As for the original topic, I like and use 37s apps but lately the metaphorical shark comes to mind in relation to them.

What about this though, perhaps it is really that they are going too mainstream for some of us? Like it won’t hurt them in the pocketbook, they are just losing the respect of their core audience in the process of gaining the attention of a much bigger audience? Like how the local band is cool, and when they first get on MTV it is neat and you are proud to know them, but then when they are in a GAP commercial you are embarrassed and they suck, even though they are playing the exact same song that you loved when they played at open mike? Damn sellouts! :)

Or maybe I’ve just spent too much time visciously envying their success and attention and right-place-right-time luck.

Or maybe I really just wish they’d go back to doing design consulting so I could hire them.

I can see what you meen by the “over-hype” but I take it like this: Their great products were on the right place in the right time which resulted in huge success for them. Well deserved. And I suppose one can not save himself from getting “over-dosed with adrenalin” when hit by such a sudden change in his life.

So I perceive them as the true guys, who are commited the thier way, and are just “high” (like after a joint) so they are doing and feeling everything too much… Hope you get what I mean.

Never the less, I like them, read thier blog and do not feel like they are bombarding me too much.

One pretty severe warning: when you’re using any of 37signals’ products such as Basecamp, make sure you backup your data thoroughly and often, in case the site has a bug or goes away. As a user of one of 37signals’ previous products, Singlefile, I had over 3000 book records in their database. At a certain point, their export function ceased working for me. I alerted Jason to the issue, but the problem wasn’t fixed. Then they took down the site two months later — so no data.From an outside perspective (they have refused to address the issue, nor followed through on their promise to get me a copy of my data, over 6 months after the issue first occured), it looked like the product simply didn’t scale to this number of records. Their customer service response has been pretty dire. This was the last message I received from Jason, back in early March:“At this time exporting a single person’s data for a service that is no longer available, was run for free over the past year, and isn’t even on a machine that can facilitate the export is simply not at the top of our list.”Which you might imagine was rather annoying, since the export of the data had already been requested well before the site was shut down, and was only necessary because of a bug they didn’t fix. It’s also not a stellar example of responsive customer service and the transparency they mention on their Basecamp Manifesto.There’s a reason that you don’t usually make your evangelist your tech support person… and having one part-time programmer is not exactly reassuring.

Example 2After a year of constant support from their early adopters and at a time of increasing margins (more customers, falling hosting/bandwidth prices), 37 Signals celebrates not with a rewards program (promised from the beginning but never delivered) for referrals but with a 25% to 100% price increase. Thanks. Not only that we are not notified about (unless we read their damned blog which as many above have noted is quite hard to stomach). First notification is when I get the increased bill.Example 3As the Singlefile user noted, 37 Signals sees fit to embody evangelism and tech support in a single entity Jason Fried. Jason pretends that this is to enable him to support the product better. No way. It’s because he is too cheap to pay somebody to do it (one does have to pay tech support people, not much, but something). As Myles notes, this results inunanswered emails.very curt and rude answers.Such as when I emailed to complain about being changed to a new price plan against my wishes and heard from Jason that a 25% price increase (in our case $60/year on top of the $228 we were sending without complaint – the same price as 2 to 3 nice shareware applications with permanent licenses) should be written off as just “an extra coffee or two a month”.After everything his early adopters did and have done for him, his derisive and indifferent attitude smacks not only arrogance but stupidity. The backlash is just beginning.One friendly word of advice, Jason. Get yourself a support department. You’re not qualified to do this work yourself (it requires both patience and courtesy) and you would save yourself a lot of trouble with users. You would also have a lot more time to make good on the unkept promises to users outlined above.

Frankly, it was one of the most graceful applications I’ve used, and the transition to similar yet clunky and unattractive software (Readerware) has not been a pleasure.

I very much respect the work that 37signals does. They may not always offer the most robust of applications, but they do offer the most user-friendly with an ability to anticipate the needs of their users before their users even realize what they need. I think that they are not unlike the Google of their genre of products. And that isn’t always an easy position to be in.

I use Basecamp because I love IT, not 37signals (although they do seem like pretty good blokes). I can’t understand the criticism of their use of customer testimonials, because I would do the same if I received such amazing approval from my users (and probably a lot less tactfully). Yes, they hype their product – but on their own pages! How is that even worthy of criticism?

Jason replied to a support email I sent a few weeks ago – personally – within an hour of me sending it. That kind of customer support is unparalleled, in my view, particularly when there are (I would imagine) a large portion of people who are using Basecamp on the free plan (like I am).

Actions [read: 37signal products] continue to speak louder than words [read: this pointless discussion], but I’ll shout quite happily about Basecamp.