Per your cancellation request, the following listing(s) will automatically expire from the Best of the Web Directory within the next 12 hours …

WTF - I did not cancel! and I don’t want my matured link from that 1994 domain go down!

Just when I checked it, the link WAS down… so that’s that “within” word …

I mailed back that I want to keep that listing and that I did not cancel…

hours later (euro timezone vs. US timezone) I got a mail saying, that I cancelled my paypal subscription back in April and that I can gladly signup for the new rates (which are a lot higher than last year as BOTW improves it’s authority and trust status)

Unfortunately, PayPal does not allow cancelled subscriptions to be reactivated, so I’m afraid you are going to have to visit http://botw.org/submit/ and re-submit your website at our current rates.

To avoid this from happening in the future, you may want to choose our $149.95 one-time review fee, or submit using a credit card. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

well – that was kind of a canned text in that mail and I was really setup… I felt threatened.

Just because the paypal service sucks, the BOTW service should suck as well… that kind of finger-pointed really turned me off.

PayPal once again cancelled a subscription, just because I changed the credit card info back in April… ok – does anyone by the way UNDERSTAND why paypal sucks so much in changing billing info to cancel all payment obligations in advance, before trying to rebill them ? it sucks – for me, my clients and now it sucks for BOTW

Well, after mailing them back about my disappointment something unexpected happened.

They called me back ! Yes, somebody did care. And we spoke.
And apparently the folks at BOTW weren’t aware to that extend that PayPal subcriptions get cancelled all the time when payment info changes…

I spoke to the account manager we both found ourself in a position to understand the other’s point. In fact I made some suggestions on how some days of coding for the BOTW system could improve their customer retention rate… all they need to do is handle that paypal cancel notification and mail their clients what I usually mail mine…

“hey – we got a subscription cancel – was that intentionally because you dont need the service anymore, or did you just change your billing info???”

not less than 50% of my own clients get back and say Hey – I want to keep that .. I wasn’t aware that PayPal cancels my subscription…

well… long story short, BOTW gave me a nice promo discount for re-signing up – not for one, but for FIVE sites – which was a really nice gesture… and I could use it not only on the annually subscription, but on the one-time fee- which actually pays for itself in the second year according to their new pricing model…

Expecting a bad customer service, I already prepared for a hate-post about BOTW today – but as you can see – a prompt reaction, fast clearup of positions and a nice gesture and I’m back in… with MORE business than I was before…

That’s how you should do it… right – did you read that
VOIPBuster ?

I used that number just like I use skype for calling out and getting called – and it was the “local” number here. Being printed in Businesscards, email footers, websites, etc.

What I love about having a VOIP number for business is that I can take it with me – just as I do with my email and my efax.

Then months ago that service was obviously sold from the then swiss operations company to that weird german company called “BetaMax Gmbh & Co. KG”

Then they simply disabled the VOIP number – Without notice to the subsribers. I even paid them a few days before for more credit.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

This service is now also known under tons of other different names and sites like internetcalls, voipcheap, voipstunt, freecall, sparvoip as they seem to be duplicating their product sales site under different terms and domains to spam the search engines with them (see below for a bigger, probably not full list)

Well, as you can judge from the service disabling, search engine spamming, it seems the take over wasn’t all good – so I thought let’s call them up and get them at least re-establish my number that I got on 2000+ business cards out there…

All I heard was a voice message saying that I shall call the number on the website I got the service from (which I did) and fill out their simple web form to get called back…

right – for example calling 123 I heard “please call 123…”

Well – I’m now unreachable on MY number that I paid for and I even called up the local Telco provider “Austrian Telekom” as well as a second provider Inode and both said that take over of that business number would only be possible if the company (BetaMax Gmbh) would be cooperative and agree to that take over.

Now what do you except from a company that

• disabled their subscriber lines that are in good credit without notice
• doesn’t have a human person answering the phone, especially with 1000s of customers
• tell you on their voice message that you shall call the number that you just called … are they nuts?

I tell you – this is big term SCAM - Betrug – Abzocke – plain and simple.

A friend today who also used to use VOIPBuster by BetaMax Gmbh & Co. Kg told me

Well, I don’t care about them… they suck anyway… when they disabled my line I just stopped using them…

Well – and that’s what everyone will do… or already did? Am I the last one leaving the sinking boat?

But still – I don’t get it… how much ignorance must one have to buy a company with subscribers – an established brand, an established customer base to just waste it with such a crappy service? with such an offense?

Betamax was founded in 2005 in Germany by a group of marketing experts

LOL - that’s what I call marketing experts, I would love to hire such “experts” for consulting my competitors.

—cut—-

This was another lesson in the “how to not operate a business” lessons… we can learn a lot from negative examples.. unfortunately (or is it a fortune?) there are still so many out there…

ps: if you try to research a bit about these companies and services you read about FBI investigations, increased rates (prev. free calls to USA), etc.etc.etc…. seems like a long history of bad consumer experiences and maybe even fraud…

PPS: here’s the full list

internetcalls.com
netappel.com
poivy.com
sparvoip.de
voipbuster.com
voipcheap.com
voipcheap.co.uk
voipdiscount.com
voipstunt.com
freecall.com

Just reading Peter Doyle's marketing bible something really struck me…

Few customers defect due to poor product performance. Only *14 per cent defect for this reason. Two thirds (66+ %!!!) leave because they find service people indifferent or inaccessible.

While I agree that service quality, all kinds of support channels are a MUST in today's world – especially when it comes to complex products and especially services themselves – that's a HUGE difference – products 14%, service 66%.

Hence the catchy title to spice up your service ..

Google has an ethics committee for decisions on changes to their algorithms. The committee is comprised of Google workers "who are concerned about ethics", said Dr. Eran Gabber, a software engineer with Google, at a lecture yesterday (Monday) at the Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Gabber said: "We change Pagerank when we find that spammers are abusing it, but we don't change it often. There's an internal ethics committee in Google. Internally, there are people who are concerned about ethics. In Google, there are a lot of people who find ethics important".

via Google Ethics Committee at the BlogSpace