Subject Matter Archive for ‘customer service’

It’s been a few long months owing to me having to take care of emergency familial issues, but remember that post I made back in March about Web Hosting Gone Wrong?

Shortly after I wrote that post, I spoke with Andrew from Media Temple about this matter and where he obviously was not allowed to go into situation specifics aside from what was publicly posted by Kyle, we were able to talk more in-depth about Media Temple’s policies and about specifics regarding theoretical situations which could result in the scenario that Kyle experienced. I aired my concerns – elaborated where necessary – and Andrew addressed them all quite thoroughly and we spoke at length about the various topics I had addressed in my previous blog posts.

At this point (actually, much earlier, but I have been unable to really sit down to write until now – sorry, Andrew!), I have to say that where I still have mild concerns about the potential ‘ease’ of going over resource allotment, I am satisfied with the results of the conversation and no longer have that sour taste in my mouth or the same misgivings I once had.

In case it wasn’t evident in previous posts or in case anyone needs a reminder, I will reiterate that my concerns were NOT regarding MT charging for overages (in other words, I wasn’t saying that MT shouldn’t charge for overages, period).

My greatest concern was how unexpectedly the overage-causing situation had happened (it was a total and complete accident and there was no prior indication that such a problem would happen), what the ramifications were (triggering the overage as the situation caused resource over-usage), what the implications might be (how easy would it be to go over resource allotment?), and then how MT INITIALLY handled the situation.

As a courtesy to Andrew and Media Temple, I will address the issues one more time and then close this particular ‘chapter’ of blog posts regarding Web Hosting Gone Wrong.

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Cheap(er) domain registration prices and cheap(er) basic web hosting packages have never and will never motivate me to choose GoDaddy for any of my domain registration or web hosting needs.

NEVER.

However.

Due to the old RegisterFly fiasco (not my fault!) that happened back in the timespan of 2005-2007, I had a handful of domains that I had been maintaining at RegisterFly get pushed on to GoDaddy while one domain ended up with eNom. Several got moved elsewhere (DreamHost, here I come!) while I let others whose purposes had expired… expire.

Also.

Due to working with various people over the years – paid, voluntary, because we’re friends, and otherwise – I have been forced to interact with GoDaddy as the go-between fix-it and fix-up person.

But those incidents and instances aside, I myself would never – if possible – choose GoDaddy.

Why?

Good grief, but where do I start?

I know! How about in alphabetical order?

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Yes, for SHARED HOSTING!

A hosting plan that first started out at $20 a month suddenly jumped to over $1000 for the month due to some majorly insane and nonsensical (read the rest of this post and go read the original article yourself!) overages!

Before any conclusions are jumped, let me clarify a few things upfront first:

1a. As of March 08, a different resolution was offered by the hosting company in question. Please read THIS POST for the most current updates on the situation. For my own response to the ‘resolution’, please read THIS POST.

With that said:

1b. The person who had the webhosting gone wrong incident is not me.

The person in question is Kyle Matthews who owns and runs the ModMy network. The site in question for this particular situation is a client’s site: NegriElectronics.com.

Edit – 03.08.10: In an earlier version of the post, I forgot to mention which site it was that was specifically involved which could lead to a person thinking that it was the ModMy sites involved (since I credited Kyle with the ModMy network and didn’t mention the proper website involved). Not true! Sorry about the confusion and I made the proper edits accordingly! Thanks Kyle for the correction!

and

2. I don’t know the person whom this incident happened to. I came across this story via a link someone posted in my Twitter stream.

The original story is posted on Kyle Matthews’ own blog, which can be accessed HERE.

and last of all…

3. I try to be as objective about things as possible when I write and I really try to not let the opinions and even experiences of others color my own perception.

Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear, right?

BUT.

4. Sometimes, the experiences of others have a great enough impact that it clearly affects my judgment.

Why? Because some experiences are so AWFUL that you really DON’T want to and CAN’T afford to risk experiencing something similar.

Therefore…

5. This is one of those times.

With that out of my system, here’s my reaction:

HOLY %$#@ING YIKES!!!

and

What the HELL is going on at Media Temple?!

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As a change of pace from my last grumpy post…

I’m going to give a happy shoutout to the folks over at Carbonmade.com!

I recently came across the free (you can upgrade and pay for more space and more features) and advertisement-free online portfolio website called Carbonmade at Carbonmade.com and decided to give the site and its portfolio application a test drive on a basic free account…

and what a test drive it’s been so far!

Just so everyone knows what’s going on at Carbonmade:

Carbonmade offers two levels of accounts – the Meh and the Whoo.

The Meh account is the basic free account that everyone signs up with and with it comes an allotment of 5 Projects (think of this as 5 folders/major categories that you can label however you want), and 35 images. You can also link your portfolio to a Google Analytics account to track how your portfolio is doing in terms of views and the like.

If you upgrade to their paid Whoo account, the numbers and features get bumped up to: 50 Projects, 500 images, and 10 videos. In addition, you can get your portfolio linked to your own domain name (you have to own the domain name yourself already, obviously) and you get priority customer support.

Now.

For myself, I already host the majority of my own online portfolio on my own domain name because I do front-end web development and web design stuff and it’s a good way to show off my skills and so I decided (so far) to stick with the Meh account and use it to showcase my absolute favorite and most recent pieces of work.

If you visit http://graffitimaster.carbonmade.com, you’ll see that I used my Projects to divvy up my work samples into 4 categories (yes, this means I have 1 Project left to use) and if you click on them you’ll see that each category houses a number of screenshots of related work samples.

Additionally, you might notice that when/if you try and right click on the images/screenshots in question, it doesn’t pull up the portfolio image.

Pretty nifty, huh?

Yeah, I thought so, too.

A couple of major reasons I’m digging Carbonmade:

• Nice, clean, and simple layout options for the portfolios
• Easy to use interface for portfolio, Project, and image arranging; image uploading; tagging/labeling; editing the About Me page; and editing pretty much anything else that can be edited
• The display method for the portfolio images
• Great customer/user support!

After all of my recent grumblings about customer support, experiencing a polite, super quick and to-the-point answer from the Carbonmade team – thanks again, Spencer! – is really what helped to clinch my positive opinion for both the Carbonmade application and website AND the people behind the project.

Carbonmade’s mission is to give people who need online portfolios a no-muss and no-fuss way to display samples of their work.

With their easy-to-use interface, clean and sleek portfolio layouts, neat method of displaying portfolio contents, tiered account levels to suit both the light and heavier users, and very satisfactory customer/user support, I think they have more than delivered.

For me, at least, some of the features I ran into while on my Carbonmade adventure came as a very wonderful surprise.

Maybe for you, they will, too.

Cheers to you, Carbonmade!

Thanks for making my day!

~ EMG /

Maybe it’s just my own bad luck…

But an awful lot of support forums nowadays seem to be going the way of the dogs with people acting like they’re rabid – foaming at the mouth, biting at everyone that gets near them (warranted, unwarranted, and otherwise) and being altogether completely unpleasant to be around.

Just what the HELL is going on here?

Is July the month for Bad Support or something?

Everyone’s having a bad hair day?

Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?

Broke one hundred mirrors?

Broke up with significant others?

Crossed an army of black cats?

Good fucking GRIEF, people.

CHILL. OUT!

If you can’t say something at least remotely polite to a completely legitimate question, then don’t say anything at all!

~ EMG

The honeymoon is over…

when support communities for products and services – both paid and not-for-profit – don’t provide adequate support.

End of sentence.

It is even worse if the customer/client/user support provided comes with a poor attitude and the worst part comes when the support makes the customer/client/user feel looked down upon and belittled.

THAT is not just an end to a honeymoon, but it is an alienation and divorce of the user from the product or service or even company.

In other words, it is a death sentence for the company whom the user has distanced and divorced themselves from.

How far can one user go in toppling the reputation of an otherwise viable product/service/company?

Pretty dang far.

In the old days, if someone got stiffed by someone else, you could bet that word would eventually get around via gossip that the person who did the stiffing == not that great of a person to deal with.

For example:

An old friend of mine from way back when got one-upped by a new mechanic in town who thought he could pull a few tricks on someone he thought to be an unsuspecting customer.

Said friend of mine is a mechanic himself, so it was a no-go, but the new mechanic didn’t know and proceeded to try to convince my friend that the repairs would cost three times more than they normally would at any other location for the next several towns over and that in addition to the repairs already warranted, the brakes needed fixing and the tires needed aligning.

What did my friend do?

He proceeded to tell all of his friends via word of mouth (including me) that the new mechanic in town was looking to make a quick buck off of unsuspecting people.

What happened to the new mechanic?

He hardly got any business and within a few months, closed up shop.

That was a long time ago and that was only through word-of-mouth.

Now in the cyber age, there are such things as blogs and online journals and Yelp.com and a load of other places where someone like my friend could do a one-click publishing of their bad experience and have it available for all to see on the world wide web.

So let’s apply a similar scenario to a fictitious company called Company ABC who puts out Service 123.

Let’s say that for this Service 123, Company ABC provides lousy support and not only that, makes their clients/customers/userbase feel awful about the whole experience to boot.

Let’s also say that, like my friend, these clients/users have a large online and offline network of friends whom they frequently talk to and blog with and about, AND, much worse, they’re huge fans of consumer review-ish websites and aren’t afraid of posting their experiences – good and bad for all to see.

Can you imagine the extent of damage someone like that could do, especially if whatever product, service, or company they are feeling wronged by is still in its fledgling or yearling phase and still relies on the userbase/fanbase to really grow?

I repeat what I said earlier: Pretty dang far.

So to all you people out there who think either you, your product, your service, or your company is ‘all that’ and is ‘hot stuff’ and that it gives you the right to act like a complete jackass to your userbase and clientbase, THINK AGAIN and FAST.

Just because your user asked what seems to be a ’stupid/newbie question’ (your words, not mine) doesn’t mean that the user, is in fact, STUPID.

It will be just your luck that the user is like my friend, the mechanic, and it will also be your luck that they get pissed off enough about your attitude problem to yell about it off the rooftops of the world wide web where everyone can hear.

And when your high and mightiness crumbles?

I will only be able to point to this post and say, “I told you so.”

~ EMG