Thursday, December 08, 2005

Sprint (no) Service - Unacceptable

One thing wealth brings is the ability to make choices. Many times growing up I was reminded that money doesn't grow on trees, and that this or that thing was "too expensive", or that "costs too much". In reality, folks around me simply had a case of "lack mentality". It wasn't until I stopped thinking in lack that abundance was a huge part of my life.

What does this have to do with contextual advertising? It doesn't. Skip this post if you'd like. Just something I have to get off my chest and maybe you need to hear.

When abundance takes over, money flows. If money doesn't flow, it stops. It's that simple. Think about if you are stopping money, or letting it flow through you - by giving and being a channel for money to flow through. When you accumulate it, it has a tendency to stop.

Lately the local phone company has been giving me fits. Now it takes a lot to do that because I'm a pretty calm person. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, our phone line went down. No dial tone. I called Sprint - which is our local phone company, and the only game in town. They gave me a date of December 5th - more than a week - and I laughed. They replied that service would be restored a lot sooner than that. It was because of Hurricane Wilma that they had their system gave those dates.

I called every day for an update. Some representatives of Sprint were kind. Some were short, and rude.

We got our service restored on December 6, a day after the projected repair.

Today, the phone line is unusable. Noise, crackling, hum. Since I know the routine fairly well, I first created a ticket on the sprint.com/local website. Then I followed up with a call from my trusty Verizon cell phone. The projected repair date? December 13. About a week from now.

What's wrong with this picture?

We had great service during and after the hurricane. Sprint claims that it is hurricane clean-up that is damaging their lines. That may be, however, Sprint management needs to dispatch help to the Naples, Florida area if crews are working one week behind schedule. Funny they should charge me a "Storm Cost Recovery Charge".

No matter how wealthy you may be, when there is only one company monopolizing a utility, you have no choices - and I believe that's unacceptable.

Thank God for cell phones.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Biased Honesty - A Look at Web Affiliates

Many of you who know me, respect my opinion. I thank you for that. It is my quest to tell it like it I see it and hopefully help you out along the way. My belief is that if I help you get what you want, I will get what I want.

My biggest gripe in the whole adventure in contextual ads has been that very few seem to know what they are talking about, and they talk about it in an incredulous way. Since the concept is a hot topic, I expected the arena to be saturated. And, that's okay. But what frustrates me more is that 98% of the so called "gurus" do nothing more than lure you into buying something to which they are an affiliate. Many times it is not even original work.

I must tread wisely here because I am about to launch my own e-book on how to work my contextual ad system.

The point is, you are expected to read through these sites with the hope that you will get enough information to form an educated decision on your potential purchase. What you get is hyperbole. Some go as far to admit it is "honest" hyperbole.

I am not knocking the affiliate system, just the way some affiliates go about presenting the information. Don't you feel the same way?

Here's what we're used to: Some large consumer reporting firm tests the product and gives us a score. We go to Costco and buy it. epinions.com is a favorite of mine. But that only works mainly for hard goods. Software without a large consumer base doesn't quite make the cut.

Is there any other way? One large testimonial seems to ask a little too much. Webmasters should gather many opinions and create a site similar to epinions.com. And then, let other webmasters write their own rating.

Sounds like a project.