I’m fighting with a SaaS company over how they do a little math.

I am pretty sure one of their advanced features is not doing algebra correctly. To be fair, the rules that define what the numerators and denominators are negotiable, so making sure we have the right settings is important. Even tinkering with all the dials in the online tool, it didn’t seem like they were doing the math correctly.

Because this company is based in Australia there’s a significant lag in their response time, which I find mildly irritating, but it’s not anything especially urgent, so the 20-hour turnaround is not a big deal.

But our annual subscription is overdue for renewal and I haven’t updated my credit card for the upcoming year. A customer support agent emailed last week to say that our subscription would be canceled. I replied back that there were outstanding support tickets I’d like to see resolved before committing to another year, but rather than reply, the continue their automated HubSpot emails notifying me of my upcoming cancelation with increasing urgency.

There was a link to chat with the support agent. The available times are in Australia time. It’s as though they want me to leave.

I get that the particulars of the software can have edge cases that make it hard. As someone who’s designed algorithms, I have a lot of empathy for the product & engineering folks who have to continually test and iterate and improve their software without breaking previously working features.

I do not understand this poor customer service. That seems like a thing you could just throw a little effort at and make better.