You may have noticed that during the week of 11 May a large portion of the time my site was not available. I have had an Australian company called Austar host my domain for the past almost 2 years. You'll notice that when that page (Austar) I just mentioned loads, your address bar reads that it is going to Austar.net.au, but the page title (in the upper left corner of your browser) says Big Blue Internet. Austar's Internet services have recently been bought out by a company named Big Blue which, one would suspect, was a good move for clients. However that appears not to be the case, at least in this client's case.

And the outage that week? When contacted via phone and ultimately connected to a service rep (after a 45 minute wait to be connected), I was told that the technician who dealt with this type of problem wasn't at work yet (at 9:30am?) but that my concern would be passed on to him when he arrived. Needless to say that, seeing as this was not the first time this had happened, this was the last straw. I feel I have been patient with my provider, but, for instance, when on a recent Saturday my email would not come through (someone had apparently reset their server but had not checked to ensure it worked) I was told that if I were a private consumer the rep could help me, but seeing as I was a business client they could not help and I was to return the call to them on the following Monday. This make sense to anyone yet? *shakes head* It didn't to me either.

I have had numerous problems with this in the past, and thus have changed to a company which appears to be worldwide in its scope called Server101 located in the USA. They seem to be interested in serving their clients well. When I sent their technical people an email (via hotmail as my own email service through the old server would NOT send email to the new host - anyone else, no problem, but the Server101 people? No way) it was answered within 20 minutes. Now that is client service. Thus I have been busily transferring all my data to my new webhost company and hopefully the problems of the past will disappear and you will have better and more reliable access to my site and to me as well.

One wonders when Australian and New Zealand companies are going to wake up to the fact that service to "clients" is the name of the game, especially business clients who pay a larger premuim because their web site is hosted by the ISP? It certainly, for the most part, hasn't yet sunk in out here in the South Pacific. As an old marketer from a long time ago, I learned that if you have a client, keep them happy, as it is much harder to gain new clients than it ever is to keep them. I do hope someone out here in Australia and New Zealand tries to think of client welfare rather than simply "what can we charge to make more money", which happens all too often here. In this definition of client service, I think we all could learn something from many of the American companies.

Friends and visitors, thank you for your patience and your continued visits. Your support, by visiting my little site each week, and telling your friends and family about it, makes the publishing of new things for you to see each week, worthwhile. Thank you again, and I do look forward to your continued visits and support. *smiles*

But again, as usual, these are simply

just my musings...