A customer of mine and I have been waging a 2 month long battle against a domain registrant over a domain name he has owned for several years.

Through one reason or another, the domain expired and he didn’t notice until after the grace period. I rang up and the nice lady said that the domain was about to be auctioned and to email a particular email address and ask if we could have an exemption due to the mistake and the length of time he had owned the domain.

No reply. After about 12 emails from me, 12 from him and numerous phone calls from both of us, we still could not get through to anyone who was responsible for the domain.

Now, I assume coinciding with another grace period expiring, he has received a very polite email from “Brian”, and I quote:

“Our client owns this and current asking price is $22,788.

Please let me know if you’re interested in making a purchase.

Kind regards,

Brian”

I have a sneaky suspicion that they refused to talk to us until this time because they knew once it had passed they could resell him his domain name for this much money. (They actually can’t is only reaction was to laugh).

Is that unusual/wrong/dodgy or just one of those lessons you have to learn about domains?

I used to love reading Creating Passionate Users but now am sure that it wasn’t actually Kathy Sierra writing it at all, but Giles Crisp from iPayroll.

I LOVE that it only takes me 5 minutes a week to do my payroll. It’s ingenious. It’s an application I love NOT to use - it’s brilliant because in order for it to be uber useful, I hardly have to even login.

I recommend them to all in sundry because I love the service.

But for now that’s beside the point because iPayroll has the edge on customer service.

Giles just arrived with 2 complimentary tickets to a business growth seminar AND (most importantly) a box of chocolates in thanks for me recommending the service. We we’re all a little surprised. Actually we we’re shocked.

We really didn’t feel like we deserved the chocolates (But 15 minutes later they are all gone anyway - it’s an office full of girls). There service is so good, you can’t help but talk about it.

But the fact that he took the time out of his day to not only come past, but BRING US GOODIES has taken me from enthusiastic customer to passionate customer.

In fact right now, while I’m eating a chocolate fudge, I am considering changing this entire blog to my love for iPayroll.

I just didn’t think companies that good existed. I hope they are making a fortune.

After a 6 week battle with Paypal, my account limitation has finally been lifted. I had almost $7,000 in there sitting for 6 weeks with absolutely no security that I would get it back. Unlike other annoyances I write about, this really freaked me out. That is a lot of money to me and my business and even though it was rightfully mine, I was powerless to get it.

The thing is, I don’t actually really mind that Paypal limited my account. I would rather they did that than find out they welcomed in some fraudster with open arms, but the way they go about it makes their customers feel so vulnerable, I now completely understand how those people who create ‘I Hate Paylpal’ sites feel.

1. It is Paypal POLICY to limit EVERY new account that received a large amount of cash (and $7k is determined to be large

This is to stop international thiefs and suchlike filtering money around the world and I think that is probably a good idea.

BUT

If it is policy, maybe they would like to TELL me it is policy, so I can do a couple of small transactions first or decide to use another method. Even if they don’t tell me before hand, when the account is limited, maybe that would be a good time? The most frightening thing for me is simply the not knowing and the fact if they chose to, they could wipe all record of me and my money and WHAT could I do??? Take them to court? If they JUST let me know. I wouldn’t panic.

2. Paypal Doesn’t Communicate

When a large company has stopped you accessing your own money for about 3 weeks and you have done everything they have asked of you and you STILL haven’t heard from them… You start to wonder if this is about security at all or if it’s really about getting interest on someone else’s money. Because I’m not in the mood for conspiracy theories, I will put this down to bad communication.

I emailed sooooo many times. I called even more times and was faced with the MOST ANNOYING mechanical answer service I have EVER experienced. I received a list of options, none of which was what I was after and none of which led to an actual person. I literally spent half an hour figuring out how to hunt down an operator on each phone call and if I made the wrong choice, I’d get “Paypal thanks you for your call… Goodbye.” … And be forced to start the process again.

When I ever got through to an operator (I think that was 3 times) I ALWAYS got hung up on while they transferred me between departments. It was a nightmare and more so for their operators who surely must answer calls to find their customers not only with their initial complaint, but a barrage of abuse about their phone system.

On the upside, every Paypal PERSON I talked to was very helpful… Even if they didn’t always do what they said they would.

Paypal also requires a fax machine to use (yes for an online service) I don’t even OWN a fax. They also don’t email you to tell you if the documentation you supplied was incorrect and even when you specify on your fax that you have uploaded the documentation to the correct place, they don’t check, so you have to spend another week going through the heirarchy just to point out that it’s where they wanted to to be all along… Man oh man. Just remembering those times makes me frustrated.

3. Paypal Loses Customers

I’ve used Paypal before, I haven’t really thought about it, and I assumed the weirdos with their weird hating Paypal sites were just idiots who mucked up somehow. Now I know differently. If I ever do use Paypal again, it will be hesitantly. I’d rather pay the extra $25 fee banks charge for international payments (which is a crime in itself) than risk losing my money or not be able to access it.

Which is a shame, because it’s such a good theory. On the upside, I now completely understand my parent’s generation and their nervousness at trusting “the internet” - this will surely help me do my job better?

Well for me anyway.

Anyone who knows me and my ENGAGED sister, know that when we get sad, or something bad happens, or we feel like we need a treat, we go shopping.

I now have a huge collection of earrings because of this.

However, last weekend, I was watching a sad movie and couldn’t bring myself to hit the shops (I’m actually only half serious, before you all accuse me of being a consumer-driven generation-whatever-I-am-er), so I hit Amazon.

There were tonnes of books I’ve been meaning to buy and I did kind of want to experience Amazon shopping, so I bought up large.

I still haven’t received my order (which is fine, I’m like at the bottom of the world), but I was talking about it to Emma and she told me in future times of sadness, go to Goodbooksnz.com, which is an NZ based online book store with no delivery fees and ALL the profits go to Oxfam.

Charities doing it wrong

I had to laugh last week while walking down the street. Every day is the official day of another charity, and all they do is head to every street corner and stand there looking glum. Often they wear these massive bibs that exclaim ‘STREET DONATION DRIVE ‘08′ or something then in very small letters the actual charity you are donating to.

You either peer at them closely to find out if you want to support their cause, or give up and walk past to avoid invading their personal space so you can read about what they do from their chest.

Other charities station 2 girls on opposite sites of the same footpath so you have to funnel through them to get past while the exclaim brightly ‘hello, how are you?’. Even though I walk past them every day and they still don’t recognise me so am therefore mildly offended, I am shocked and amazed at how people blatantly just ignore them, like they are lower than sewer rats.

Neither of these seem a very sustainable way to draw positive, sustained attention to your cause.

Oxfam does it right

Yes, I have received a chicken for christmas, and I know quite a few people who tucked into their christmas turkey knowing their present was a goat heading off to a family where food is not taken for granted. Such a simple idea, but so successful. We feel GOOD giving Oxfam money because we are giving someone a present.

And now this website for books. They have totally mastered the art of offering people value for money. And I know charity is all about the gift of giving, but if all you do is give and give and give and know that it doesn’t go towards anything that makes anything that will become sustainable, you just want to give up giving. But Oxfam are starting real life businesses that mean we can make every day choices about giving them money.

It just struck me as brilliant. So use it.

Early voice recognition systems were calibrated to male voices. Women were ignored.

Early video conferencing systems were calibrated to a male voice, so even if a woman was speaking, the video didn’t even know she existed and instead focused on a man.

The first artificial heart valves were modeled on a mans heart and didn’t FIT in women.

None of these technological advances involved women in the design process. If you’re a male technology entrepreneur and don’t currently have any women in your team, listen to the SXSW talk on how to attract girls into technology or else, you too may find yourself in the embarrassing position of quite literally ignoring half your market.

If you are a female, listen anyway, they are quite good at putting into words EXACTLY why up until the age of 20 I didn’t even like computers and it really makes you think how different technology will be once there are more of us contributing to it.

Today is Easter Monday in New Zealand, it is also two days before one of my good friends heads off overseas and a chance for the old girl crowd to have one final lunch together.

It was a beautiful day so we wanted to sit somewhere outside in the sun and chose our restaurant based on it’s nice big outside area. The trouble was, while the inside part was empty, all the tables outside were full.

So we asked if maybe they would move another table outside (there was pletny of room). The waiter looked at us like we were demanding prima donnas, and said ‘no sorry.’ So we said “ummm ok, we’ll try somewhere else then.” He shrugged and walked away.

I wonder what kind of half-full restaurant is so happy with their profits that they will turn away 7 people on a day that they charge and extra 15% holiday surcharge, simply to avoid moving a table.

Or maybe the waiter was so dis-enchanted with his boss, he simply didn’t care?

I would be a little worried if the staff I hired at the front end of a restaurant were so disinterested in making sales they lost me about $200 in business in the space of 30 seconds.

Every time I lose (get rid of?) a customer, I feel a need to blog about it, kind of like a confession, because it’s never nice a pleasant task. So far we’ve had a good run, a few customers who came on at the beginning and who didn’t fit our business any more, one man who embarked on a web project without any idea of what he was doing and completely unreasonable expectations, one massively dis-organised project back in the earlier days that was largely our fault (we did however offer a massive discount) and not a huge amount else. But these guys were just unpleasant.

The Yeller

This customer felt like it was ok to ring me constantly and yell down the phone line. This started when we started having server troubles, which is a nightmare for any web company. However, I did everything I could to sorted, we had me and at least one other person basically full time getting people off the server and keeping it ticking along. Often this was in the middle of the night and well outside of work hours. However, every time one of them called, I accepted full responsibility, told them we were doing everything we could and were aware of the problem and they would be back on track within 10 minutes.

I started to get the impression they just enjoyed yelling at me (this was two separate people within one company)

Then we fixed the server and there were no more problems, so every time their internet connection didn’t work, they STILL called me yelling down the phone, if I didn’t pick up, I checked my messages only to get an ear bashing. It didn’t matter that I’d been totally honest all along especially when it was our fault and that I explained numerous times that now we were accessing their email just fine, they still yelled.

I HATE it when people yell at me. I think I have reached my limit of being yelled at over the past few years and think there is no place for it in business. What do they think? Because they are giving me an ear bashing, I’ll forget all my polite, respectful customers and sort their problems first? I just find it a rude, unpleasant and unnecessary way of dealing with other people. So I told them to go somewhere else (I was actually very polite and just said that I don’t think it was working, they were clearly unhappy and it was probably best for all of us if they went somewhere else).

I thought I’d feel bad, but actually I feel very relieved.

It was kind of funny to contrast it with our hosting company at the time. They were also on standby all the time and helped numerous times trying to sort it out. Even when I was getting an ear bashing, our relationship with our hosting company remained friendly and helpful. I knew they were doing everything they could, they knew I was doing everything I could and we got it sorted. I could have yelled at them, they could have yelled at me, we could have sat there yelling at each other for two weeks straight, but instead we just calmly sorted the problem.

I’ve been thinking a bit about managing my online reputation. Mainly because every time I hear someone talk about how kids these days put such stupid stuff about themselves on the internet and how they are silly to think the internet wont remember it forever… I think about how much stupid stuff I have of me on the internet.

I totally agree that to a certain extent you probably have to control what people see of you, and no I wouldn’t put any of my secrets online (although I did wonder about postsecret because it would be kind of cool to anonymously tell your deepest darkest secret to the world), but I do have a Flickr account that I upload basically all my stupid pictures to without any form of security, I probably could never get a job at Vodafone now because of my online rants, and sometimes I freak out when someone starts following me on Twitter because despite the fact the whole world can view it, I still treat it as a group messenger among close friends.

I’m smart enough to know that when I’m really angry and write a massive rant on this blog, to save it and wait a day before re-reading it and deciding whether or not to publish it. But that and the fact that I don’t really link to my publically viewable accounts is about all the self-censorship I do.

Is this a bad thing?

I don’t think so. I LIKE the fact that my customers get to know me and see me as a person not just a suit (not that they could see me as one anyway because I don’t own one, but you get the point). I talked to someone last night about how his boss is terrified of people finding out how small their business is. Sometimes I wonder what people think of my business. We have a pink door hanger, we have work drinks most nights (or afternoons), we hang out beside the motorway sometimes, just watching the world go past, we’re very small and yes, we live in New Zealand. When I write it like that it feels like a major confession, but actually those are all things I’m PROUD of, it’s what makes us what we are.

If you know my opinion on something like climate change and disagree, I hope that only makes our relationship more interesting, not that you would no longer want to work with me, but seriously, if it has that effect, then it’s probably best that we DON’T work together.

If you know the combined age of our company’s employees is less than 70 and think we can’t possibly have the experience or skill that you require, then that’s kind of sad, but I think our work speaks for itself.

If you think that because you see pictures of me acting like a hooligan with my friends in the weekend, that I’m unprofessional, that’s unfortunate, but some of my best ideas happen when I’m out having a boogie and also I don’t want you to be under any illusion that this company is my life.

So I know that when I have a daughter and she behaves like me on the internet, I’ll have to fight myself to not intervene, but I totally think we go too far sometimes with trying to create online persona’s that are nothing like what we do in real life and the coolest thing about the internet is that even if we never meet, you and I could really get to know each other.

Big companies ALWAYS shock me with how useless they are. Big companies pay a fortune for someone to come up with a marketing strategy, but forget to analyse who they are before hand. This results in me seeing massive banners, tv ads and sponsorships everywhere proclaiming one thing, then interacting with the actual company and experiencing just the opposite.

Take my favorite large company Vodafone for example. If you NEVER met anyone from vodafone, you would be under the belief that Vodafone was full of hip young things who are so clever and cool that while they are out skateboarding and surfing and at dance parties, they come up with super cool ways to help you make the most of now.

When you walk into a Vodafone outlet however, you come face to face with some angry young person who clearly doesn’t give two hoots about how you make use of your time because they wont even bother to look at you for the first half an hour (I was actually wondering today if a Vodafone store would be a good place to catch up with friends - all this space to sit in and you are invisible to the people actually working there).

And aside from the girls they dress in tiny little dresses at various events (and I’m only including them because I suspect the boys love them), you could hardly call the people you come into contact with as ‘cool’. I’m fairly certain none of them have EVER been surfing and the seeming inability to hold a conversation makes me think they don’t have many friends to practice on. This may seem really rude, but my take on the Vodafone marketing speel is that it relies on being the ‘cool’ company. Therefore it actually is important to have fun, approachable people in their shops - I have nothing against uncool people, but they simply don’t belong with Vodafone - this is the image they have built.

I don’t want to be accused of using ironic in the wrong sense like our friend Alanis Morrisette, but it does strike me as ironic that Vodafone shops are so full of high-tech gadgets and information about 3G and wireless internet and clever things you can do with technology these days, while in the middle of it all two bored looking people struggle to write your problem down in one of those tiny notebooks you use to write your spelling words in at school. Once again, using glass on your table tops and minimalist branding only gets you so far in convincing your customers that you are at the cutting edge of technology. When you are faced with a problem management tool that is not only decades only and inefficient, but surpassed by basically every low-tech company around, suddenly those big modern, open spaces just look as empty as the promises Vodafone makes about who they are.

My point is. Vodafone clearly doesn’t care (what are we going to do? Switch to Telecom?) But you should. If you can’t live up to what your marketing says about you, rethink your marketing strategy.

Once you have established who you are, EVERY INTERACTION ANYONE HAS with your company should reinforce that. Want to be seen as fun? Well have fun with your customers, chat with them, discuss awesome ideas you have for what you’re helping them with. Want to be seen as professional? Make sure no one within your company is ever rude to your customers and deliver everything on time. Want to be seen as cool? Hire people who are unique, have quirky clothing and interests and the ability to chat casually with random passers by.

Vodafone has the pleasure of my rant because they do this to me time and time again, but you do see it everywhere. While words CAN convince people about what you are for a while, eventually people will see through them and you’d better either have a monopoly on your market or ensure what’s behind them holds true. Otherwise, your customers WILL leave you, and they probably wont even bother telling you why. So don’t just go to a branding company and get them to decide who you are (not that any half decent one should let you do that). Put in the ground work, think about what makes you different and never swerve off that path.

Just got back from Sydney, where I managed to be while two of the companies we work with had major launches… Take a look:

Circos.com

“Circos.com, Inc. helps consumers find the products and services that best match their lifestyle. While other search engines return thousands of web pages, Circos.com returns a targeted set of qualified brands, ranked by their performance against consumers’ personal preferences. Whether you’re a dad looking for movies both you and your kids will love, a foodie wanting restaurants the locals rave about, or a savvy traveler looking for the hippest hotel, Circos.com finds the best answer for you.”

We’ve been working very closely with Circos on re-designing their interface and branding and were VERY excited to watch them launch at Demo. I’ve just watched their video and it was awesome, these guys are really going places.

Do Some Good Now

LJ Urban is a really exciting company, we really love their focus on sustainable building and when they came to us to talk about the good project, we were immediately hooked. LJ Urban were sick of developers using billboards to advertise their projects and saw massive waste in the traditional marketing process… So they decided to integrate their latest project with their ability to change the lives of people less fortunate than them. For every house they build in the Good Project, LJ Urban are funding the training of a mason in Burkina Faso. Instead of billboards, they built a website, and for every 100,000 visitors to the site, another mason gets the training the need to build houses for their local community.

We worked with LJ Urban to design and implement the website and ‘good-o-meter’, helping them create a new and globally beneficial way of advertising new homes in America. Head there now To do you rbit of good and help LJ Urban help others.