What exactly is Premium about a Premium service?
A couple of days ago, I went to see one of my customers, Lloyd Morgan Design, a specialist in 3D sign making for pubs and village signs. Basically he was one of my first ever customers and we arranged a meeting to discuss a couple of issues after I received a lot of confused telephone calls regarding his website and the promotion around it.
While I was there, my customer received a call on his mobile. The young lass on the phone said she was ringing on behalf of a premium web design/promotion company that my customer had apparently signed up for and my, by now confused customer gave the phone to me so I could figure out what the Dickens she was on about.
It turns out that my customer wanted a domain name some time ago and instead of just giving my customer what he wanted, this darling company decided to design a web page for him around it (not the main link above, another website). I got the domain name and we looked it up on his computer and it was the biggest load of dross I have ever had the misfortune of clapping my eyes on. My customer had never seen this site before and even after the amount of checks I have done online for him, neither had I. The images on it were not to scale and as a result they were very poor and weren't even the right type of sign, it was just a picture of a standard pub sign, which was not very 3-dimensional and therefore nothing to do with my customer.
I must say I did very well to not tell the caller exactly what I thought of the said website, but I could only stifle a laugh when she asked us what we would like her to do with it (I think she only meant would we like it revamped). While my client tried to dig out the paperwork I made small talk with this lass and asked her where she was based. She replied "Oh our office is in Lancaster but our Head Office is in Glasgow." My thoughts went along the lines of "Oh goody, that means we are funding both your offices then."
Well my first words to my customer when she was off the phone went something like: "Bow out of the contract as soon as you can and count your losses, because if neither of us even knew this website existed then they are not a very good promotional company."
Tempting though it is to trash a competitor, I'd best not disclose who it actually is, but I think after typing my customers name into every major search engine and only coming up with his main site, it is fair to say that the only premium thing about this company is its price.
While I was there, my customer received a call on his mobile. The young lass on the phone said she was ringing on behalf of a premium web design/promotion company that my customer had apparently signed up for and my, by now confused customer gave the phone to me so I could figure out what the Dickens she was on about.
It turns out that my customer wanted a domain name some time ago and instead of just giving my customer what he wanted, this darling company decided to design a web page for him around it (not the main link above, another website). I got the domain name and we looked it up on his computer and it was the biggest load of dross I have ever had the misfortune of clapping my eyes on. My customer had never seen this site before and even after the amount of checks I have done online for him, neither had I. The images on it were not to scale and as a result they were very poor and weren't even the right type of sign, it was just a picture of a standard pub sign, which was not very 3-dimensional and therefore nothing to do with my customer.
I must say I did very well to not tell the caller exactly what I thought of the said website, but I could only stifle a laugh when she asked us what we would like her to do with it (I think she only meant would we like it revamped). While my client tried to dig out the paperwork I made small talk with this lass and asked her where she was based. She replied "Oh our office is in Lancaster but our Head Office is in Glasgow." My thoughts went along the lines of "Oh goody, that means we are funding both your offices then."
Well my first words to my customer when she was off the phone went something like: "Bow out of the contract as soon as you can and count your losses, because if neither of us even knew this website existed then they are not a very good promotional company."
Tempting though it is to trash a competitor, I'd best not disclose who it actually is, but I think after typing my customers name into every major search engine and only coming up with his main site, it is fair to say that the only premium thing about this company is its price.
Posted: 03 February 2005
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