The founder of a startup in Bengaluru has apologised after a tweet from the company's official handle was severely criticised for being passive-aggressive to a disgruntled user.
Fold Money co-founder Nash Vail took to X on Monday to acknowledge that the situation was handled poorly and that the company has learned from its mistakes.
It all started when a Fold Money app -- which is currently in its beta stage -- user pointed out a few flaws and criticised it. Responding to the tweet, the company said, "Maybe research a bit before signing up for an app that's in beta?" and shared the link to their blog post which lists the challenges that users may face with the app's beta version.
When the user hit back, Fold Money tweeted, "Yup dragging the hard work of a team in public, especially the one you didn't pay for, without understanding how the product works is much easier than reading a blog post."
This response was labelled as "passive-aggressive" by the user and a number of other X users also called out the company for its poor response.
"Extremely disappointed on how Fold is dealing with this situation," wrote Zeel Patel (@patelzeel68). "Dragging this into public over a tweet that could’ve easily been taken as a hard reflective criticism... Not becoming passive-aggressive on a public platform over that — you can’t expect your users to understand and have the context you as a team have."
"You’re an emerging fintech, not Wendy’s. Engage with your current, future, and past customers politely because your current and future customers are watching," another X user Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) wrote. "Not always easy to build in public but take all criticism as feedback."
Responding to the criticism, Vail took to the social media platform and apologised for the incident. "We have taken and responded to a lot of feedback. Most of the app what it is now has a direct connection to some feedback or request made on our discord/x. This was just poorly handled, we’re sorry about that," the Fold Money co-founder wrote.
He also responded to several users, apologised, and acknowledged that the company had learned from this mistake. "Yes sir, we’re learning, growing, and owning up," Vail wrote to an X user.
When asked why they didn't delete the offensive tweet, he added, "Deleting the tweet to get out of this is an easy way. We just want to acknowledge we f***ed up and not try to scurry away. If deleting them is the way to go we will."
Read more: Bengaluru techie's viral post triggers memefest: 'Renting my 2BHK in Indiranagar'
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