How to Alienate Buyers, Hurt Your Reputation, and Lose Money in Order to Avoid Upgrading Archaic Technology. (Don't Do This.)
Jan. 28, 2008
In the world of digits, the "default setting" is convenient for programmers. A case in point. . . .
Tonight, I ordered a package of direct-mail training materials. It looked like a good package. I paid $127.
As soon as the site had my credit card, it began to display poor programming. I was told I could not download the material until I inserted a special code. The code, the screen said, would be sent in an email.
It wasn't. No email. The autoresponder was dead.
I send an email to the site's manager. But the email address was goofy: two strung together.
I waited. Nothing.
Then I sent an email to a friend, who had been interviewed as part of the package. I told him to warn his buddy: dead autoresponder, angry customer.
I got a letter back from the seller in an hour. Personal. It had the code in it.
I pasted in the code and clicked. I was taken to a web page, where I was informed that all the files were zipped. I had to download Winzip. Winzip use to be shareware. These days, you have to pay for it.
In 8 years -- or is it 10? -- I have never learned how to use Winzip.
So, I have to spend more money to read his materials. So, he cheated me. His sales copy never mentioned Winzip. If it had, I would not have bought the package.
I have had this happen before: a surprise "gotcha!" involving Winzip. This was a stupid policy back in 1997, because it made the seller dependent on unreliable, confusing, third-party software. But in our day of cable modems and DSL, and bandwidth so cheap that sites people post movies, the policy is beyond mere stupidity. It is archaic.
If a site zips a file, it had better have automatic unzipping software that opens the file for the buyer. The buyer should never be told after a sale that he is responsible for the unzipping procedure. It's his money. It's therefore the seller's responsibility to provide the automatic extraction and installation software.
It would be like a new car salesman delivering the car without tires installed. He points to a stack of four tires. "You put them on. That's your job," he tells the buyer. "And you have to pay for the special tool to put them on the car."
You know what this tells me? A guy selling a package on how to sell doesn't know the basics of marketing. He has not learned the basic principle: Keep the buyer happy by making things easy for him. This guy thinks his #1 job is to make life easy for his Website's designer.
This seller lost a sale. He also lost any promotion I planned to do if the package was high quality.
Why are sellers so blind? Because they listen to programmers. The programmers tell them, "This is efficient." It's efficient from the programmer's point of view, but not from the buyer's point of view. But programmers are not interested in buyers' views. They don't work on commission. Why should they care?
I have asked the guy for a refund. I will not read his material. I don't trust his judgment as a seller. I surely will not trust his judgment as a teacher of marketing.
Lesson: satisfy the buyer, not your programmer. Keep buyers happy. Whether a programmer is unhappy is irrelevant. Programmers can be replaced. Unhappy customers are lost forever.
P.S. I sent him this article. He replied, "I'm sorry you feel this way." No he isn't. If he were, he would have said, "You're right. I blew it. I will have my programmer fix the site ASAP."
He did say I can get a refund. Yet what I really wanted was the material.