Have Some Online Businesses Become Victims of Their Own Success?

Whether you are shopping for a product or service, you are always looking for an online site that will provide quality service, good technical support and the tools needed to make your personal or business deal a pleasurable experience; you also want to receive what you order in a timely manner. But what happens when an online business becomes too big and service begins to suffer? The answer can be complex depending on the type of service you are utilizing. Take for example, print-on-demand sites for people who choose to author and self-publish their work.

When I wrote my first book in the spring of 2008, I decided to self-publish my work and selected a popular POD and publishing site because of the positive articles that were written about their service, their excellent printing output and their efficient and professional online support. But when it came to my second book, all of that efficiency changed. Problems started to occur around the beginning of April 2009. During the first week, I uploaded my file to be converted to a format, which would eventually be printed into a book. Everything worked out perfectly. However, I had to revise my book before submitting it for printing. A couple of days later, I had problems uploading my data. Their program would upload halfway and then stop or not upload at all. I repeated the upload process several times each day. When it did upload, the program never converted my file. Then an error message started to pop-up. At first, I thought there was a problem on my end, but it was not. Then I went to their forums and discovered that other authors were having similar problems. After a week of trying to upload my file, to no avail, I sent an email informing them of the situation and asked if there was a problem with their server. On that same day, a reply came back saying, "They would get back to me within one or two days,"and a tracking number was assigned to me. Three days later, technical support asked me to send my document to them, and they would upload it for me. It was almost two weeks, and my file was yet to be uploaded. In the meantime, I tried again to upload my file, and still no luck.

Then, I received another email from technical support saying that they got my e-mail and had assigned me a tracking number and would get back to me as soon as possible. So now I had two tracking numbers for the same complaint. It was apparent that one end did not know what the other end was doing. It was now the second week of April and I still had difficulties uploading my file. Meanwhile, not a week went by that I did not receive e-mails from this site trying to sell promotional incentives. As I continued to go back to the forums, complaints were still being posted but the site seemed to be slow in checking and correcting these problems.

I decided to try another popular POD service, but their site was not working up to speed, either. Certain tools were disabled; there were mishaps while I was trying to update my account. And yet, these services continue to expand, but something as simple as making certain their site is working in optimum mode seems to get lost along the way. If the problems are not met head-on, eventually, customer service becomes damaged, and the buyer may end up taking their business some place else. The days of personal service seems to be losing some steam with many of these enterprises. Being too big at the expense of the customer may not guarantee continued success. To prove my point, I read on one of these sites that they did away with their live technical support team because the company felt sending questions and complaints by e-mail was more efficient.

But I do have good news. During the third week of April, my document finally uploaded and was converted to the proper format for printing and publishing. When people say patience is a virtue, I agree one hundred percent, because my persistence was beginning to wear thin. Hopefully, the problems with the site have been completely resolved, and if I decide to write a third book and use their service, there will be no more repeat performances of the abovementioned difficulties.

By the way, a couple of days later, I heard from the site notifying me that they saw my content was uploaded and was not able to run some tests they had created for my file. Since the file was uploaded correctly, there was no need to make any other test, and they apologized for the delay. I wrote back and said, "Thank you for your assistance; I was able to upload my file without any problems."

If I thought my troubles were finally over, history was about to repeat itself. When I checked the converted file, something strange happened. While the site was converting my document, two of my chapter titles were off alignment. So, the last week of April, I had to revise my content again. You guessed it; I had problems uploading my data. I decided to log off and went back on-line that evening. It started to upload but suddenly stopped. I tried again, and nothing happened. This went on for about an hour. The next day, I tried again with the same results. After almost spending three hours on this site, I was ready to log off, but decided to give it one more try. The size of my file was 2.5 MB. As it got to 2.4 MB, it stopped uploading. I decided that this glitch would probably go on for days to come. As the saying goes, you can't win for losing.

The final straw came when I contacted the second POD service. I sent them an email listing the problems that were occurring with their digital platform. They responded by saying, "We are currently unaware of any issue causing problems while trying to upload the content. I'd recommend that you delete your cookies and try again. Also, would suggest trying a different browser and seeing if you are able to upload successfully. If you're still encountering problems, please let us know." Well to make a long story short, I followed their instructions, but when I tried to log on to my account, I could not get in, decided to create a new account and still could not get in. For better or for worse, you got to love technology and its advancements.