Wagnerblog

Almost a month a ago I wrote a post describing the difficulties surrounding my purchase of CodeRush.At that  time I certainly didn’t think there would be a sequel. But here we are, less than a month later and I came across an even worse case of e-commerce blunder. It gets a little boring to point out other company’s short comings (unless they are competitors of course), but this case is such a ridiculous and aggregious example that I just had to. 

My company needs to implement user forums for a given product. Forum software is a lot like bug tracking software – there are many different implementations on the market using a variety of platforms, open sourced as well as commercial ones. In our case it had to be .NET / SQL Server based and support a number of languages for localized implementations. In addition, as much as I may want to try an open source product, I have to have something that is guaranteed and has the backing of a specific responsible party for support. Mainly because I have a contract riding on this. By the way, that’s one characteristic that makes it tough for open-source products to take a greater piece of market share, but that is an entire separate post for another time.

I decided to purchase InstantForum. A product that has been on the market a number of years and has all the localization packs I needed.

A week after making the decision to go ahead and get InstantForum my Purchasing Manager called : “ Thomas , you won’t believe this. I have been trying to send this company a P.O and nobody has responded. I tried to call but they don’t list a phone number ! And the only way to contact them is through their web site contact submittal form. No additional emails – nothing! “

I was completely flabbergasted. How many people do you know that would love to get a call from a company like mine? We all know people in the industry who want to grow a MicroISV and build their dream.   Eric Sink, CEO of Sourcegear Inc., I believe coined the term on his blog. And the growth of his company is a testament to what can be done as a small software vendor. His company was even listed among the Inc. Top 500 for revenue growth from roughly 300k to over 3M per year. Thats doing it right!  I have been considering doing business with Eric precisely for that reason – he knows how to run a company.

But back to the delimma of the hapless ecommerce vendor that I can’t get in touch with.

After my initial shock wore off, I double-checked InstantASP’s web site.Sure enough – no direct way to contact them. Absolutely ridiculous! To make matters worse, the company did not respond to one single inquiry we sent (and we sent about 6 of them).

Let me recap just so this insanity sinks in – we have a motivated buyer (me) who wants to purchase an Enterprise License of a product that by all accounts is fairly well respected and rated. The company professes to be an eBusiness working on the Internet. But it doesn’t respond  to any effort made by the customer (me) to contact them. So …. short of flying 10,000 miles to 11 The Crescent Bucklow Hill Knutsford Cheshire WA16 6RQ United Kingdom, knocking on their door and handing them the PO, I am in limbo. That is NOT how you do business on the Internet.

Maybe I should create a running installment of this blog. “ Technology companies on the Internet who don’t want to earn any revenue by making it impossible for their customers to do business with them. “

Come to think of it, if you have any similar stories to tell, please chime in. A “How not to” list can be as valuable as a “How to “ list. Inversely if you have had a great experience with a tools vendor please mention it as well.