People

PayPal What are you thinking???

April 7, 2011 by Doug Mcisaac

Dear PayPal

I'm thinking about breaking up with you.

We've been together for almost a decade. A decade where I've bought and sold 10s of thousands of dollars of items using your service. I've loved the simplicity and the security that you provide me when I make purchases from people I don't know all over the world. I love how you make it easy for me to sell things online without having to go through setting up bank processing.

I evangelize you to friends, family, students and clients.Recommending that the simplicity that you provide far outweighs the higher transaction fees when selling and that the security you provide when ordering is unparalleled.

I look for the PayPal button when I'm making purchases and always use PayPal when it's available.

I even remember stubbornly ignoring Ebay's attempts to get me to use BillPay. I ranted to my friends about Ebay's attempts to replace you when you were so vital to Ebay's growth. Even when Ebay made us go through extra steps to use you I persevered. I thought you were in the right and I like to think that people like me are the reason that Ebay relented and bought you for $1.5 billion.

But I don't know what you're thinking right now.

I'm not sure if you've just gotten too big and forgotten your roots. Your service is still awesome, I've even had great customer service experiences the couple of times that I've had issues.

You have to remember that it's not the big things that kill relationships.

It's the little things. Like forgetting to put the toothpaste cap back on or leaving the toilet seat up.

Those things that just annoy you,

The first couple of times, you don't even notice

But after a while you mention it and explain why it bothers you

Then when it happens again…

You're mad

This is one of those things…

Why in the hell do I have to click "NO" I do not want to use your "Bill me later" service EVERY time I pay for something????

Once was fine…"Oh they have a new service…"

Even the second time, I thought "Oh there it is again…"

But then you started freezing the page to make me select yes or no on it.

That was annoying

But I dealt with it, thinking to myself, "This is a little aggressive for a $5 purchase"

and it happened again

and again

WTF are you doing??? Who programmed that thing. There are two issues here:

1. Why would someone want to use Bill me later on a $5 purchase?? Maybe a $500 purchase, BUT a $5 purchase???

2. Why should I have to say "NO" more than once. Hell even a 30 day cookie would be fine. A one day cookie would make it a little easier to bear…

Really…I don't get it. how much will you really earn on my $5 purchase if I use Bill Me Later…

Sincerely,

Former raving fan

Fir those that don't use PayPal here's the offending picture:

Why You Need to Be Paying Attention to Social Media

August 27, 2009 by Doug Mcisaac

“United Breaks Guitars” is a great story of how one determined man with the right connections can make a large multi-national pay attention using social media. Here’s the short version of the background story from Dave Carrol.

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.

The long version can be viewed here but wait until you’ve watched the videos they’re pretty good.

This first one is fun and edgy. United sat up and paid attention when it broke a million views in about a week. As I write this post it’s past 5.5 million views and has helped the Sons of Maxwell, Dave Carroll’s become much more of a known quantity. It would be interesting to find out how many copies of the songs have sold on iTunes.

Here was the second video that was produced. This was done after United contacted Dave Carroll.

Here’s the final video. It’s a lot less edgy and hasn’t received the viral push that the first video received. So far it has only received 248,000 views and has been up for a little over a week. Part of the reason the number of views is so much lower is that this video was delayed and took almot 6 weeks to get out which allowed the buzz to die down. Had this video been releases within 2 weeks of the first video it would have millions of views. That’s one thing about viral buzz, it doesn’t last, you need to keep it going.

Enjoy the video:

Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents

August 17, 2009 by Doug Mcisaac

There are a only a few people who’s blog posts I eagerly devour and learn from as soon as they appear: Seth Godin, Simon Ford and Chris Brogan. I’ve read most if not all of Seth’s books, I’m CEO of one of Simon’s companies and I’m gleefully waiting for my copy of Chris’ new book Trust Agents to appear in my mailbox from Amazon.

Chris understands how social media works on a level that most will never truly understand and many of us are struggling to reach; at least I know I am, sorry to make assumptions about you. The core of social media and in truth all marketing is Trust. In any relationship someone must have faith and believe in the other person for the relationship to work. Business relationships are no different. Our clients must believe that our product or service will deliver at least as good as we tell them that it will.

I’m confident that Chris’ book will give us a deeper understanding of how to earn that trust and build influence using online tools.

In case anyone is thinking I’m just pushing this for an affiliate commisison, I’m not, I trust that this book will be well worth the time invested in reading it.

Simply click ont he picture of the book and it will send you to Chris’ website for a list of locations to buy the book.