caveman - 6:49 pm on Feb 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

Gee, not sure why my 'customer service' comments are under assault, but as they are, I'll add some specificity and follow up comments:

Customer service is when we buy something, and it comes with a warranty and support for a given length of time.

This may hold true for toasters, but I think it is too narrow to apply to business at large. I worked in advertising/marketing for 20+ years before becoming a Web publisher. When on the advertising side, we 'sold' our services. Our customers were our clients who advertised. If we did not serve them well, they fired us. And there were no warranties. Just 'services paid for' and 'services rendered,' and evalutation of the quality of those services.

Also, to expand out a bit, the products and services that many of my clients sold, or that I sold when on the marketing side, often did *not* come with clear warranties but good companies almost always provide good customer service, even to non-customers.

If we never paid Ink a dime to get listed we have paid nothing and therefore we are not their customers - hence no customer service. Why do we think we're entitled to any?

I paid quite a bit more than a dime. I paid thousands of dollars. I expect some help when there are legitimate issues in need of resolution. Not griping over poor rankings mind you, but real, technical issues.

My guess is that probably a lot of people are agonizing thinking they've been penalized when in actuality they're just not optimized.

My guess is that your guess is quite right ;-)

However in our case, we have submitted hundreds of pages to INK via PT over the years, and virtually every one, with two exceptions, did well or very well, depending upon how well the pages were constructed, etc...

There were two pages, however, that were nowhere to be found in INK SERP's after PFI. This was not a spam issue, or poor SEO. These two pages were the victims of INK's problems with redirects. The first came to light over a year ago. After countless frustrating emails back and forth with PT, they finally got the point that the page was truly missing by no fault of our own. So PT corresponded with INK. Less than a month later, the page reappeared and was at #2. Confirmation was provided that there was a technical glitch, although no specifics were ever provided. Fair enough; problem resolved.

The second missing page is a more recent problem, caused by a stupid thing that we did that led us to have to do a redirect shortly after we listed the page with PFI. All the other pages we listed at the same time did and continue to do very well (none of those were redirected). The one that was redirected is nowhere. So far, no help from anyone at PT/INK, after numerous emails.

I have no issue with paying to be in the INK index and then not performing well because my page is poorly optimized. That is my problem.

But when INK / PT does not help me with technical issues that are the fault of INK - after I paid to be included but am not for technical reasons - that is *poor service* and bad business and a good way to sink a company. (BTW, I don't care if it's INK or PT that provides the help - that's a business issue to be worked out between those two parties. But INK should be sure that either they or their partners are available to resolve serious, legitimate issues to PFI customers.)

Happily it seems that Y! understands this full well, and is *already doing a better job of customer service than INK ever did* - at least if Tim's comments and Y!'s early actions are any indication. And that is not only as it should be (and a welcome relief), it's also just plain good business.

:-)