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Guest post by: Dr Don Yates Sr PhD Become an Author

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Help, My House is On Fire!

Help My House is On Fire! What if you were to call for help came during a break, the weekend or even after hours? Nonsense, you say! Why, because you have certain expectation of what is needed to take care of the emergency! I have been burned out of a house, even though the fire department was there on the scene in minutes. We pay taxes or our landlord does in return for which we expect certain services such as fire and police protection round the clock, or 24/7.

Our Telco’s will try to push us to a workday schedule, but if you are a heavy internet user such as I am in both Forex and other online businesses then I usually get service when needed, and not have to wait for the next working day. While we don’t expect a plumber to be on call for routine service, but if a pipe bursts, then we expect emergency service.

So we have come to expect and pay for certain services to be available to us 24/7! And reasonable hours for other services.

In another offline life, I was a business mentor and adviser for IT companies trying to move product from Malaysia to the UK and USA. One of our prime requirements was to show and plan for after sales service. After-Sales Service, by definition refers to “Periodic or as-required maintenance or repair of equipment by its manufacturer or supplier, during and after a warranty period”. Few of these start-up or growing companies were ready or budgeted for such an expense. Regardless of whether we were providing hardware, specialized software, or service we had to factor the cost of such into the product or service price or offered by separate agreement. Don’t you hate it when you have driven down-town, managed to find a parking spot, then walked to the ATM and find “Sorry, this machine is temporarily out of service.

Our offline business owners expect much of the same service as we expect at our house, fire, police and other protection. Depending on the type of business, we don’t except the Telco’s to service us when we are closed. However, the Forex market is open 24 hours a day from 5pm EST on Sunday until 4pm EST Friday; during which we can expect support services. If I am trading and have a problem with either the brokerage account or my telephone line I expect service – why because my trades are running and I need access to protect my investment.

Many of you reading this article range from the total newbie starting business online to online professionals that live off the internet, or at least the reach that it offers you and your product. Your needs for your home or outside office certainly include the fire, police and Telco’s’, but add to these your computers and equipment, internet service provider, hosting service for your website(s), software providers, payment gateways, brokers and your networks. All of which are necessary for your business, so with any service interruptions or other problems, you are temporarily out-of-business at least for your internet business.

Those of you that have come to know me also know that my Internet Scams Anonymous Groups provide our membership with a working definition of online scams and fraud. We lead off of our definition with the following introduction: “The Internet Scams Anonymous (ISA) Groups expect online businesses to do business as a business. However, we have to except that not all online businesses were founded by business minded professionals. If they are not accessible or their support systems are lacking; then they are not doing business, and are either poor businessmen or are just scamming us”

Few of us as individuals; unless, perhaps if our name is Carlos, Bill or Warren, can command that our service provider and vendor provider us service as and when we need it, never mind 24/7. Online, we have come to realize that support and after sales-support seem to carry a different online meaning than offline, even for the same services

Some concerns and examples are in order:

Many of our vendors, service providers and programs recognize that the internet is a global community, made up of users from all over the world. Someone is online 24/7. These companies benefit from that sales side of the ledger, 24/7, but few are available to support those sales, when needed

Some of the bigger players do offer online chats to take care of your immediate needs – great, but for most - only if you are in their time zone. Otherwise this feature is not available, except during their office business hours. To make it worse, you need to load a world clock to figure out what time it is. Better still, some do not even tell you what time zone they are located, i.e. UK, USA or Malta. For most online business, we can forget about 24/7 support. In other cases, claimed support has been found to be non-existent.

Why, if they are making as much money as indicated, don’t they provide 1-800 or equivalent?

Example 1: You join a new program to make money, No Google history. You are given a 7 day trial for modest cost, after which, your cost explodes to their monthly cost. No Fear! They provide readily available online support. If you don’t find the program acceptable during your 7 day trial, not problem - They also offer no-questions asked 45 day money back guarantee – How Can You Lose?

• You sign up and make payment through the program owner’s payment gateway to activate the 7 day trial period

• Note you did not pay through PayPal or AlertPay –now Payza.

• These gateways provide some recourse and refund for non-delivery and/or other issues with the vendor

• While most cards are accepted internationally, card policies may vary from country to country

• You attempt to load your site, enter your personal data and start your 7 day trial, but the site does not work and will not load

• If PayPal or AlertPay, immediate notice normally will give immediate refund, but we used the program owner’s credit card facility

• A search for the program support system and you get a 200 series number and a recording. The office is closed; leave your name, number and problem and we will get right back to you.

• Several long distance messages left, but not response

• Search for alternative point of contact such as whois. Email the owner’s wife, with no reply

• You find a Forum for the program, but cannot leave a post because you cannot log-in until you are a member ….

• Your 7 day trial runs out and you are still trying to gain access to your site and the monthly payment clock has started.

• You receive your monthly credit card statement, and the charge is shown again the affiliate name and not the program

• You contact your credit card company only to find that the policy for a refund (in your country) is left to you and the vendor to resolve – they cannot only help once the document trail has been made and is available

• In the absence of communications from both sides, your only solution – cancel the credit card to stop the monthly payments

• Lost a couple month of payments, 7 day trial, time and so-called lost benefit of joining the program in the first place

• Check Goggle, if no history, do a whois search – if results to private, pass

• Copy and print out all pages of the program

• Get a receipt

• Read the FAQ’s

• Check your credit care policy in the event of a problem

• Guarantees – Great, but are useless if you cannot contact someone to get your refund

Example 2: You buy a program from a major online guru, but it has a problem. You must submit your support request through his outsourced support ticket vendor

• You register and wait for confirmation which does not come so you cannot submit your support request

• The outsourced ticket system vendor had a different name than your guru or his program so if the confirmation comes, you already forgot which program it belongs to or when the ticket is responded to, you forgot which support agency and your ticket number

• Copy and prepare your paper trail; all pages of the program, receipt and such

• Retain Ticket numbers and bookmark all Support links to the program

Example 3: A three week resolution. A major software vendor will usually have you create an account, record your purchases, etc. In this case, it was originally a USA registered account. Relocating to another country through cookies, name, email address or whatever, the USA account will show up, but cannot be used in the country you are now located

• A software upgrade with one vendor often necessitates an upgrade of another vendor’s software for a proper whatever; let us call it a conversion from Word document to a PDF file

• These problems always seem to catch you on a weekend, during non-business hours

• You attempt to set-up a new local account, but again, something in your new account tie-backs to the USA account, prevents your activation of the new account

• Emails unanswered and other runarounds, until finally a phone contact is made. Recommendation, set up a new account, but already did that

• Set up another new account with a new email address or name – why? Looks like that is the only way our system can help you!

• Tried another new account with a yahoo address, but it didn’t work because it found my name already in their system

• Final solution, give up and set up a new account under the wife’s name which worked

• Even a new account in the wifes name, might not have worked, if they were also tracking your IP address or credit card data

Example 4: A major social business network, in business since 2004 brags on their best business networking site, best customer care and such. In fact, they do a great job of stroking and reinforcing each other’s back about how great they each are and how great the system is.

• An attempt was made to reach customer service to ask a question, but the system responded with a post “CUSTOMER SERVICE IS CURRENTLY CLOSED. PLEASE COME BACK WITH YOUR QUESTION MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY AT OUR BUSINESS HOURS 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME, USA.

• At least they provided a time zone – where is my World Clock when I need it

• They also offer a quick solution to change your password, edit your credit card account or to cancel your account

• When they are finally reached and asked why they do not accept after hour emails like other support systems (we are closed but will get back to your later), they respond like it is a stupid question that no one can support such an email load

• I guess when you think you are the best; then you stop thinking and finding out what others are doing to support their members!

These and other examples of mine or yours help point out the infancy of our internet where globalization is the buzzword, but support is localized – and as shown – even non-existent.

Protect yourself, kept copies of all transactions, record your passwords, ticket numbers, and bookmark your URL’s. Check your credit card account policy with regard to refunds.

While we have come to expect certain standards of support service offline such as fire, police, etc. for our home and office, we have a long way to go, if ever, before we have standards of support from online vendors and services to protect our online business.

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Referred by: http://kooiii.com

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