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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

A Tale of Two Issues

Two things happened on Tuesday that needed sorting out:

• I clicked the wrong link in TripIt and my main account got wiped out as a consequence
• I discovered that BusinessWeek had got it into their heads I am on Sun's Board

The path the two issues have tracked as the week has progressed couldn't be more different.

Despite the TripIt issue being a case of user error (albeit induced by bad design!), the folks over there were extremely helpful and took my direct e-mail to the first person I thought of as sufficient indication they needed to engage. I had good, direct communication from an empowered employee who took ownership of the problem, checked in with me regularly to make sure the actions they were taking were OK with me and told me what to expect. I had my main TripIt account re-instated after 48 hours. I even had TripIt's VP of Product, Will Aldrich, show up in blog comments to apologise for the problem happening and to say they are redesigning the UI area that triggered the issue. Great stuff, very encouraging and restorative to my shaken faith - thanks, everyone.

The BusinessWeek issue has been exactly the opposite. Despite it being an egregious error on the part of BusinessWeek that has nothing whatever to do with me and read incredibly badly on their reputation for accuracy, I got something of a brush-off. My report to their editor was forwarded to a staff member who told me (via cut-and-paste text) that I should have filled in a form reachable via a pale grey icon below the fold and on the far right on the erroneous page. Nothing much happened until I sent the same text as I'd sent the editor via that form a day later when I found it. What then happened was a reply saying they would look into the issue appeared from some other company (clearly a supplier). The matter is still not resolved as of the time of writing, and I was just told it could take several days to make their listing match the SEC filings. [Update on April 14: Fixed at 4:25pm]

One of these companies has a great future.

posted at 11:46 PM (UK) | |