It is NOT ok to lie to me...

OK, I admit, I've been stewing about this for awhile. There's two specific incidents during the past week that have really bothered me.

First incident - I purchased a solo ad recently from a 'vendor' with a zillion (ok a figure of speech, but if I told you the exact claim, you'd know who it was) members on his 'mailing list'. He guarantees a minimum number of clicks. "OK, cool. Price seems right, and based on my experience with this product's ROI, the numbers work out, so I'm going to pop for a trial mailing".

So the first delivery date comes and goes, and there isn't one hit on my targeted landing page. I question the vendor...turns out that his email system isn't configured properly (a.k.a. it would appear that he hasn't sent any campaigns out before). But that instead of sending me 500 clicks, he will now rerun the campaign and send me 750 clicks.

Second stab at delivering this campaign has come and gone, and I'm still waiting for ANY activity on this landing page.

Moral of this story: If you're going to make claims and guarantees, especially outrageous ones, be prepared to back them up!!! Walk the talk.

Here's another scenario from another thread that I was participating on this morning.

A relatively well known vendor (website) was down for an extended (multiple days) time at the beginning of this week. OK, so bleep happens right? It happens to the best of us for whatever reason. But there's two issues from that thread that really really bothered me.

First, the vendor made several public statements to create misleading perceptions, minimizing their problems, which apparently was not the case. For me, the issue isn't that their website was down, even for an extended period of time, its now an issue of credibility. Can I believe anything this vendor tells me in the future? Maybe, but probably not.

OK, maybe I'm old fashioned. I'm old enough to qualify for that title. But it is not OK to mislead me.

A second issue I had with that specific thread, is that a well known individual (in this forum community) posted a comment that I paraphrase...."so what?"

I come from a turnaround business management consulting background in the offline world. One of the first things we look for in a turnaround situation is..."are your vendors meeting your expectations for quality and delivery?"

In other words, "If you fly with turkeys, you won't soar with eagles."

I'm fed up with the lies and the crap, and "No, I'm not going to accept a 'so what, that's just the way it works in the IM business' attitude. I'm not going to be confrontational - especially on the WF - but I am going to start holding people accountable for their commitments to me, and I won't adopt a 'so what' attitude.

If that makes me a jerk, then so be it. Giving someone my word still means something to me.

Talltom

Rant over