The times they are a-changin’
While we’re on the subject of data security
Scenario: You have 3 subscriptions with 1 supplier. Your PayPal account, for any given subscription, says ‘XYZ supplier item name = ABC PayPal reference number’. Or does it? No. For some strange reason, it doesn’t. Which is why an account that I have cancelled TWICE through PayPal’s ‘cancel subscription’ option has carried on paying. It only took me all afternoon speaking to India at my own 0870 expense to work this out MYSELF.
The result? No explanation from PayPal. No call back as promised. No apology for what is clearly a database problem at their end. No clarification.
Where does it leave me? Out of pocket financially because a supplier has been paid twice for a subscription that I cancelled twice. Out of pocket because I spent an afternoon chasing this. Out of pocket because to bring this to PayPal’s attention I had to spend over an hour on an 0870 number.
And worse, there’s no resolution. I still have 4 active subscriptions for this supplier at PayPal (when I only need 3); I don’t know which is which (since the numbers are clearly cross-contaminated in their database) and 4) presumably because the numbers are cross-contaminated, the ‘cancel subscription’ option doesn’t seem to work.
Luckily it’s only costing me an additional $5 a month. What if the subscription was a monthly maintenance contract for £500? A leasing payment for £1000?
For sale - marketing data (25m names)
Clean list, ideal for SME email marketing campaign.
Buy your own product!
A nice reminder from Christina Hills ‘The Shopping Cart Queen’ on Paul Colligan’s ‘You can sell online’ podcast.
I think it took me about a day for the thought to occur to me. Ding! How do I know it works? What’s the experience of buying from me like??
Faa-antastic! 
It’s an unforgiving world.
The online world is brutally unforgiving - and businesses stand or fail on the reliability of the basic services they provide. I was pointed at ImageShack when I learned how to put pictures in forum posts and needed somewhere online to host them.
ImageShack offers free online hosting. Ok, so off I went and hosted my images and, at first glance, it seemed a great arrangement. By the time 6 months had passed using ImageShack, I’d noticed odd (but infuriating) problems: images seeming to disappear; failing to show after uploading (only to turn up in the album days later?); a hair-pullingly confusing lost-password cycle… and now, finally, another day when images aren’t appearing in blogs and websites.
So, that’s it. Goodbye ImageShack. And there are no second chances. At present, the pictures on this blog and in our website are hosted by PhotoBucket. Until, of course, such times as they fall over too.
Podcasting and risk aversion
Podcasting presents organisations with the kind of challenges that sometimes don’t occur to the small business or creative individual. The larger the organisation the greater the need to control and safeguard its data and systems and to prevent misuse. As a result, access to media files beyond the firewall is often restricted to prevent employees downloading illegal or copyright media.
The trouble is that these restrictions can also prevent creative exploration of media such as podcasting and blogging. A cultural shift is required even to get podcasting through the front door of most organisations, let alone keep it from becoming just another safe and controlled form of corporate communication.
It’s not an easy balance to strike but we try to emphasise this: the whole point of blogging and podcasting is that they are capable of ‘humanising’ an organisation. Like humans - and unlike most organisations - they are quick, responsive, flexible - and fallible.
Soft but unyielding..
Me: “Would you agree that a reasonable definition of ‘fit for purpose’ might be an expectation that this machine would still be functional on its second birthday?”
Senior customer relations person: “Sir, you had the choice to buy the extended warranty and you chose not to”
Me: “I do hope this call is being recorded because effectively you’re telling me that I have to buy an extended warranty if I want this machine to run for two years! I don’t call that a choice, I call that a ‘pre-requisite’! Tell me, if you bought a brand new car and two years later, a part failed that rendered the car a write-off, what would you do?”
Senior customer relations person: (pause) “Sir, I would start saving for another car….”
Me: “Rubbish. You and your entire family would be banging down the dealer’s door demanding your money back - because the car wouldn’t have been fit for purpose!”
I enjoyed the conversation. The Senior customer relations person was very polite and adamant she could not do anything. I took the time to point out that, whatever the company procedures said, the long and short of it was that I was once a happy customer full of glowing referrals and was now an unhappy one unlikely to buy or recommend their products for them any more.
Saving? £600. Loss? My next purchase as a minimum.
Hmm. Not good.
I’m sure that’s NOT how Mac OS X is supposed to look. Could it be that the years of virus-free smugness are coming to an end? (Note the ‘frantically burning backup discs while there’s still time’ dialog box). Have any other Mac users come across this..ahh… delightful desktop theme?
Some quick research turns up a reference in the Apple forum - to yet another known G5 fault. Unfortunately (once again, just like when the power supply failed) MY serial number wasn’t in the extended warranty range.
Apparently, this is a VRAM failure - necessitating the replacement of the logic board (or something). Anyway, it’s a £500 bit plus about £75 fitting. So, Apple. Given I could buy a comparable new one for £800, that’s effectively a write-off, then?
I’m going to be talking to Apple tomorrow and suggesting that they extend their warranty even further if they want to keep me using Macs. When a machine is a couple of years old, I might reasonably expect some minor repairs - NOT, however, to have to write the machine off.
Worst of all, there’s a 5 year old Packard Bell PC whirring away upstairs in the teenager’s room that - at this rate - looks likely to outlive both our Macs.
‘mu:kaumedia launch podcast training in Devon and Cornwall
We’re excited to launch our new 1 day, hands-on technical and creative podcast training courses at locations in Devon and Cornwall!
Would you like to:
• know exactly what podcasting and blogging can do for your business?
• understand exactly how both work through direct hands-on experience?
• set up your own blog and start getting extra Google visibility for free?
• record your own podcast audio that you can put on your blog, in your emails or on your website?
This unique business podcast training course will give you all of that and more. In the space of a single day, you will create your own blog, record and publish your own podcast episode and de-mystify how blogging and podcasting work.
This course isn’t just about setting you up with the basic creative, strategic and technical skills needed to blog and podcast for business - it’s about actually getting stuck in and creating a live blog and a podcast example before the day is complete!
You’ll leave the course with a working blog that you can continue using to add Google visibility to your business and greater depth to your customer experience.
Dates, venue and booking details to be announced soon!
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