Just wanted to say hi to everyone.
I look forward chatting with you all.
Feel free to introduce yourself. ]]>
If finding such a creature isn't very realistic, she can also make do with a consultant who can direct her (or us) in the right direction in assembling the marketing kit and leave the design work to me.

Anyone have recommendations for this task?]]> Reviewed: Earthlink Web Hosting

Description: The well known ISP Earthlink also offers web hosting for people and small businesses.

Review Title: Fast Servers, but No Power and Frustrating Customer Service
My Rating: Thumbs Down

My Opinion: Earthlink Web Hosting got rated one of the top web hosting providers by C-net. How they managed that rating, I have no idea. Some serious money must have exchanged hands. I've had to deal with them on behalf of two customers now and both times was about as fun as getting a door slammed on your hand.

Let's cover the good points first. Their hosting servers are usually fast and reliable so they're probably not overloading their servers like a lot of cheap or low end hosting companies do to offer low prices. They also offer a healthy allocation of disk storage and transfer bandwidth, but not unrealistic amounts to win the comparison chart game against competitors.

Cheap hosts will eventually reaveal to you why their prices are so low. Earthlink charges a fair market price for what they offer, but their hosting plans are missing some key features for the price that they're charging. The most glaring is that none of their plans include MySQL database support. That's an amazing omission for hosting services aimed at small businesses. MySQL is part of the lifeblood of anyone running a dynamic website on a limited website budget.

Then there's the user interfaces...the confusing user interfaces that are easy to get lost in. I found myself getting lost and logging in multiple times and logging into the wrong areas of the website.

Most frustrating was the customer service experience. I've been on hold for 30 minutes now as I'm finishing up this review. They keep giving me inaccurate information and whenever I follow instructions to send a support request to them, I end up in this stupid online chat session with a phantom customer service rep. Amazingly, the "person" greets you the same way each time you start a session and the first sentence they say in response to you is always "Hi, I will assist you."

They obviously have some canned automatic responses to make it seem like you're getting more immediate attention. It'd be funny instead of annoying if those canned responses didn't fool you into trying to talk to someone who's not there yet... and now it's been 35 minutes since I got my very purposeful sounding "Hi, I will assist you."

Before I end this, I need to say for purposes of disclosure that I sell web hosting as part of my business so I could be biased, but I also know what good hosting is when I see it.

This is an automatically generated post created when a new opinion has been posted to the Opinion Boards. You can comment on this opinion directly or post your own opinion]]> Reviewed: Better Business Bureau of Silicon Valley


Description: The Silicon Valley chapter of the Better Business Bureau serves the areas in and around Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. They're best known for the reports that they provide on businesses and organizations. Their mission is to encourage self regulation on the part of businesses and promote good and ethical business practices.
Review Title: Too Bad You Can't Report the BBB to themselves
My Rating: Thumbs Down
My Opinion: If you're running a small business and you thought about shelling out the money that the Silicon Valley chapter of the Better Business Bureau wants to make you a proud member, save the cash unless you only want to the membership for the positive aura that the general public associates with any place hanging the BBB member plaque. If you're one of these people, I hate to tell you, the BBB aura as the consumer's guardian is not deserved.

I got fleeced around $400 total for a basic membership and a special "online reliability" graphic that I could stick on my website. It was a complete waste of money. I wouldn't have minded as much if I had felt that my money somehow ended up protecting my rights as a consumer, but I've had very serious run ins with companies that had no business with a "satisifactory" BBB rating. That's the same rating I and just about everyone else had. "Satisfactory" is not how I would describe a company that ripped me off of over $2000 and has miles of bad reviews online.

The Silicon Valley chapter of the BBB is a Skunk. Here are six signs of a Skunky Organization.

SIGN #1: You don't meet their very lenient membership requirement of having been in business for a full year and the sales person changes gears and explores "other ways" your business is at least a year old.

In my case, it wasn't an unethical thing to do. My business license was only 6 months old at the time, but I've been doing web development work on the side for years. I offered to show my filing for a business name that was made well in advance of me actually declaring my web development work as a business.
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SIGN #2: You tell them to lookup your alternate proof of qualification (fictitious business license filing) and they have no idea what you're talking about.

They wanted me to fax a copy of my fictitious business license filing, but I couldn't find it. I told them to go look it up in public records online. They didn't know how to do that so I sent them a link to a website run by the county with all sorts of public records on it. They still couldn't find it so I had to tell them where to move the mouse and what to click.
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SIGN #3: You get your membership application packet and it's a photocopy of a photocopy made too many years ago.

The membership form was hard to read. It was grainy and crooked and there was a date on it that betrayed the advanced age of the original document.
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SIGN #4: The $240 special service that you purchased that allows you to post a special graphic on your website to invite people to lookup your BBB records ends up not having the BBB name anywhere on it.

I'm a web developer and I sell web hosting. If I pay for a BBB membership, I want to show it on my website. They inform me that I didn't pay enough to display the BBB logo on my site. The "reliability report" graphic was a cheaper privilege because it didn't have the BBB logo on it. This would have been less of a problem had that graphic not looked as if it was pulled straight out of Microsoft Office clip art from the 1990's. I wasn't going to deface my website with that piece of crap! The privilege to show the BBB logo would cost like another $400-$600. No thanks.
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SIGN #5: Half a year into your membership and you feel like you've been had. They lose track of you and call you up again and start to give you the same sales pitch on why you should join the Better Business Bureau.

I was astonished for two reasons. First it just showed me just how disorganized they were. Second, they gave me the same sales pitch, which made me realize that some of the things they said to convince me into joining was nothing more than sweet talking garbage.
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SIGN #6: After your membership expires, they call you again with a very similar sales pitch as they did the first time. By this time, you realize the "reason" they have for calling you is a false front.

A few months after my membership expires, the same sales person calls me and thanks me for being a member in the past. She tells me that I've been receiving hits on the BBB website and that usually means that people are checking up on me so they can do business with me. She goes on to explain that they have a high rate of successful referrals from their website from people looking for BBB members to do business with. The story is plausible, but I just find it hard to believe that an organization that needed me to talk them through a public records website has the ability to mine their web traffic reports for the business intelligence to make this kind of claim to me.
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I'm sure not every Better Business Bureau is this bad, but with the advent of direct consumer reviews online, it just goes to show how dated and flawed the BBB reporting can be.

This is an automatically generated post created when a new opinion has been posted to the Opinion Boards. You can comment on this opinion directly or post your own opinion]]>
Here's my scenario. A client of mine wants a domain name that's about to expire and re-enter the public domain in a few days. She gets offers from "domain acquisition specialists" to get the domain for her for a minimum of $200. In some cases, these "specialists" actually can come in handy if you're competing for a very popular domain name that will be getting released back into the public domain. In most cases that I've encountered, domain names these days are so specific that the market for your average domain name is limited. Chances are that there aren't many people who want to buy a name like "willworkforsocks.com" away from you.

This was the case for my client and I advised that we just wait it out and pick up the domain at regular price. When the domain did become publicly available, I was shocked to discover that it had been registered by a company going as "DOMAIN DOORMAN". A little research on this company also yieled many aliases and a series of websites for these companies that all looked similar except for some color changes and different logos. Each time I'd search on one of these companies, I'd find countless people complaining of having domain names stolen from them. A lot of them had done research into available domain names online, but waited a few days to register them. When they went back to register, their domain name was already registered by Domain Doorman or an alias company. A lot of these people suspect that their online interactions were snooped upon or stored for data mining because their domain names were so unusual.

I'm not much of a conspiracy believer, so I'm still a little skeptical until I ran into a blog entry by Bob Parsons, the CEO of GoDaddy, detailing something he calls the "Add/Drop Scheme". In this scheme, a domain registrar services company can take advantage of their position to register hundreds of thousands of domain names that they think someone will want. They keep these domain names for five days because they can get a full refund from the central registrar if they return the domain name within five days. Within the five days that they hold the domain name, they're hoping someone will be desperate enough to negotiate with them to get the domain name. People were reporting asking prices that started around $1000. One guy said he negotiated down to a few hundred dollars.

According to Bob Parsons, in the month of March 2006, close to 30 million domain names were registered. Of these registrations, less than 8% were retained, meaning that roughly 27.5 million of these registrations were likely fraudulent.

The good news here is that if you run into a similar scenario, if you wait a few days, the domain may become available again. The worst thing you can do is contact the company that registered the domain away from you, unless it's a legit business that has legitimate use of that name. Wait a few days before you take your next step and if it's available, don't piddle around. Register it before it can happen again.

If you want juicier details about this Domain Doorman company and the schemes that they run, someone set-up an expose' site on them athttp://www.domibot.info]]> Reviewed: Domain Registry of America

Description: Domain Name Registration known for those "patriotic" looking domain name registration notices that they send via the postal service.

Review Title: Domain Name Registry of America is a Borderline Scam · My Rating: Thumbs Down!

My Opinion: This company is a recurring headache for me because they flip out my clients year after year with their deceptive mail notices for domain name renewals. If you own a domain name for a website, you've probably already gotten a renewal notice by mail from a company called Domain Registry of America. They've got the nice colorful American flag as their logo. That's just where the deception starts.

First, it's a Canadian company. Second, they probably aren't your registrar though they use deception to fool unsuspecting people into thinking that they are their registrar. They've already been busted by the FTC and have modestly reformed their act so that they now have to disclose that they're not your registrar and that they want you to transfer your domain name to them, but they word it very cleverly that confuses most people.

Don't be fooled. The main service they offer is still conmanship. Their one year renewal price for a domain name is several times the rate of a competitive price for a domain name and twice the cost of what I consider a reasonable registration fee ($15). Most reputable registrars that charge competitive rates do not send you mail reminders via the post office because the margins are so razor thin for discount domain name registrars that they could literally waste any profit they make on postage.

If you find postal mail notices a valuable service, there are other companies that will do it without being unethical in exchange for a premium fee. Network Solutions is one company that used to send notices by postal mail, but I'm not sure if they still do.

This is an automatically generated post created when a new opinion has been posted to the Opinion Boards. You can comment on this opinion directly or post your own opinion]]>
http://www.checkprogram.com/santaclaracounty

As they say, it's as easy as 1-2-3!

Bad check reports are simple to file, once the Bad Check Resitution Program has recovered the money from the offender 100% of the funds are given to the merchant, there is no minimum dollar restriction, and bad check offenders are required to attend an 8-hour education class at the offender's own expense.

Sheldon and I were very impressed with the talk given by the lawyer who works with the program. It's worth looking into.]]>
i have a little cafe in palo alto. our credit card processing contract is getting over now, so we are free to move on to a new processor. so i wonder if any of your business also take credit charge, and if you have any low rate cc processors to recommend.

also, our credit card printer just broke down, so i'm looking for a new printer also. will barter for food if you have a spare one.

thanks,
cindy.
]]>
I just joined as a BBB member and I'm having second thoughts about it. Their website was broken half the time in the past month and when I've been in contact with them, they appeared to be disorganized, which didn't inspire me to believe that my membership money was wisely spent. Besides the poor communication, one thing that really put me off was when they didn't know they could look up the date of my fictitious business name filing online at the San Jose City Clerk's office site. I couldn't believe I was explaining to the BBB how to look up my records.

I'll be getting my membership packet about a month late due to a snag in the validation process that they didn't contact me about. When I finally get it, I'm hoping to see some things that make me feel better about shelling out dough to support the BBB.

The website for the Silicon Valley BBB chapter is:
http://www.bbbsilicon.org]]>
Who it's for: Owners, partners, and supporters of Silicon Valley based small businesses.

Why start this group: I've taken limited part in some other small business online networks, but didn't like them because some of its members treated it primarily as a sales lead generation pipeline or the group had minimal ties to the Silicon Valley community. I think we have the right mix of people, knowledge, and connections to do better.

What this is for: This group is for discussions and information of specific interest to small businesses in Silicon Valley. We're here to help each other survive and thrive. This is not a place to shamelessly pitch your products or services. You're free to mention what you have to offer, but please do it in context. If you simply want people to know about your local business, create a Merchant Profile instead.

Here's what we need to get this group started:

Members: Join this group (Silicon Valley Small Business Network) if it applies to you. You'll receive some communications that you otherwise may not get.

Volunteer to be a subject expert: If you have skills or knowledge highly needed by small business owners, I'd like to name some subject experts to lead discussion areas and do Q&A. For example, Steven W Schnur, CPA (schnur), has volunteered to answer some general questions about accounting.

Post questions or commentary for other members: Don't be shy, ask business related questions to subject experts or to the group in general or start a discussion about topics of interest to small businesses in Silicon Valley. This group will be made private and open only to approved members after things get rolling.

Create a merchant profile: Social Wave is a community network that integrates the interests of locally owned businesses into the foundations of its services. The more Social Wave members who create a detailed Merchant Profile the larger our directory becomes. I estimate that we need 100 quality Merchant Profiles before there's enough content in the directory for me to promote seriously.

Ideas and Suggestions: We need your thoughts about how to make this group the most useful to you and others like you. Since Social Wave is my personal project, ideas and suggestions can include feature requests in Social Wave to extend its functionality.]]>