Point people straight to email for payins/outs

[chadwhitacre]

We heard from @jslegers at #126 (comment) about the confusing flow for configuring PayPal or requesting bitcoin payins/outs. This PR addresses the issue by pointing directly to email as the preferred support method for these requests, rather than linking to the general "Contact us" info.

@jslegers Is this at all more helpful?

[jslegers]

Send us a mail is definitely more clear than Contact us, although it still seems a lot better to have a contact form for this purpose :

• With a contact form, Gittip can ensure that the right person(s) always receive the message
• With a contact form, Gittip can make required information mandatory, reducing the number of mail ping-pongs afterwards
• With a contact form, required information can have a very specific format, making it more difficult to send information in the wrong format
• Any changes to who receives the message can be done in background, providing a consistent user experience even when the recipient(s) of the message change(s)
• Maybe it's just me, but a contact form seems more professional and streamlined to me than Send us a mail or Contact us

[chadwhitacre]

@jslegers The [email protected] email is a shared account with a web app behind it (we use SupportBee), so that addresses points 1 and 4. Regarding the format, we regularly field support requests for this task, and it doesn't really take much ping-ponging in our experience, so points 2 and 3 are not pain points on our end. Our support bottlenecks right now are around disconnecting (#639) and canceling (#54) accounts, not around connecting PayPal accounts or doing bitcoin payins/outs.

The reason we don't want a form dedicated to connecting PayPal is that PayPal is temporary solution for us. We had a conversation with PayPal (#63) and were told that we should expect to not be underwritten by PayPal in the long term. We're using them now as a stop-gap for non-U.S. payouts (#126).

For connecting your PayPal account, we need:

• Your Gittip username.
• Your PayPal email address.
• The first eight digits of the API key from your Gittip profile (to confirm your account).

I think that if you emailed [email protected], you'd find us to be responsive and helpful. :-)

[patcon]

Just wanted to say thanks @jslegers. You've given us tons of information, and I promise it's really helpful :)

@whit537 I can't help but be reminded of the odd signup page for AppFog, previously one of Heroku's main competitors:
https://console.appfog.com/signup (screengrab in case it changes).

It used to be even weirder, with no timeline, but simply saying "If you'd like an account, just send us an email at [email protected]!". So yes, technically I knew exactly what to do to get an account with them. But needless to say, it was so far off from the process I was expecting that I never bothered. I think my thought at the time was, "If they can't even automate my account creation, such an important part of their core business process, why would I trust them with my long-term infrastructure?"

It's not totally analogous, but I think there are some similar threads in what @jslegers is getting at :)

[jslegers]

@patcon

It used to be even weirder, with no timeline, but simply saying "If you'd like
an account, just send us an email at [email protected]!". So yes,
technically I knew exactly what to do to get an account with them. But
needless to say, it was so far off from the process I was expecting that I
never bothered. I think my thought at the time was, "If they can't even
automate my account creation, such an important part of their core business
process, why would I trust them with my long-term infrastructure?"

It's not totally analogous, but I think there are some similar threads in what
@jslegers is getting at :)

That pretty much sums it up, yes.

When I want to create an account, I expect to be able to do it myself.

When I want to add or remove something from my account, I expect to be able to do it myself.

If I want a really exotic feature, I can understand why I may have to fill out a semi-automated form.

For me, any more procedure beyond that feels needlessly inefficient and unprofessional. It feels like the Kafkaesque bureaucracy I'd expect only of companies of 5,000 employees and more... and that I find absolutely abhorrent.