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The new definition of customer support …

  • Anna Porter Artist
  • 3/13/2013 12:34:18 AM
  • 4 Comments

Unresolved Firefox warnings when attempting to verify my FASO website on Pinterest
Unresolved Firefox warnings when attempting to verify my FASO website on Pinterest

Back in the day when I used to work for one of the largest Value Added Resellers for the Hewlett-Packard Company in Southern California, we knew what it meant to "add value". We helped our customers resolve hardware and software issues until the issue was resolved. We did not "pass the buck". Sadly that cannot be said for many of the suppliers providing website hosting services these days. A case in point is my own experience with the suupport staff for my own website, managed by Fine Art Studios Online. Ten days ago, I informed FASO of a problem verifying my website on Pinterest using the exact instructions that my website "support staff" had published in their member newsletter. At first they provided support by assuming that I was an idiot and emailing me the same instructions that were in their newsletter - instructions that I had tried three times with two different browsers, and they did not work. It took them several days to get to the point of even handing anything over to their "developers", who apparently were too busy handing all the problems in their code to pay much attention to someone who has been paying them monthly for two years for a website that gets almost no traffic, yet is supposed to be "search engine optimized". Which is why I was so insistent on getting the Pinterest verification of my website handled. Pinterest, unlike FASO, has a proven track record of improving traffic to websites.

 

Undaunted, I kept emailing back and forth to my "support staff", who told me several times that they were just "too busy" to pay any attention to my issue. Each of my polite requests that they do something about the two pages of warning messages that I was receiving in Firefox about issues with their code was handled by a different "Artist Support Specialist", apparently so that no one would have to take responsibility to actually help me. Finally they agreed to send my case to their "developers", who immediately decided it was "not their problem". After over one week of communicating back and forth, the sole assistance that I received was to be told to "go talk to Pinterest". When I insisted that they address the issues pertinent to the warning messages about their code, I was assured that they would forward those issues to their "developers" once again. Then, today, I received yet another email from yet another "Artist Support Specialist" stating that if I wanted these warning messages addressed, then I should open yet another ticket and start all over again.

 

This is my response. I am your customer. I am paying for your support services. I am paying for you to have a website service to offer to artists. I expect that when I am getting warning messages in Firefox when I attempt to follow your published intructions about how to link my website to a social network that you claim to provide an interface to, and when at least half of those messages are warning messages about your code, that you will pay attention to those messages and attempt to resolve the issues quickly. And I expect that you will not respond by "passing the buck" or telling me start all over again.

 

 

I have no idea where Fine Art Studio Online "Artist Support Specialists" learned how to not provide customer support. Wherever it was, you apparently learned your lessons well. I recommend that Fine Art Studio Online pay attention to the legitimate complaints from its customers, or it will soon find that it has no customers left whatsoever.

 

As for me, I am in the market for a new website. If there is anyone out there who believes that they can provide better service and support, please email me at [email protected] with a link to your service and samples of existing websites so I can check them out. I cannot have you email me at my FASO email address, because whenever I try to add my FASO email address to my desktop Mail application, when Mail goes out to try to verify the FASO server, it gets an invalid security certificate error - yet another issue that I have been trying to get assistance with from FASO for SEVERAL MONTHS, without success.

 

Bottom line, artists, unless FASO resolves the issues with their websites and with their customer support services, my advice is to save yourselves the headache and an aggregious amount of wasted time and look elsewhere to place your website.

 

Anna Porter Artist

Fine Art and Digital Photography

http://annaporterartist.com

[email protected]

Topics: 5Ps of Marketing | Art Marketing | Marketing for Artists | Marketing for Creatives | Marketing for Photographers | New Blog | Online Marketing | Social Network Marketing 

Comments

4 Responses to The new definition of customer support …

Dear Anna,

Well, clearly we have dropped the ball here.

I apologize for that. I usually look forward to blog posts about our support team as, they usually have been quite complimentary. I'm very sorry we've let you down. I have reviewed the history and I can see why you're frustrated.

I just tried to reproduce your issue with Pinterest on my site and, while I didn't have the same problems, I DID have problems getting it verified. While the steps in our original newsletter appear to still match their process, their verification screens sometimes return the wrong info and I had to guess at what value to put in the meta tag, I'll be doing a blog post with screenshots so that if others run
into the same issue I did, they'll know how to workaround it. (specifically it showed me the html file on the meta tag screen and the meta tag on the html file screen).

I don't think the issue I experienced is the same as yours though, as I WAS able to finally verify. Whereas your situation was that Pinterest just seemed to hang in the verification. And, indeed, your screenshot actually shows more than half of those warnings are generated by the Pinterest site.

I had seen your issue a couple of days ago and did verify that your site was responding quickly and that the meta tags for pinterest were in place properly (they were), which I thought was what my team was asking me. So, at the time, it appeared to me that the FASO side was all set, but clearly pinterest is having some sort of trouble reaching the site for verification.
Whether that's them, us or a network issue is hard to troubleshoot and can lead to each side thinking it's the other side's problem, which gets frustrating quickly.

It's probably too little too late from your point of view, but, if you want, I'll be happy to work with you on getting your site verified. I'll email you my phone number, email address and some other info about the situation. If you decide that you're done with the situation, then I do understand and will wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson
FASO Founder

By Clint Watson · via annaporterartist.com · 162 months ago

In response to Clint Watson:

Thank you, Clint. I sincerely appreciate the personal response. That tells me that you do, in fact, care about the issues that the artists who use your site experience on it.

Yes, I am still willing to work with FASO on the problem. I have been willing to work on it from the outset, but just kept going around in circles between FASO and Pinterest. Which is why in my last communication with Pinterest, after being told to go talk to them by your support staff, I asked them to please send me anything that I needed to do on my end, and if there was anything that FASO needed to do on their end to please contact [email protected] directly. I copied [email protected] on that message to Pinterest and your support team's response was to tell me to close my ticket on FASO and start a new ticket if I wanted any of the FASO error messages addressed. Since all error messages were generated during my attempt to verify my website on Pinterest, I could see no reason to have to start the process all over again with a new ticket. And quite frankly, I was fed up.

I apologize if my blog post was the only way to get through to someone who was willing to actually help. While I had hoped that might be the result, I did not expect it to be the founder of FASO. I do appreciate your willingness to work with me personally on this. That is a rare find in today's executive hands-off business world.

If I do not have to move my website, then I do not want to have to go through the headache of moving my website. But I do need to resolve this issue. And I do need support that actually solves problems by solving them, not just closing tickets.

Please send me whatever you need to send me and ask me to do whatever you need me to do on my end to work with you to resolve this issue.

Thank you.

Anna Porter
Anna Porter Artist
Fine Art and Digital Photography
http://annaporterartist.com
 [email protected]

By Anna Porter · via annaporterartist.com · 162 months ago

An update:

Yesterday afternoon, Clint Watson, the founder of FASO did everything possible on my site to have it be verified successfully by Pinterest. Both the html file and the meta-tag code are in the correct places on my website. He personally loaded the html file himself and checked all settings.

Yet despite multiple efforts to have Pinterest verify my website, it simply would not complete the verification process. It hangs at the Verifying... stage.

I would like to thank Clint Watson and FASO for their efforts to help me resolve this issue on their end. It appears that, in fact, there is either a problem with the Pinterest verification program or a problem with my account on Pinterest (although everything else on my Pinterest account seems to be working fine).

I asked the Pinterest Help Center to address and resolve this issue four days ago, and I updated my open ticket there with the most recent findings by Mr. Watson, but as yet Pinterest has not provided a solution.

I can only hope that their management is as accessible and as dedicated to providing their customers with excellent service and support, as Clint Watson is at FASO.

Anna Porter
Anna Porter Artist
Fine Art and Digital Photography
http://annaporterartist.com
 [email protected]

By Anna Porter · via annaporterartist.com · 162 months ago

Finally, a solution: At the suggestion of Clint Watson, Founder of FASO, I moved to the new Pinterest look today and that seems to have resolved the problem of Pinterest not being able to verify my FASO website, despite everything being in place properly there.

I did not have to try to re-verify. As soon as I updated to the new Pinterest look, my website automatically showed as verified on Pinterest - annaporterartist.com, with a link to my website, replaced the web icon at the top of my Pinterest profile.

Perhaps the process of moving to the new Pinterest look reset whatever was stuck and not allowing Pinterest to find the html file and meta tag code on my website.

My sincere thanks to Clint Watson at FASO for his excellent follow-up and his personal support in helping me resolve this issue.

Sincerely,

Anna Porter
Anna Porter Artist
Fine Art and Digital Photography
http://annaporterartist.com /> http://pinterest.com/annaporterart

By Anna Porter · via annaporter.fineartstudioonline.com · 162 months ago

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