I don’t agree with Marco’s lack of support for customers, but I fundamentally disagree with Successful businesses needing to grow. This very much depends on your business model / targets.
Not everyone wants to grow.
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I agree…I don’t think he needs to grow his business via employees…it’s his business!
I wonder if some kind of customer service feedback tool (that I’m sure exists) would be beneficial for him. I’ve seen good ones out there that include voting up/down issues.
But in the end, I think it’s clear it’s pretty happy with his system. He only feels pressure to change things if it’s an outcry or drives his ratings down.
I’ll say again, though — he’s following through on what he said he would do. By doing this major re-write, he’s able to iterate on the app much quicker than he used to, which is a great thing! I still have some minor bugs, but he got after most of the issues I was having. Still the best audio of any podcast app for me.
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I’ve moved on from Overcast (the whole saga made me look deeper into other apps, and I’m way happier with Pocket Casts and how I was able to fit it into my listening habits and track all the shows than I ever was with Overcast), but there are definitely small development teams out there who manage support just fine.
A while back, I had a (minor) issue with Soulver (basically a problem with retrieving the subscription info) and got a response from the developer within minutes (standard email, no special support software). If Marco cannot provide any support, he should have a detailed FAQ, a knowledge base and a known issues tracker, and he should openly say that there’s no support except for that. That would be fair, and he would not be criticised as much for essentially not providing any two-way communication.
For example, he does not have a community forum, yet he got very angry at users for relying on reddit to provide support to each other. Where he ignored them as well (same as on Mastodon, X, and wherever else Overcast or he have an account). I am sure that e.g. DEVONthink Community Forums solve a vast majority of issues and minimise the impact on actual people working in support (Jim and others). The same goes for Obsidian (a very small team for a very major app).
This is a solved problem; it is Marco’s stance, mixed with quite some hubris, that go against standard practices in providing support when you are a small team or a solo dev.
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Even baseball players will hire people to help them sort through their fan mail. It’s being mindful of their place in society and promoting the game of baseball by answering a kid who asks for an autograph. There is an expectation that they will do it even though there is no official requirement.
I’d say that having an app in the App Store comes with an expectation you provide some level of support. If you can’t handle it yourself, hire someone to help.
I find the tone of some of these comments strange and unhelpful.
Marco runs his own business. He can do that however he wishes. His customers can choose whether to use his product and service or not, and I am sure that their perception of what they get (including support) for their money (or willingness to accept advertising) is a key part of that.
All this stuff about “expectations”, and instructions about what he should do and how he should do it, especially from people who have decided not to be customers, feels inappropriate somehow.
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I’m also running my own business. Getting feedback from people who chose not to work with me any more is helpful. You’ll often get more constructive and valuable feedback from people who have left (your product, your service) than from those who continue to use it and are just generally ‘happy’. Marco just chooses not to listen.
I don’t see why commenting on this should be inappropriate; past customers can return, and in fact, it may be cheaper in business terms to win them back (as they already know the product) over acquiring new paying customers.
He is, of course, free to do with his app and his business as he chooses but has to accept the consequences (as we all do), one of which is that there will be what he perceives as negative (rather than constructive and useful) comments.
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If People expect support, they are are not based in any reality in an App Store which invited a race to the bottom on pricing.
Marco’s open about how he operates. He doesn’t offer “Support” in his app, he offers the ability to send feedback with the blurb below.
Overcast is free unless you wish to subscribe, and those who wish to subscribe can cancel at any time.
As I’ve said before, I find Marco’s stance disappointing BUT it’s his business, he can run it as he wishes.
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Right and I’m free to not use his software because I’m disappointed in the lack of support. It mostly doesn’t need support, but when he did the rewrite and there were lots of bugs, that was the time he could’ve thrown up a webpage saying something about what he was doing to fix it.
Things is one of my favorite apps, I’ve been using it for years. This webpage is where I go if something doesn’t work the way I expect and it answers 99% of my questions. I’ve only clicked that “Contact Us” button a couple of times.
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I think the point that @geoffaire is driving at is that if you’re disappointed in the lack of support, and you ever chose to use Overcast, you made an…interesting decision in your choice of podcast software. 
I wasn’t disappointed in Marco’s support when he broke everything on the rewrite. I was disappointed that he didn’t more thoroughly vet things before replacing the software en toto with the new version. That’s an area where he’s historically been pretty good - being nitpicky about quality. At least up until the rewrite.
It does mystify me why he doesn’t just point an AI summarizer at his inbox and get the digest of what’s going on, but again, no support is promised or even implied.
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