I’ve complained a bit about my personal experience with Clear Wimax in terms of signal, salespeople, and customer service, but have to admit they really came through for us this past weekend at our training event.

Jodey Smith, a long-time personal friend, was there to assist event attendees with technical problems or if our pace was a little challenging, but after internet issues from the venue (that’s another post in itself!), Jodey brought in several Clear WiMAX modems, a Clear Spot, and a few wireless routers. We were easily able to get every conference attendee online without problem. I promised to pimp his service if it went well, and sure enough, here i am…

Jodey Smith
design@gopublicdesign.com
404-538-2637

Thanks Jodey!

I’ve been a user of mobile internet for years, starting back in the days where my cell phone acted as a 14.4kbps modem. For a couple years, i’ve used a sprint card and have been fairly happy with service.

I’ve heard about the clear/clearwire technology for a couple years, how great it would be, etc. And a few months ago, on the recommendation of a friend (who just happened to be a reseller with clear wimax), i signed up for clear service. I set out to find faster download speed. After all, who couldn’t use 10mbps download speed, right? The wimax is technically 4g technology (4g simply means 4th generation — it’s no reflection on speed improvements from 3g. More in this nerdy yet somehow cool video explanation from craig matthias). Product showed up at my door the next day and i couldn’t wait to get started. Dreams of streaming video from the highway, or conference calling beside the pool, like the tv commercials tell us.

Fyi, clear is using atlanta as one of its flagship cities. Signal coverage everywhere in atlanta. In fact, they back that up with media coverage everywhere in atlanta, and salespeople coverage everywhere in atlanta. I live in atlanta. And not like the outskirts, like people in alpharetta say they live in atlanta. I live in midtown. I travel atlanta extensively.

Long story short… i have the clear home modem, which sits stationary. Signal meter says it’s good, but more often than not, page loads take longer than when i’m on my sprint card. If they load at all. I have the clear mobile modem. But sitting in a client’s office in the middle of buckhead (again, very much atlanta), i get zero bars. And when clear gets zero bars, guess how internet performs? It doesn’t.

Quick synopsis: clear 4g service runs on sprint towers. Where sprint offers 4g service, clear offers 4g service. Where sprint offers only 3g service, clear offers jack.

If they had told me that up front, i never would have bought. I tried to cancel service and return equipment within 14 days of signing up, only to have customer service show me the fine print that voided any chance of cancellation after 7 days. Marketing brilliance: misrepresent your product, lock people into a contract, and charge astronomical fees to get out of it.

So here’s my recommendation: use sprint. Sprint offers the 4g technology. Heck, sprint built the towers. They’re just letting clear leech. Get the Sprint 3g/4g card. This card downgrades where 4g signal is not available.

My hope is to spread the warning to souls in search of faster download speeds. Stick with the proven product on this one. And for the love of pete, read fine print.

Every few thousand miles or so, I find myself in a grimy, hole-in-the-wall waiting room, while those more mechanically inclined than I change fluids under the hood of ye olde family jeep. It’s not an arduous process, but a bit of an interruption in a fast-paced life. I stand still and watch a talk show on the tv in the lobby, careful not to brush against a wall or counter — oil stains have ruined many a pair of pants.

Today was different.

I remembered seeing a lube shop on ponce. It was a texaco, so I figured it must be reputable. I lined up the jeep in front of an open bay and was met at my door by a smiling technician. Pricing was posted just over her shoulder, and she explained their maintenance packages to me. After I had made my selection, she mentioned a man by name, and told me that he “had the door for me”. As if I were walking into the ritz. Odd, I thought, but I walked toward a smiling gentleman who, indeed, was holding open the door to the waiting area. Nice touch.

The waiting area was clean. Not immaculate — I wouldn’t have performed surgery in there, or eaten off the floor, but care had obviously been taken to provide a clean and comfortable environment. I sat in a chair and watched the last few minutes of a recently released dvd.

I hadn’t been seated long — it certainly couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes — when a service tech came and sat beside me, clipboard in hand. I wondered what he’d tell me they found, that needed to be replaced. Classic upsell. It didn’t happen. He deftly explained the service performed on my vehicle. The oil. Belts checked. Tire pressure corrected. He made me aware of services that would be due soon. And he directed me to the counter.

The cashier logged me into the system, got my contact information, and informed me that they would keep a record of every service they perform on my vehicle, as a courtesy to me. Nice. In case I lose the envelope in my glove compartment stuffed with every piece of paper a mechanic has ever handed me since I bought the vehicle. She then told me that JJ had the door for me. I turned and, sure enough, the service tech was holding the front door open, my jeep five feet from the door, with my driver’s door open. He wished me well, and I went on my way, but was enamored with the level of service I had just been provided.

From my first encounter until I was buckled in again, I never questioned my next step. Never wondered what was taking so long. I’ve paid other people to maintain my vehicles since I could drive. This was by far the most unique vehicle service experience i’ve had. The crew operated in such a coordinated effort to make my experience a positive one, and performed, a little like my Jeep, pardon the pun, like a well-oiled machine.

Great job to the crew at Texaco xPress Lube, 566 Ponce de leon in Atlanta. I’ll see you in another few thousand miles, and i’m actually looking forward to it.

Wow, ok, so I submitted a trouble ticket at a web hosting company called Deru, and got a nasty email back from support. I don’t know who pee’ed in Darin Wayrynen’s corn flakes, but I felt like sharing. At least he wished me a Happy Holiday…

Darin@deru.net wrote:
Hi Rob,

Yes, we are reading the emails, but frankly every aspect of working
with you is such a pain that I don’t feel like coddling you any more!

How you can represent yourself as a professional web master, yet complain about every aspect of a vendor of yours is beyond me.  If it’s not the backup, it’s the billing, if it’s not the billing, it’s the domains renewals, if it’s not the renewals, it’s the price of the renewals.

In this case, a simple – hey, I followed the process below but did not
receive an email in a timely manner would suffice – but instead you
write days later (it has been 10 days) and insinuate how critical of a
nature the backup is sort of silly.  The process is automated and you
should be well aware that it doesn’t take 10 days to backup an
account.  If it was critical this could have been addressed the same
day.

So, yes, we all read your email, and you are getting the same sort of
short shrift from me that you have been giving my team.  You won’t get it from my team, but frankly I’m tired of my company being your
doormat.

Happy Holidays!

Darin

rob@yourdesignonline.com wrote:
Is anyone actually reading these support tickets before responding? I had already submitted my email address but never received the email. Knowing when the backup is complete is crucial so that we do not miss any emails in the transfer.

Rob Riggs
yourdesignonline
www.yourdesignonline.com

On Dec 21, 2009, at 3:03 PM, darin@deru.net wrote:

Hi Rob,

Please follow the instructions in the response below – you can make your own backup at any time by following those instructions.

Darin

rob@yourdesignonline.com wrote:

Hello, I never received an email that advised that the account was backed up. Can someone let me know what is going on? I need to finish this.

Rob Riggs
yourdesignonline
www.yourdesignonline.com

Reghu Raj wrote:

Hello Rob,

Please follow the steps given below to take a full backup of your account.
1. Login to your cPanel interface (Use your cPanel login details)
2. Click on the ‘backups’ icon.
3. Click on ‘Generate/Download full Backup’ link.
4 Provide your email address in the ‘Email Address’ field leaving the Backup destination as ‘Home Directory’. (Leave all the other fields blank)

You will receive an email when the backup process is completed.

The new backup created will be listed in the same page where you initiated the backup process. You can click on the file name received in your mail and the backup file will be downloaded.

Let us know if you need any further assistance.

*******
Regards,
Reghu Raj
Deru Communications

Mantra of this post: it’s important to pay attention to things in our daily lives. They teach us things about our business.

Ok, so I was up late over the weekend working on one of those internal projects that never seems to get done during the work week. I turned on the television for some background noise. My home office is an offshoot from the living room, and I can see about 60% of the screen (hence the pic) — it eases the pressure of working in complete silence, and I get to keep abreast on the latest rerun of scrubs.

Back on track: this infomercial came on, with a goofy-looking kid, anthony morrison, who promised riches beyond measure by using his system, hidden millionaires. All right, I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking the same thing. Because these things are all the same, right? The one thing that got me was anthony’s use of the phrase “affiliate marketing”. As you may know, affiliate marketing accounts for a small stream of our revenue, so I instantly tuned in (still working, but a greater percentage of my attention dedicated to the tv).

The basic tenet of affiliate marketing — I push someone else’s product, they pay me cash for the lead or the sale. To draw our current affiliate income, we currently use our seo/sem skills to place ads, plus send messages to opted-in subscribers via online outbox, our email marketing platform, to get the message out. Got it? Moving on…

It seemed odd to me that someone in an infomercial like this would let the cat out of the bag before the general public got to the event they were pushing. Some meeting in the basement of some dingy hotel conference room, with music pumping and big lcd screens on the walls: that’s where they finally unveil their magic potion, or secret formula. So, honesty? That intrigued me.

So i’m not making $200k+ every month from affiliate marketing like this kid is, right? So I register for his event in my area for the next day, out of curiosity.

Disclaimer: I didn’t sign up for the millionaire program. In fact, I left early, in the middle of the guy’s presentation. It was a 90 minute presentation, it was worth about 30 minutes, and I stayed 15 minutes too long, debating on whether it was rude to get up and leave while the guy was talking.

Anyway, I knew that I wasn’t signing up for anything, but I attended to conclude why I wasn’t signing up for anything. I owed that to myself. So here’s my conclusion:

1) within the first 5 minutes, they introduce the company that they’re affiliate marketing for: it’s a credit card company. I have nothing against credit cards, the issuers, or their customers. I have credit cards. But not everyone who has a credit card should have a credit card. And I have a moral issue with the way credit cards are marketed, especially to those already steeped in debt, without much hope of getting out. A $1,000 visa card is not the solution to their debt.

2) the program is like $4,800. They offer convenient financing options. First, that’s a lot of money to pay in order to start working for someone. The affiliate marketing programs that our team participates in have been established by relationships. We haven’t paid a penny to become an affiliate with anyone.

Second, the presenter spoke for forty-five minutes straight, speaking in very simple technical terms, explaining the basic tenets of search engine marketing, promising that anthony himself would come later in the evening and give us the very phrases that we should use in our campaigns. This sounds like a lesson in search engine optimization. A very expensive lession in search engine optimization. Other than the web site that they give you included in that $4,800 package, I saw nothing proprietary in what they offer.

I googled the company and in a post, saw someone’s opinion that said something like, “if it really worked, they wouldn’t charge you until after it worked.” that’s a little lame. If i’m the late sam walton (or I guess, sam walton’s kid), and I sell someone a can of slim-fast, I don’t let them pay after they’ve lost 40 lbs. I sell them a product. What they do with it is up to them. However, I didn’t see $4,800 worth of product in the package.

3) a little investigating showed some suspicious aspects of the company’s existence, such as no articles of incorporation, no contact information on the public services web site other than to register for an event. You know, the basics. And support, no matter what you’re selling, is crucial.

So what does that teach me about business? First, sometimes it’s worth investigating something just to know for sure why it isn’t a solution. Second, allocate enough time to investigate, but once you know enough to make an informed decision, make that decision and move forward. Third, google, google, google.

All that to say, in this rambling post, that we’ve got a good thing going here. At a $4,800 discount. Thanks for reading…