Yaicha

Ted’s take on the world, one topic at a time.

Archive for the ‘Human Interest’ Category

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PlentyOfFish.com Sucks at Customer Service

Posted by Ted Hopton on March 2, 2009

Plenty of Fish

Plenty of Fish

Well, that’s a pretty blunt headline, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons I like having a blog: I have a platform to complain LOUDLY about companies that do wrong. This is what my old colleague, Keith Dawson, calls the “Super Empowered Angry Customer.” And that’s who I am today.

There’s a free online dating website called Plenty of Fish, at plentyoffish.com or pof.com, and for reasons that should be obvious, I decided to create a profile there. The site is fairly lame, frankly, but it’s free so I figured I would try it, anyway. Much to my surprise, within a few days I received the following “friendly” email with this Subject Line: Your Only Warning!

You have received this email because one or more of our rules have been violated.

If any of these rules are violated again, your account(s) will be removed from our website permanently.

1. Harassment – harassing or offending other users will result in your account being deleted

2. Nude/Inappropriate images – if you upload nude or inappropriate images, your account will be deleted

3. Duplicate/Fake Accounts – if you created more than one account for yourself or create a fake account, all of your accounts will be removed from our website

4. SPAM

5. Age – if we have reasons to believe you are under 18 years of age, your account will be deleted.

http://www.plentyoffish.com/terms.aspx

You’ll just have to trust me on this, but I did nothing offensive, harrassed no one, uploaded fully-clothed normal-looking pics of me and friends, did not spam anyone, and I sure as heck am older than 18.  I also only created one account, but the crummy website interface gave me a cryptic error message while I was creating the account and then it forced me to change from the username I had originally selected. I complied with the inane request and finished setting up my one and only account.

So, why did I get that email? I have no idea, unless the glitch when I signed up caused their system to create two accounts for me. More to the customer service point, what is any customer supposed to do when they get this email?

The fatal flaw that lands Plenty of Fish in the “sucks at customer service” column is their clear assumption that their users are bad people. The email they sent could only be effective when received by people who knowingly did one of those forbidden things. Plenty of Fish appears to hope that by acting like a stern and angry parent they will get creeps to stop acting like creeps. I really wonder how well that works.

My guess is that a very high percentage of people who get that warning email subsequently get banned from the site, as I did. Yes, I tried to log in a few days later and could not. Whatever sin Plenty of Fish thought I had committed, they must have thought I did it again, so they kicked me out.

Since I’d already decided after being treated like a criminal that I’d prefer to use another site, this did not bother me, but it sure did amaze me. See, when I got that threatening email from Plenty of Fish, I replied and asked what had triggered it, explaining that I was not aware of violating any of their policies.

Guess what the reply from Markus, the guy who runs Plenty of Fish, said? That’s right, nothing, since he did not reply. But that’s okay, Markus, you don’t have to answer email from me, since I have a blog and can tell you right here what I think of the way you treated me. And can at the same time tell my friends and anyone on the Internet who wants to search for Plenty of Fish, plentyoffish.com or pof.com and customer service. I’m happy to let you know right here what a lousy job you do with customer service.

You see, I’m not a criminal, I don’t intentionally violate terms of service, and I sure don’t act like a jerk on a dating website. So Markus’ “Your Only Warning!” email both insulted me and failed to give me any avenue for correcting whatever issue had caused my account to be flagged. If you’re interested in losing customers and visitors, Plenty of Fish sets a great example:

  • assume your customers are out to get you
  • threaten them the first chance you get
  • refuse to tell them exactly what it is you think they did wrong
  • ignore their responses and questions when they offer to make it right
  • kick them out with no further explanation soon after.

We all could learn a great lesson in how NOT to treat customers from Plenty of Fish. That’s plentyoffish.com or pof.com, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention. After all, there are plenty of dating websites, too.

Posted in Customer Sat, Customer Service, Human Interest, Social Media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Housing Crisis Explained, Clearly and Simply

Posted by Ted Hopton on December 27, 2008

Like many people, I’ve been somewhat unclear exactly how we ended up with such a mess in the mortgage and housing market. I certainly grasped the broad outlines — people got greedy and made loans to people who never should have gotten them because those loaning the money knew they were going to sell those risky mortgages to others. But why did this happen now, and just how in the world did all the pieces fall in place to create this disaster?

Well, good old NPR has explained it all, clearly and simply. Take an hour to listen to this episode of This American Life and you’ll understand it, too: The Giant Pool of Money. It’s not only educational, it’s entertaining, too, as they have interviewed the people who actually made the loans and bundled the  mortgages into securities. They’ve asked the questions we all want to ask, such as “What were you thinking?!”

Posted in Economics, Ethics, Human Interest | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Phillies Win World Series Game 3, I Think

Posted by Ted Hopton on October 26, 2008

I watched the Phillies win game three of the World Series last night and this morning, sort of. It started so late (10pm ET) that I kept falling asleep on the couch. And Comcast committed an unforgivable sin by providing the worst signal I have ever endured: the picture kept freezing, the sound would disappear, and finally the feed died altogether for 25 minutes (so I read, this morning, because I fell asleep waiting for my view of the game to resume). I missed both Utley and Howard’s home runs. Shame on you, Comcast!

Luckily, I woke up in time (at almost 2am) to see the Phillies bat in the ninth inning, though I saw none of J.C. Romero’s shutdown of the Rays in their half of the ninth. It was great to see Bruntlett sneak across home plate on Ruiz’s feeble hit down the line. I smiled wearliy and went to bed, and when I eventually woke up this morning I couldn’t quite remember at first if I watched the game or dreamed about it.

Luckily it was a good dream.

Posted in Human Interest, Sports | Leave a Comment »

Facebook in a Crowd

Posted by Ted Hopton on October 25, 2008

I enjoyed this confessional article, Facebook in a Crowd. Hal Neidzviecki writes about having 700 Facebook friends at the same time that the number of his in-person friends is declining. So, he decided to have a party for his Facebook friends so he could meet them in person. Read the article to learn what happened :-)

read more | digg story

Posted in Human Interest, Social Media | Leave a Comment »

Me Make Fire

Posted by Ted Hopton on October 22, 2008

I feel I am getting back to my primitive roots. I am learning to use fire to keep warm, just as human beings learned to do so many thousands of years ago. I am trying to heat my house with wood as much as possible this year. Since I work from home, it’s not really much trouble to get up now and then to put another log in the wood stove.

In fact, the image of Bob Cratchit keeps coming to mind, when I notice that my hands are cold and debate whether it’s time for another log or not. Don’t want to waste my wood (it’s quite pricey, in fact), but I need to be comfortable to work effectively, too. I can bundle up in layers, sure, but gloves don’t work with keyboards.

I don’t have the best stove, either. It’s certainly not airtight, so it’s not as efficient as it should be. I’m learning how to regulate the temperature with it. At first I roasted the place by putting too many logs in. They just burn hotter, but not any longer. Better to stick with just a couple of logs and keep adding another when the fire dies down enough. I only have to light the fire once, in the morning, and after that I just keep adding logs when needed and the embers start the flames up.

Posted in Human Interest | Leave a Comment »

You Know You Have Dead Mice When…

Posted by Ted Hopton on October 22, 2008

the D-Con you stored under the kitchen sink is gone. I had two packages of D-Con still in the box under the sink, but when I went to get them out I found that mice had chewed through the box and eaten all of the poison.

Boy, that stuff must really smell and taste good to them.  As my landlord says, the weather is turning colder and the mice are seeing my little cottage as awfully cozy.

Posted in Animals, Human Interest | Leave a Comment »

THIS is where Sarah Palin comes from!

Posted by Ted Hopton on October 7, 2008

The Daily Show skewers fools like no one else, and the Vice-Presidential Debate was rich raw material for their talents. I recommend checking out all they did about that, but to me the best thing they did was show Palin up by going to the Wasilla Main Street she keeps talking about. Yep, it’s really, really scary that she thinks those people are worth emulating. Is this really where we want our Vice President to come from?

more about “Debate Analysis From Wasilla | The Da…“, posted with vodpod

read more | digg story

Posted in Human Interest, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Hail: Winter in August

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 10, 2008

I’ve never been in such a furious hailstorm before. My little cottage is literally getting pounded by hail that ranges in size from marbles to golf balls (really, I am not exagerrating). Wind is blowing both rain and hail pretty close to horizental when it gusts. I am not happy that my car is uncovered in all of this.

And I’ve been watching one horse’s odd reaction. Rather than seeking shelter in her run-out shed, she started running wildly all over the field. I wonder what was going through her equine brain.

The storm seems to be letting up now, after maybe ten minutes of intense downpouring and wind, not to mention thunder and lightning.

Very strange to see essentially an ice storm in the middle of the summer!

Posted in Human Interest | Leave a Comment »

Online Trolls Haunt the Internet

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 3, 2008

I’d heard and basically understood the term “troll” for a long time, but this long NYT magazine article, The Trolls Among Us, provided an enlightening look at the underside of human behavior with technology. Here’s the article’s definition of “troll“:

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities.

Here’s a glimpse of how this aberrant community thinks:

clipped from www.nytimes.com
“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.

The author interviews and stays with several prominent trolls, showing what they are like in person as opposed to the way they act online. While that is interesting on one level, I liked more the exploration of what the prevalence of trolls says about human beings and society. For example:

clipped from www.nytimes.com
Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?
blog it

Posted in Ethics, Human Interest | Leave a Comment »

Summer Wind – NYT

Posted by Ted Hopton on July 18, 2008

I liked this story, Summer Wind. It’s calming, peaceful, and evokes images of the rural lifestyle it describes. It’s a vignette, really, not a story, article or column. Just a quick view of a place in time, nicely-written and conveying the appeal that the rural lifestyle has for the author.

Here’s a glimpse:

For the past few hours, the wind has been rising and falling, the precursor of a storm coming in from the west. When the wind climbs, a kind of elation blows through the house — it’s the hushing sound of the leaves outside and the way the breeze sweeps the floors and lifts the curtains and slams the doors. The dogs snap to and look around when it gusts. And when the wind drops, it seems to drop us — the dogs and me — into the trough of an ordinary summer day.

I’m loving the rural lifestyle, myself, here in my cottage on a horse farm. It’s nice out here :-)

Posted in Animals, Blogs, Human Interest | Leave a Comment »

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