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I need encouragement. We got our first hater. Real hater.

Hey Guys,

I just wanted to share with you our new achievement: A hater.

We literally have a guy that goes everywhere we are to comment that "our tool is useless" or something like that. I have chatted with him and he has told me: I been trying to be polite and

The reason It started is that I think he didn't like the limits of our LifeTimeDeal.

For me, personally, it's really bad, I don't deal well with people criticizing. But I know it's all part of the game.

Cheers,
Gonzalo

  1. 7

    Options:

    1. Give in, extend his lifetime limits, problem gone, self respect dented.
    2. Ignore, let his comments drown in the positive ones.
    3. Fight in public, spend effort replying to his public comments. When I see a negative review/comment followed by a helpful courteous reply from the provider it helps to negate that review imo.
    4. Fight in private, get a lawyer, send letter.

    Regardless. Great product! Hope it's going well otherwise.

    1. 3

      Hey @rab,

      Thank you so much for your kind words.

      I'm going with 3 for now, doing 1 might have worked, but I should have increased the limits for everyone.

      I really appreciate it if you like the product.

      Cheers,
      Gonzalo

      1. 1

        Don't let it get to you man, keep up the good work!

        3 is definitely a good route to go. Try to approach each instance with a smile rather than a grimace. Like "ah hey, it's our old friend who just wants to say hi." Angry comments without replies look bad. Angry comments with angry replies look worse. Angry comments with sincere replies at least look better to someone unfamiliar with your brand.

        Curious though - what was your lifetime deal offer? If you do have to adjust this for everyone, would that actually be a problem? Loyal customers would only see this is a nice gesture from you, and you potentially can satisfy this angry customer enough so they stop flaming you.

      2. 1

        Could also have just offered to refund him
        Might be better for business even if it's not the perfect system thing

      3. 1

        Just let it flow man. Haters gonna hate. At least you know you have one follower who is obsessed with you ;)

        That being said, I would also opt for option 3. Look at it as an opportunity to show your network how graceful you can be. The way you respond, your tone and how you handle it, can actually work out in your favour. Turn a negative comment into some good marketing.

        On another note, be careful with internet trolls. There’s absolutely no reasoning with them.

        To finish with a corny insta quote, high trees catch a lot of wind 👍

  2. 3

    In this case, just ignore.

    However, be careful to distinguish between blind hate vs. genuine grievances using your product.

    You can't just dismiss all negative comments as the words of a "hater."

    1. 2

      That's great advice.

      But if he goes with: "Your product is useless" in a bad way, it's kind of infuriating. Thank you so much for commenting, I really appreciate it!

      1. 1

        I understand it's infuriating.

        You spend most of your time and energy to build this product, and some a-hole just tears you down with callous words.

        Your product isn't useless; if it is, why did he buy it or even consider buying it?

        He just exposed himself as not knowing what he's talking about.

        Basically you can ignore people like that safely and lose nothing.

  3. 2

    I wouldn’t ignore it. I’d simply reply and say, “sorry to hear that, would really like to understand where that’s coming from and what we can do to make it a better product”. Atleast you’re on record for trying to learn and make things better. Keep debate out of public forums, it’s not good PR and not a good use of your time.

  4. 2

    I also recommend ignoring. You can't please everyone and the energy spent to this one person can be better spent on your fans. People find out about the value of your product themselves.

  5. 1

    Hi Gonzalo,

    I understand how it feels and you may feel it is getting on to you. I have been there. I would say answer it after few days once you are cooled down and explain why the limits are there. Remember that haters just few but you are gaining army of supporters for what you are building. Best of luck!

  6. 1

    This will happen again and again. My advice is to take a stoic approach to it all, you can't control what they're saying, and to be honest their vitriol will likely do very little to damage your brand unless they have a huge following or something like that.

    At Empire Flippers we've gotten some REAL nasty haters. Buying or selling a business is a wicked emotional experience and even the smoothest transactions will have challenges and obstacles often to overcome.

    I've had people call me and parts of my team all sorts of toxic names in private, and have had people call out other members of our team on review sites where they purposefully lie in the review while also calling out a new hire that he is basically a POS.

    When I first started writing for our blog years ago, I had a competitor (who at the time I thought we had a friendly rivalry with, turns out I was wrong!) start commenting on every guest post I did and other posts on the blog saying how "shit we are can't even do a case study on businesses we sell" - which obviously wasn't true since all the case studies I wrote was our own except 1 which we did that one because it was just a fascinating story highlighting what can happen when a buyer goes all in on something.

    It's all terrible, but in the end it doesn't do much I find.

    Your actual customers that like you and love you will know that review is not being sincere most likely, and the ones looking to become those customers will (if they're sane) reasonably deduce that a business rarely has 100% of customers that are happy and will almost always have some small % that will be over the top aggressively toxic for no real apparent reason - so those prospects will see that review and likely discount it if you have plenty of other great reviews.

    Don't let it get you down :-)

    1. 1

      Man, I'm busy as hell with the LifeTimeDal launch but this was just too good to let pass. Thank you so much for your kind words. I will check your site, I'm curious now.

      Regards,
      Gonzalo

  7. 1

    Why not launch on appsumo marketplace? 10% comission

    1. 1

      From what I understand, marketing has to be done in the marketplace by the product owners, which may be difficult. Any ideas?

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