My experience has been very different. People have been quite happy to chat about their experience using the product and the pain-points uncovered were consistent across users.
In a nutshell, what we did was email users asking for a 30-45 minute remote interview in exchange for $50 gift card. We started the meetings letting the user know that there are no wrong answers, that it's quite informal and they can leave at any time. We then spent the first half of the interview finding out who the user is, what they do and how they use the product. The second half was spent uncovering pain-points and maybe even asking users to share their screen and show us.
We'd take notes during the interviews and then once we've done a few we'll collate the notes at which point the improvements to make to the product would become obvious.
In a nutshell, what we did was email users asking for a 30-45 minute remote interview in exchange for $50 gift card. We started the meetings letting the user know that there are no wrong answers, that it's quite informal and they can leave at any time. We then spent the first half of the interview finding out who the user is, what they do and how they use the product. The second half was spent uncovering pain-points and maybe even asking users to share their screen and show us.
We'd take notes during the interviews and then once we've done a few we'll collate the notes at which point the improvements to make to the product would become obvious.