Forum Moderators: phranque
We are building dry rock retaining walls and terracing the lot. When finished, I am hoping this will be a show piece.
Of late, I have been buying a LOT of "stuff" for the garden on the internet. This includes thousands of dollars worth of tools, equipment, solar lighting, statuary, sod, cement stamps, dyes, garden furniture, a gazebo ... the whole nine yards.
I was astounded by the number of web sites which don't function properly. I use a Mac and was truly amazed that so many sites are not compatible with Safari or Firefox!
I found some statues that I couldn't resist. They are bronze and not by any means inexpensive. I wanted to order 6 of them as its a large garden and there's plenty of room for statuary. The "BUY" button didn't work!
I sent an e:mail to the company and told them of the problem with their site. They wrote back and told me that they had tested their site for IE6 and that they were aware that Mac users were not able to buy online. Sorry for the inconvenience, but would I please call them to place my order.
I don't think so. They are located in Australia and the cost to call them from where I live would be astronomical. Next! They just lost a $7,890.00 sale.
Another site which sells tools for stamping cement had the exact same problem and the same advice. Please call them. Nope! There are plenty of others selling similar products. I'll find a company who's website works the way it is meant to. Lost $340.00 sale.
A company selling garden furniture lost a $4, 628.00 sale to a competitor who answered my questions within 24 hours. The company which I would have preferred to do business with took three days to get around to answering my questions.
I have placed an order with a Canadian company in the amount of $1,490.00 for garden tools. They said they can ship to my location, but it has now been a week and I still haven't heard from them regarding the shipping charges. Next!
So what the heck is with all these people? I am begging to give them my money and they can't seem to be bothered taking it! :(
What is wrong with webmasters who can't be bothered to make sure their work renders properly on all platforms? What losers.
IMO it is totally irresponsible to fire back that your stats only show 1.5% of your customers are Macintosh. Even though I use Windows 95% of the time, it just makes me cringe!
Unfortunately I've had to work with many sites that the owners generally know everything and anything you try to tell them makes them very defensive. I have one customer, the poor dear, her site is horrible. I get ill every time she asks me to do an update. Dreadful, long and narrow scrolling pages, with black backgrounds and the most gawdy color schemes, bloated with deprecated methods, illegible graphics-only heads she calls artistic, it's a digital train wreck. I've come short of begging her to rework it, please, PLEASE, I'll almost do it for free - and she goes into this long diatribe about how everyone just loves her site and we can redesign it so long as we keep 'this' and 'this' and 'this' - all the things that are totally killing it.
But my buttons work on all platforms. The problem is you just can't find them.
So sometimes you just have to walk away, buyer or developer. :-(
What is wrong with webmasters who can't be bothered to make sure their work renders properly on all platforms? What losers.
I think in this case a lot of them are so surprised they even managed to get most of it to work, and even more surprised that someone paid for it, then when the cleck cleared, this just drove them over the edge and they haven't come back to earth yet. :-)
