Oren Eini aka Ayende Rahien from the NHibernate Profiler project tried unsuccessfully to get licensing software from XHEO working.  When he couldn’t get it to work with a reasonable amount of effort (in his viewpoint), he asked for a refund.  Seems like a straight-forward situation.  However, it got ugly and it went public.  Both sides made mistakes (and I would argue both sides let it “end” without fully acknowledging the mistakes they made).

I found the back and forth fascinating and entertaining enough that I thought it was worth sharing.  These links are provided in chronological order.  I believe Paul Alexander is the president / founder of XHEO.  The comments on the blog posts aren't critical for following the story, but they are interesting none the less.

http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/02/02/open-letter-to-xheo-that-is-not-a-good-way.aspx
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/02/04/a-customer-service-story.aspx

http://www.xheo.com/Blog/post/Response-to-Ayendee28099s-Open-Letter.aspx

http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/02/05/the-wrong-way-to-respond-to-criticism.aspx
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/02/05/on-xheo-conduct.aspx
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/02/06/closing-the-xheo-saga.aspx

There are likely many lessons learned available for any customer or customer support person in here.  Customer support is hard and doing it wrong is common.  Just because you have a good reputation today doesn't mean you will have a good reputation tomorrow.