (seriously, Robinhood needs to be held accountable by the SEC for this bullshit). It’s easy to use, and I’ve never had any problems with them.
They also beg for feedback incessantly. It feels like every week I’m getting an email from Fidelity saying “Reminder: Give us your feedback”. There’s no option to unsubscribe from this, and it’s fucking annoying. I was tempted to take the damn survey so I could tell them how annoying it was to receive weekly emails demanding my feedback, but apparently the survey takes around 15-20 minutes to complete. FUCK. THAT. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit. I’m not filling out your stupid survey Fidelity, especially not when it’s going to take almost half an hour of my time. Now stop emailing me before I file a restraining order against your obsessive ass.
Fidelity isn’t the only one guilty of this. My beloved AliExpress also does this after every order. The only difference is, AliExpress also includes a link to allegedly unsubscribe from these kinds of emails. I say “allegedly” because every time I’ve tried to use the link it doesn’t work. As in, the page just straight up doesn’t load:
Some sites will give you false hope and tell you you’ve unsubscribed only to continue hassling you, but not AliExpress. Ali doesn’t even pretend to give a fuck. I’ve tried it on both my PC and my phone, so it’s not a problem on my end. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or what, but in any case I had to resort to flagging all emails from AliExpress as spam.
Here’s another one that just plopped down in my inbox as I’m writing this (in late June). I bought a smoker from Lowe’s using in-store pickup. Within a week, I received this email begging me for a review:
Again, I have the option to “opt out of this message”, except unlike AliExpress this opt-out link actually works (supposedly). But why should I have to “opt out” of this bullshit? Why is begging me for feedback the default? They even had the balls to include the suggestion to send feedback on the email itself. I was half-tempted to reply with feedback suggesting that they not send these nuisance emails in the first place, but like any large corporation I’m sure Lowe’s treats most feedback accordingly:
Every damn app under the sun has taken to doing this too. The Reddit app is almost as relentless as Fidelity, it feels like every other time I open the app I’m slapped in the face with a pop-up asking me how I feel about the app and asking me to leave feedback. You really want my feedback, Reddit? Your site is a circlejerk of left-leaning delusional retards, your upvote/downvote system promotes groupthink while dissuading free speech, and I wish that your automoderator was a real person so I could savagely beat them in the middle of the street. Trust me Reddit, my feedback is the last thing you want to hear.
A lot of smaller businesses and developers do this as well. In this case I’ll give them a pass, since smaller operations rely on positive reviews and feedback to build their businesses. It’s not easy getting started, and the only way to really make an impression is through word of mouth from satisfied users, clients, and customers.
What I don’t get though is when these smaller developers ignore feedback.
I don’t typically give feedback unless something sucks really bad or if something has the potential to be really good with some minor adjustments. I also don’t leave it for large corporations unless they really piss me off, and in that case I’ll do it publicly so everyone else can see it (unlike the person who’s been sending companies angry rants using my name).
At the beginning of the year I switched WordPress templates. Most templates suck and are needlessly convoluted crap with tons of useless features and laggy retarded UIs (looking at you, Kubio). But I managed to find one that didn’t suck called BlogArise. BlogArise was pretty good overall and only required minimal adjustments on my part for color.
However, BlogArise also had a few minor bugs.
I really liked BlogArise, and I genuinely wanted the developer to know about the issues so they could fix them. So I left a post on the theme’s WordPress page offering my feedback, which you can read for yourself here. I’d like to think that my feedback was constructive and well-written. You’d have expected the dev to at least acknowledge the post in some form, but nope. Nothing, not even so much as a simple “Thanks for the feedback” or a “We’ll look into it”. Since then, the dev has updated the template at minimum once a week with random small fixes, most of which must be on the back-end because I’ve noticed absolutely no difference between version 0.35 and the current version (0.73 as of this writing in late June), other than one time when it broke the color scheme and I had to update my code accordingly.
I still use BlogArise, and I’m not really angry at the dev as much as I am annoyed that I took the time to help out by not only giving my feedback but also offering solutions to some of the issues and got straight up ignored. I’m also annoyed that there’s still no integration with Disqus, and I have no idea if the dev plans to implement it because they didn’t bother to reply to my post. I get that the dev is probably busy (they seem to also have other templates) but acknowledging your users would be nice, especially when they’re trying to help you.
This kind of thing is why I don’t typically give feedback. Everyone wants your feedback but they rarely if ever listen to it. At best you’ll get a canned reply from some auto-responder or office drone, and at worst you’ll get outright ignored. It’s like rubbing salt in a wound that they inflicted on you. The only time a company actually listens to feedback is when it gets media attention. Other than that you’re basically just wasting your time filling out their stupid surveys and sending them your thoughts.
If you genuinely want my feedback then fine, but don’t patronize me by pretending that you care what I think when you very obviously don’t.
And, for God’s sake, don’t repeatedly contact me asking me to give you feedback. Annoyed people don’t generally give positive feedback.