If I ran a pay site I'd probably send the report just because it would be
entertaining, even though I think it best not to "tip your hand".
I certainly appreciate Vink's post. I dedicated several years of hard work to
research and development trying to make Strongbox useful for webmasters
and it's very much appreciated when someone says that they are finding
it to be useful.
I made a post about phatservers the other day because once again when I emailed
them a support request at 1 AM they took care of it and replied to me within
about 4 minutes, which was amazing because I figure it would take about
6 minutes to do what I asked even if they were sitting there checking email
every 30 seconds. Add in the 45 seconds or whatever to read me email and
type out the reply and they must have started working on my request three
minutes BEFORE I sent it. I swear Mike @ Phatservers has some sort of
customer service time machine where he gets requests before they are sent.
Granted my post was in reply to someone asking about hosting, but I
figure it's useful for webmasters to know about products and services that
out perform expectations . I don't post about the hosts who reply to support
tickets in a few hours - they're doing what hosts do, great. I do post about
exceptional products and services.
There's actually a second benefit for webmasters in those kinds of posts,
I think, that isn't immediately obvious. Like pay sites, over half of the price
of many products and services sold to webmasters goes to pay for advertising.
If no one ever posted about Strongbox we'd be spending $5,000 / month
to put a banner on this board and that means we'd have to charge you
guys twice as much. Chop, Vink, Cleo al others have all saved a significant
amount of money because webmasters like them are kind enough to let
each other know when they find something good. Of course I'm sure one
Strongbox user wouldn't mind paying twice as much if it meant I'd
be sending him $5,000 to advertise on his board.
Chop, while it's certainly true that the promptness of my customer service
is my biggest weakness, I don't see any emails from you, nor have a recieved
any phone calls from you, so I'm not sure why you are saying you can't
reach me. If you don't have my number any more it's posted prominently
on my web site. Anyway, I've just emailed you. I've been training a new
guy to help with installs and support and am looking for someone else
to hire as well, so hopefully response time will improve. It certainly does
need improvement. If any one has any suggestions on how best to keep
up with email I'm all ears. I half jokingly mentioned to Mike @ Phatservers
that I should come work for him for a month to learn how he does it.