Published in News, Rants and Ephemera on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007
I'm sure I'm not alone at having had this type of experience, so forgive me for this little rant about what could be politely called "please use common sense if you do business on the web".
Dear Company-from-another-country-that-was-happy-to-take-my-money -but-too-shortsighted-to-have-an-international-support-number,
While I think it's great that you have a toll free support number for your country, I think it pretty much sucks that you don't have one for international users of your service, which of course there are because you have no trouble taking international credit cards and providing your services.
Your support e-mail form is a neat idea, but the last time I used it I waited two months for a reply. This time it's four days on and I'm still waiting...
It seems like simple business common sense to provide an international support number, I don't even mind paying for the call. I just want my account unfrozen so that I can update my credit card details, renew some domains (i.e. pay you money) and get back to work.
It's not that hard to do the basic things well. Or is it? I suppose that it's the somewhat jaded reality that there are so many people online, companies can get away with missing some of the basic details and prosper in spite of themselves.
Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:
I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.
The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.
Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..
Comments and Feedback
I had very similar problems with some companies where I bought some domains.. The problems was a little different however :)
They had phone number in over 20 countries but after I called each of them I realised that none of this worked... And they were replying every 2 weeks after I was sending them an email... So imagine the frustration.. I do not think it is important who did that but if you want to know I can tell you the company name... I think it was my mistake however since I did not make any research on this company before dealing with them...