The folks over at Six Apart who developed the technology and offer the platform that makes this blog possible have had some recent performance problems. I along with many other bloggers complained. Below are two comments left at Steve Rubels blog by myself and Debbie Wiel describing our experiences and a call for a refund.
Why doesn’t Mena demonstrate some good old fashioned accountability and offer a refund or discount on future services? Their outages impacted my business. Perhaps they scale their fees in the future based upon performance? I too found her apology hollow and totally lacking. I don’t want apologies. Just results please.
Posted by: Mike Smock | Thursday, October 27, 2005 at 01:06 PM
Must admit I had the same thought about a refund or service extension after reading Mena’s post. They should consider it. Too bad 6A’s "Fall Special Offer" email arrived in my inbox today. Bad timing. It’s hard to get it right. But I’m still sympathetic and hanging in there as a customer.
Posted by: Debbie Weil | Thursday, October 27, 2005 at 06:23 PM
I was genuinely concerned because our blog has become an integral part of our marketing strategy at vSente. We were very concerned about the prospects of having to move the blog to another host, especially the impact this would have on our overall search rankings. So I was delighted to receive an email the other day from Barak offering the following:
By default, you will receive a credit for 15 free days of TypePad service. To get this credit you don’t have to do anything; we will just credit your account.
That said, we recognize that customers have had different experiences with the service, so we want to give you the opportunity to choose more, or even less compensation. If you click the link below, you’ll get a screen that offers you the following choices:
•
While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience I mainly found the service acceptable last month.
Give me 15 free days of TypePad.
•
The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month.
Give me 30 free days of TypePad.
•
The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month.
Give me 45 free days of TypePad.
•
I really wasn’t affected and feel I got the great service I paid for last month.
Thank you for the offer, but please don’t credit my account.
The reason I’m delighted with this approach is not because I might save a few bucks. Instead it indicates to me that the Six Apart folks are taking this seriously and in a very business-like manner. I will not opt for any discount/refund. Good job 6A.
Creative awards are meaningless if you can’t convert them into revenue, profit and market share. Click here to learn more about vSente. We wage and win battles for market share.