What Do You Do With Dial Up Customers Who Can't Download Your Product?

It must be a nightmare for those still on dial-up connection.

Assuming that they can actually watch the videos without constant freezing, why not host the videos on a password protected area of your site?

Hi Stephen,
I use Kunaki -- CD/DVD manufacturing and publishing service (Not an affliate link)
They will make you unlimited CDs and DVDs for $1.75
You make the price larger than the $1.75 and they send you the difference and ship the CD to your Customer as If you sent it.

Or you can order a bunch for stock and ship them yourself.

Works great for me.
Hope this helps
Carey

I used to only have dial up -
There are many products that I didn't purchase for that very reason.

I think that it IS helpful when ads contain the size of the files that you are downloading.

The dial up folks will consider if they want to tie up their phone line for 18 hours to watch a 4 hour video.

Note: This Content is HUGE, over 600 megs of audio and video !

Also using FTP instead of http, helps

Being in a rural area, you're used to people not considering web page sizes or large downloads.

Web 2.0 doesn't work everywhere, its just a part of life.

Mark

Yes, I agree. Try add the videos to a CD and mail it to the customer. It's a cheap, quick way of getting the problem sorted.

You offer to ship them the files or the option of obtaining a refund.

You have the obligation of delivery no matter what.

As others have said I would put the files on a cd/dvd and send them off to the customer. You can make a bit more money this way too being that there is an actual product they are receiving from you.

Offering transcripts should be the easiest.

If they're camtasia type videos, why not offer powerpoint files? Maybe along with lower-quality mp3s?

There are even services that will transcribe your vids for you.

As was suggested previously, too, offering CD upsells is a great option.

Joe

If you are just trying to deal with this on an individual basis... meaning resolve one delivery case...

Offer to ship it or provide them a refund.

Also you should pay the shipping.

This is not a financial question because...

1. You have a legal obligation to deliver the product
2. The individual has the option of filing a chargeback and they will win on non delivery which generally will cost you an extra $15-$30 in chargeback fees depending on your merchant provider's policy.
3. If you were to just say "what is your mailing address" and burn them a quick copy to cd or dvd and drop it in the mail covering the expense of doing so your self you just might earn the respect and adulation of your client. This in turn may make them a life long customer earning you thousands of dollars over time as well as earning you word of mouth referrals from them etc.

---

If you are looking for the most cost effective way to add the option of automated physical delivery for all cases of customers on slow connections...

There are a bunch of online on demand print and fulfillment services and I specifically integrated two into Nanacast.com to provide our publishers a way to print and fulfill cd, dvd, and print book/binder products to their clients on demand even when you are asleep :-)

Shipping a DVD in Priority Mail Flat-Rate Envelope (envelopes are free) with Delivery Confirmation is $4.75 (link). That is cheap and well worth the added security of a tracking number and confirmed delivery (for Chargeback reasons).

And you can do everything online. Print, pack and leave with a driver. They might even pick it up.

I put a note on my site telling them not to buy if they have dialup.

Since they are videos they are always too big.

I think it is rare.

I just went through this. I am the one on dial up. I bought the product knowing there were videos, but as long as I had the ebook I would be satisfied. But, when I read the book and found out there were some other tools, such as Skype, which I can not use. I was still refused a refund because I had to show proof that I put forth a good effort using the product, which is understandable.

How can I show proof when I can not use the resources or tools that are called for in the product? I feel as though I should be refunded, but the owner of the product feels like I shouldn't be because of his guarantee policy.

It should be mentioned in the offer, if you do not have high speed, do not buy, there maybe some tools you can not use to make this work for you. I just happen to live in an area that does not offer it yet. So why should I not be refunded? I can not do any thing with the product.

tell them to use "free download mnager" Free Download Manager - absolutely free download accelerator and manager



.

Couldn't you just use winrar (actually you can make split zips too) to make a split archive of much smaller files, they may not be able to download it all at one time, but they could download multiple pieces of the archive over several days and then extract it to get the complete file.

I like the earlier suggestion.. Tell us upfront if it's a video product or a huge file so we will know that we can't partake of the offer.

Sure saves a lot of time!

Pete

Honestly, I would recommend them "Internet Download Manager".

I remember when I was in India 1996-1997. . was on Dialup and had just bought a great Nokia Phone (I am a big time Nokia Fan, since the first day I used a cell phone). ... I had to download the Nokia PC Suite and it took me 3 hours to download 40% and then, the connection died and I had to restart all over again. This is when I discovered IDM and it allows you:

1. to download multiple threads of the same product.
2. to restart download from the point where the connection broke.

IDM has a free version, just let people know if you are having problems downloading the product, download this tool and it will take care of it for you.

I am not going to call out the product or persons name. If and when I get high speed I will be able to use the product.

I would definitely look at Kunaki in this instance Steve

peace

Jay

OK, here's an option that I'm surprised nobody has brought up and discussed yet...

Why not use WinRar to split up your single file into multiple files that people on dialup can download individually without getting disconnected...

Am I missing something or wouldn't this work just fine, compared to burning your file on cd and shipping it to your clients... which costs money, why not do it for free and just split your file up into easy to manage/download files... using WinRar... or other zip/compression utilites of the like...

- Jared

Once upon i time long time ago i had dial up, to download larger files i used the download manger you get with fire fox. You can download larger files bit by bit.

Yes it takes a while but apart from sending them on cd or breaking them down to smaller file/video clips just for dial up. There's nothing as a seller we can do more apart from a refund.

I purchase a lot of videos on various software, animation and programming training. Most of the places I purchase from break up the downloads into smaller segments. archive_part_1.zip, archive_part_2.zip etc etc

Many also provide a physical DVD for an additional fee but you choose which delivery method when you make the purchase.

Really if you make it clear to people how they will be receiving the content and the options up front BEFORE purchase you really wont see many if any complaints. People will be able to make the decision to purchase in advance based on the type of delivery method you have available.

One of the things that the physical delivery method merchants choose to do is use a one stop fullfillment center that takes the orders and deals with the delivery then pays you after all is said and done. Others handle it themselves.

Another issue with this is having the widest possible payment methods for people to choose from. Paypal, 2Checkout are two of the common I see being used with the merchants I purchase from.

Make as many options for people to choose from as possible and don't put all the content in one 1TB sized download file. Break it up into smaller parts.

Though the biggest thing I want to comment here is that you be 100% up front and make it clear exactly how the content is going to be delivered and put the file sizes or average file size of the downloads. Do this and you shouldn't be seeing any of these issues.

Those that complain deal with on a one to one basis.


- Terry

a) you make it clear in the sales letter it is a video course and its a download, with estimates how long it will take to d/l on dialup/broadband.

b) i myself hate, hate videos, i don't have the patience to WATCH then. I just spotted a WSO yesterday someone selling a marketing course, saying "contains 9 hours of videos"

I am the type i need quickly accessible information. A video doesn't have a table of contents, or ways to go to specific "chapter" in a way as books have. With books i can see a TOC and go to a specific section.

A video "forces" me to start the video and watch it to the end, filler or not.

I wish marketers would stop releasing "9 hour video courses" and similar "nonsense".

Hey Steve,

Head on over to Kunaki, pay the $1.75 plus $4.00 to have it shipped and fill out the address of your customer.

Mike Hill

PS. Had this happen to me in the past with a few of my customers and that's what i did... they were thrilled!

Steven,

It's not only dial-up customers who have this problem.

I live in a town of 900 people where, until two months ago, the only high-speed Internet available short of paying $600 a month for a T-1 line, was satellite access.

Hughesnet, the biggest satellite access provider, has a "fair access policy" that caps your downloads at just 200 MB per day. If you go over that, they slow you down to a crawl for 24 hours.

Downloading just one DVD sent me over the daily limit.

So what I would do was ask video sellers if they could please send me the videos on CD or DVD.

One vendor did so without an extra charge. A few others refused, even if I offered to pay for the shipping! One very famous Internet marketer did not have an email link on his web site to ask about this. (I'm sure he thought he was very smart.)

Now anyone who knows me knows that I am a *very good* customer to have, and that it would be foolish to dismiss me as some kind of country rube just because I live in the country and, until now, had this problem.

So I would argue that every information marketer should be ready to make accommodations for customers who cannot download huge files by offering to send them on CD/DVD for either no extra charge or a small extra charge.

Marcia Yudkin
Author, 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other books
http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm

Some interesting observations, I believe from what I have read in this thread that this is not a problem, it is an opportunity.

Providing solutions for problems is one of the best ways to create a solid business, If you live in the US you can send out most CDs DVDs as media mail which is cheap, if you want to keep the costs down really low.

The average cost for media is less than .50 cents add to that the average cost of sending media through the post office, $1.76 and you have a cost of around
$2.26 give or tack a few cents for location.

I sell a lot of physical products online and the shipping costs are not that big of a deal, considering that there are a lot of people that are stuck with Dialup because no other option exists, this is an opportunity to serve a niche market.

Kanaki is definitly an option, worth considering.

I would market to these individuals based on your cost for providing a solution for this issue.

It is a matter of marketing not a problem at all.

Just a few thoughts.