On Wed, 20 Jun 2001 14:49:30 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Dear Mr. Dickson, et alia ...
>
>This is a difficult e-mail to send, not because of what I intend to
>say,
>but because your websites can make it horridly difficult to access
>anything.
>
>First, I appreciate the fact that Digital River apparently bought
>rights
>to Simtel Net in order to keep it alive; for some reason I'd always
>thought that since mirrors were generally educational institutions,
>the
>public service of Simtel Net would never become an endangered
>species.
>
>However, this message is to advise you that the way Simtel Net is
>currently being handled it may soon cease to be viable. Simtel Net
>was
>always a place where one went to find software that wasn't available
>anywhere else, or at least nowhere else it could be easily found.
>But
>lately Simtel Net is the place one goes to be utterly frustrated.
>
>So much of what made Simtel Net so valuable -- the ability to do the
>initial search off-line, the ease of download with choice of home or
>mirror sites, the e-mail updates automatically generated when
>software
>authors uploaded new or updated software, to name just a few -- have
>flat out disappeared. And "service" has been, apparently, thrown
out
>the window in favor of ad revenues. Courtesy and clarity of goal
has
>certainly gone by the board, at least in some areas of your
>enterprise.
>
>Before I started this message, I wanted to find out if the *cause*
of
>this message was actually affiliated with Simtel Net and/or Digital
>River; a search of the Simtel Net site produced nothing, and just
>accessing the Digital River site required I be able to read HTML and
>parse the correct HREF in the correct manner to even access the DR
>site.
>[I wonder how many potential customers are lost because of that
>flawed
>web design?] Searching everywhere, I failed to find David
Kirschbaum
>listed by name anywhere ... so if he does not work for Digital River
>or
>Simtel Net, I suggest that you track down how he managed to
intercept
>e-mail and respond to it in the rather crude manner relfected in the
>e-mail exerpt which follows this main message.
>
>If he does work for you, I suggest that the stance he is promoting
is
>far from beneficial for Digital River. As a former CPA, I know that
>"Goodwill" is considered a valid asset, something that is often sold
>at
>a defined value along with selling the company itself. I also know
>that
>certain types of activities [supporting a PBS auction, for example]
>can
>provide positive advertisement for a company at costs far below what
>would be paid for equal exposure via purchased advertising time.
For
>reasons such as that, certain companies have always made a point of
>providing "free services" of a sort to "non-customers." It was just
>plain considered good business.
>
>Rudeness and whining, however, have never been considered good
>business.
>If David Kirschbaum is one of your webmasters, as I suspect, his
>message
>and his website design are very poor recommendations for Digital
>River
>and its web hosting business. Who would *really* want a website
that
>excludes ANY potential customer? Who would *really* want a website
>that
>is so complex and so muddled with javascript fragments, that the *
>owner*
>of the website had not way in hades to do upgrades or even the
>simplest
>changes on his/her own, and it cost $$$$ each time the smallest
>change
>was made?
>
>There used to be a prime rule in business and customer relations:
>KISS
>
>It may well be worth considering reimplimenting that approach.
>
>While you're considering that, why not read what "your people" are
>saying to people like me?
>
>Sincerely,
>
>l.d.
>L.D. Best
>
>P.S. If your websites were USABLE, we'd be glad to visit them and
>use
>them to scan and access files available for download. However, your
>webmaster has made those pages and that downloading impossible for
>many
>MANY browsers.
>
>------------ Read it and Reconsider ----------------------
>
>Re: simtel access, David Kirschbaum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> We are totally disinterested in your inability to reach ftp sites.
>>
>> We make it very clear that we expect all visits, all downloads, to
>>be
>> through our web page. How else do you expect us to stay alive
>>here?
>> Only page visits pay our salaries, the updating of equipment, the
>>very
>> Internet access itself!
>>
>> We stopped publishing the file catalogs, the .IDX files, because
>> thieves and "link archives" were stealing them, using them to
build
>> their own "archive site", getting all the visits, using OUR sites
>> for the downloads, letting us do all the work.
>>
>> We could not survive that way. So .. no more .IDX files.
>>
>> Is it so much to ask that you visit our web page for your
>>downloads?
>> That's where you'll get the latest descriptions, the download
>>counts.
>>
>> If you do NOT visit us .. well, we just won't be here any more.
>>Then
>> what will you do?
>------------------------Sad, so sad, the
attitude--------------------
>--
>
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><A HREF=" http://www.b-for.org "> B'FOR web site</A>
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> *******
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Way to go! LD. and if there's KISSes on the go, where do we all stand
in line!
I agree it seems shocking that any employee should reply in such a
cavalier fashion to a request or complaint. I would hope he gets his
knuckles rapped!
Reagrds
mel
--from Mel Evans, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Webmaster Services to Scotts Caravans of Mayfield Dalkeith
Commercial sites located and serviced at http://www.webtheon.freeserve.co.uk
