<story><title>Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been a paying customer from https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.notion.so&amp;#x2F; since 2017 with my company. In the early days, I even exchanged emails with the founders giving detailed feedback.&lt;p&gt;Around 3 months ago, I started having issues with their &amp;quot;Export&amp;quot; feature. Basically, you request to export all your data on Notion, and you&amp;#x27;re supposed to receive a link to download it. But the link never arrives.&lt;p&gt;I contacted them about this, and that&amp;#x27;s what they said at the time:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Our engineering team is currently working through a large backlog, and there is no immediate fix for this issue...&lt;p&gt;I explained this wasn&amp;#x27;t a &amp;quot;nice to have&amp;quot; feature. It was a critical function that locks us with them and goes against their selling message of &amp;quot;you own your data&amp;quot;.
I was ignored, with the same robotic tone.&lt;p&gt;So today, 3 months later, I contacted them again to say I&amp;#x27;m having the same issue. They replied with the same message:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  Please accept my sincere apologies for the ongoing difficulties with this. Our engineering team is currently working through a large backlog, and there is no immediate fix for this issue. I’ve already alerted them to the issue and told them of your particular situation, and we’ll certainly follow up if there are any developments!  Really appreciate your patience with us as we continue to improve. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with in the meantime.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m again explaining the same thing - If the feature isn&amp;#x27;t working, this is a critical function that they should at least try to generate manually as per my request.&lt;p&gt;They are basically locking me in. They, again, replied with scripted messages:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Unfortunately, our engineering team is working through quite a backlog at the moment, and there isn&amp;#x27;t an immediate fix for this issue....&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on what I can do? Thanks!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s one thing to make a &lt;i&gt;new feature request&lt;/i&gt; and have the response be &amp;quot;sorry, we&amp;#x27;ll get to it when we get to it.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s quite another to have a &lt;i&gt;bug&lt;/i&gt; in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say &amp;quot;sorry, our engineers have a big backlog.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Imagine if a bank said &amp;quot;sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog.&amp;quot; Unbelievable!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eugeniub</author><text>&amp;gt; Imagine if a bank said &amp;quot;sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog.&amp;quot; Unbelievable!&lt;p&gt;The Mt. Gox story.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been a paying customer from https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.notion.so&amp;#x2F; since 2017 with my company. In the early days, I even exchanged emails with the founders giving detailed feedback.&lt;p&gt;Around 3 months ago, I started having issues with their &amp;quot;Export&amp;quot; feature. Basically, you request to export all your data on Notion, and you&amp;#x27;re supposed to receive a link to download it. But the link never arrives.&lt;p&gt;I contacted them about this, and that&amp;#x27;s what they said at the time:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Our engineering team is currently working through a large backlog, and there is no immediate fix for this issue...&lt;p&gt;I explained this wasn&amp;#x27;t a &amp;quot;nice to have&amp;quot; feature. It was a critical function that locks us with them and goes against their selling message of &amp;quot;you own your data&amp;quot;.
I was ignored, with the same robotic tone.&lt;p&gt;So today, 3 months later, I contacted them again to say I&amp;#x27;m having the same issue. They replied with the same message:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  Please accept my sincere apologies for the ongoing difficulties with this. Our engineering team is currently working through a large backlog, and there is no immediate fix for this issue. I’ve already alerted them to the issue and told them of your particular situation, and we’ll certainly follow up if there are any developments!  Really appreciate your patience with us as we continue to improve. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with in the meantime.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m again explaining the same thing - If the feature isn&amp;#x27;t working, this is a critical function that they should at least try to generate manually as per my request.&lt;p&gt;They are basically locking me in. They, again, replied with scripted messages:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Unfortunately, our engineering team is working through quite a backlog at the moment, and there isn&amp;#x27;t an immediate fix for this issue....&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on what I can do? Thanks!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s one thing to make a &lt;i&gt;new feature request&lt;/i&gt; and have the response be &amp;quot;sorry, we&amp;#x27;ll get to it when we get to it.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s quite another to have a &lt;i&gt;bug&lt;/i&gt; in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say &amp;quot;sorry, our engineers have a big backlog.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Imagine if a bank said &amp;quot;sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog.&amp;quot; Unbelievable!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>makeitdouble</author><text>&amp;gt; Imagine if a bank said &amp;quot;sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog.&amp;quot; Unbelievable!&lt;p&gt;That happens a bit more than we would want to.&lt;p&gt;There was an (several?) incident with Mizuho bank in Japan. During system errors they&amp;#x27;d swallow clients cards and wouldn&amp;#x27;t give them back until a the client asks for it in person at the counter (so, a few days later when it happens on the weekend)</text></comment>