Too many people and too many companies out there over promise and underdeliver!
Property debacle
Im exploring the possibility of doing property development in Boston and whenever I am doing something new, I like to tap my network to seek advice from those with more knowledge than me.
In chatting with one of my friends, she told me her boyfriend does property development in Boston and to speak with him. Fantastic! I talked with him on the phone and asked him if he could recommend people to help me in my search. I told him what I was looking for and he said he would ask his realtor to pull up the matching properties.
We met for lunch, and I further elaborated on what I was trying to do. I was confused with his willingness to help me and asked him what was in it for him if he helped. He said it was fine because I was a friend of his girlfriend. Then he asked me to pick 2 properties and he would come with me and the agent to view them. I was annoyed to limit it to 2, but then gave him the ones I was looking for. He said he would get his friend to set them up for saturday.
Saturday came and I got a text message from him at around 11 am saying that we didnt have the appointments for the places and would go on Monday. I texted him on monday, and he said realtors take the day off and we would go on tuesday. Tuesday came and he never contacted me. That was 2 weeks ago now and I have given up on him.
Prior to this, I was talking to a realtor - Paul Gramazio at Gibson Sothebys. After being let down by my friends boyfriend, I called Paul and asked him to set up appointments for the two properties I had wanted to see. Paul got the appointments and we were golden.
Needless to say, this other guy promised me something I hadn’t asked for, and when I accepted his help, he failed to deliver, setting me back two weeks!
Mediatemple
I signed up for (and had this site hosted at) Mediatemple’s Gridserver product. They promise a whopping 100 gb of storage, and up to 100 sites hosted for just $20 a month. How they claim to be able to provide this is by having a huge grid of computers to distribute the load. Well, I don’t know how well intentioned they are, but their product is oversold.
When I had this site hosted on the Gridserver, it was terribly slow. It wasn’t that it was slow sometimes and good other times, it was consistently poor. There were also large outages in the first few months. Mediatemple tried to make it OK by giving a few free months to me, but didnt address the problem! The quality of their webhosting is not even worth it for free!
A lot of people signed up for gridserver due to the irresponsibility of techcrunch’s Michael Arrington recommending it (myself included), but were severly disappointed. Upon contacting Mediatemple, they acknowledge the problems, but have not made significant headway in fixing them.
I had enough and decide to make a move. I added myself to the waiting list for Slicehost. Their pitch really resonated with me:
Oversold capacity. Slow performance. Restricted access. Misconfigured software. Who wants better hosting? You do. You’ve got websites, blogs, wikis, forums, business applications, mail servers, open source projects and custom software that needs a home. You see right through the cheap deals and 6-month contracts those other guys offer. You need a company that’s built for people who know what they want. Welcome home.
I’ve been with a few different hosts and have always been disappointed. This is my first day with Slicehost and I am extremely happy. I’d be very grateful if users could give me feedback on the speed of the site from their location. Just add a comment and say where you are and rate the speed of the site from 1 to 10 (10 being the best). If you decide that you want to sign up for slicehost, feel free to use my referral link to help me get free service. Keep in mind, slicehost is VPS hosting so it requires extra work!
The message
Im sure you’ve had situations where people have made promises without following through. As much as you want to do the same, don’t! Promise them the bare minimum to get the deal, or earn their trust. When it comes to deliver, first do the minimum, and then some! Pleasant surprise is always better than mild disappointment.
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