Keeping In Sync
September 19, 2007 on 2:50 pm | In Business, Funnyish, Insider View, Musings by Josh Jones |
It’s been Tearin’ Up My Heart for a while that I can’t get Verizon’s FiOS service to anywhere I’ve EVER lived.
So… many… times… I check the availability on their site.
When the day finally dawns that Verizon blesses me with their almighty 30mbs beam of light, I predict the deluge of automatic notifications will blot out the sun. And along with it incoming email for everybody on looney.
Or maybe not. Because I hadn’t received one single notification when POP! I saw a new billboard advertising FiOS this weekend while at the Frank Gehry’s first/worst architectural project food court.
Had FiOS finally reared its ugly head to darken the shores of my fair little town? I sure hoped so! I was so excited I couldn’t even waiut to get back online and check their web site one final time.. I had to know immediately!
So I quickly licked the hummus off my fingers (pita is for jerks!) and dialed (888) GET-FIOS I think… already salivating and slightly aroused by how much more dominant my Bomberman Live would be with a 5mbs upload. Not to mention I’d just pre-ordered some Halo 3. (They asked me how much I wanted to prepay! Uh, what’s the minimum? $5. FIVE DOLLARS THEN!)
Anyway, here’s how the conversation went:
Thank you for your interest in Verizon FiOS .. what is your home telephone number so we can qualify your address?
Actually, I don’t use a land line.
Then we can’t check.
Uh, do you have internet?
Uh, what? Sort of.
Then go check at verizon.com!
I’m sorry, we can only check if you have a home telephone number with Verizon, would you like me to give you the number of your local Verizon sales office, who is closed until Monday?
No, thanks. I’m Gone.
URGH!
I had to know though, so I called right back, this time equipped with my neighbor’s Verizon landline number.
Thank you for your interest in Verizon FiOS .. what is your home telephone number so we can qualify your address?
310-hamana mum humuna
Thank you. You qualify for Verizon FiOS!
F*********** yeah!
Indeed. Now, are you the account holder?
No.
Are you an adult over 18 who is authorized to make decisions for the account holder?
No.
…….. oh. ……. uh… …….
Ha, no script for that, EH?! How much is it anyway?
30mbs down and 5mbs up is $54.95/month!
NICE.
Oh man, I was soo stoked that I immediately went back home and watched the Patriots choke the Chargers.
Much later that night, I remembered how stoked I was, and decided to go sign up online.
Well, my stokedidity died quick.
According to the site, my address did not qualify.. and neither did my neighbors! URGHTHT!!!
On top of that, it’s $179.95 a month, not $54.95! I don’t know where that came from.
So, I guess it’s a few more years of blaming it on the lag for me.
What the point of this anecdote was.
It’s hard to get an entire company *N SYNC. All the time, really.. but especially when there’s a new product, promotion, or feature.
Usually in a big company the website is the thing you can trust the most. It’s run by “corporate” and is generally the official company line. Ironically, for small companies the website is often the last thing to be updated, and so is usually the least reliable source of up-to-date availability, pricing, products, and all dat.
Next down the clue-stick tree is the phone sales and support team. If it’s a big company, they’ve got a lot of people working those phones, and generally they’re fairly low paid/respected and not too interested in keeping up to date on the latest and greatest stuff from corporate.
I’m sure there’s some kind of announcement, and maybe even 15 minutes of training for everybody… but until that new thing’s been out a few months, be prepared for some serious asynchronocity between what you read on the web and what you hear on the phone.
Finally, at the furthest orbit of in-the-loop solar system, is actual physical retail employees. If a company’s got retail branches, no matter if they sell cell phones, cable tv, hamburgers, shoes, or dog food, keeping EVERY employee in EVERY physically separated retail branch on the same page is, as they say in the hosting business, “sumn bitch”.
Even DreamHost, without that many employees, who are all in LA, and with no retail branches and no phone support has a very hard time getting the word out about new features internally!
It’s like these people don’t read! Or even listen! Or are never told!
Believe you me, the moment you finish reading that hilarious DreamHost newsletter every month, you know more about the current state of DreamHost than 90% of the people who work here!
But don’t worry, when you write in asking why you still haven’t been invited to DreamHost PS they’ll eventually need to ask somebody “What’s a PS?” … and then they’ll find out, usually even before they respond to your message!
Hopefully you won’t get too mad now if at times it seems as though the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. Or vice versa.
Because they don’t. But hey, it’s still better than only having one hand.
So, rather than getting angry all the times somebody in a company doesn’t know about their own new product, rejoice every time they do!
Be thrilled when you go to an Apple store to ask about the iPod Touch and they know “It’s not out until the end of the month.”
Shout “heckolluyeah” when you go into the T-Mobile store to get a HotSpot@Home phone and you’re lucky enough to find somebody there who just read about it on Gizmodo like you did!
And hug your keyboard and kiss your mouse when a Happy DreamHost Support Teamer actually knows we have a Cron Jobs tab or a place for end users to change their own mailbox password! (Psst… try it at your own domain.)
But This I Promise You
If we announce anything next Monday, September 24th, 2007, everybody at the company will already know about it!
Just this once.
Bye Bye Bye!
40 Responses to “Keeping In Sync”
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Is this the long-awaited “we fill your empty disk space with free porn” announcement?
September 19th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Um… New feature coming out? That’s what, three months in a row?
September 19th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
interesting “If we announce anything next Monday, September 24th, 2007, everybody at the company will already know about it!”
Seems something big is coming up.
Note: Excited state
September 19th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I watched for two weeks as Verizon tore up my whole street (it’s only about 5 miles in total) to lay down fiber optic cables. I know this is what they were doing, because I asked them.
Yet I STILL can’t get it at my house, with it running under the front of my driveway. Nice.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
always Justin haha
September 19th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
I can’t want for next Monday.
What in the world will the new feature be?
MY WISH LIST FOR MONDAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT:
—————————————
* Postgres database support
* nginx or lighttpd web server support
* local disk access on DreamhostPS servers (for fast serving)
* some type of php accelerator (zend, Alternative PHP Cache (APC), eAccelerator etc..)
* cheaper DreamhostPS servers
September 19th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
I wish it will be something totally unexpected, totally awesome and something, which will just make us all go crazy for happiness. :-)
September 19th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
I feel manipulated.
The post began wonderfully, then turned into a commercial.
I thought of recommending this post to others because of the nice insights in it but then the ending killed this thought.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Hey, that’s my birthday! You better make this one good! :)
-Kalle.
September 20th, 2007 at 12:54 am
So out of sheer curiosity, was the guy who came and asked you “What’s Dreamhost PS” the same guy who was supposed to install it? If so, thanks for reminding him :P
- Vlad
September 20th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Maybe we’ll all get our accounts upgraded to a dedicated server each..or not as the case may be, an API for the web panel would be nice though.
Lee
September 20th, 2007 at 8:41 am
I believe FiOS can only be found in Tampa FL, Fort Worth/Dallas TX, New York NY/New England, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Fort Wayne, DC/MD/Northern VA, Virginia Beach, Los Angeles, and Portland OR….
But thats just completely arbitrary if you aks me…
September 20th, 2007 at 9:40 am
+1 DreamhostPS servers for all!!!!
September 20th, 2007 at 10:22 am
If by some stroke of genius there is suddenly FiOS available in your place, make sure they don’t cut the copper line (which they might very well do, in some areas).
Slashdot article in my name above.
September 20th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
You’ve just inked a deal that makes ALL Dreamhosters NSYNC affiliates, and we can put little ready made “Buy Some NSYNC Shit Here” buttons with code on our website, and everytime somebody buys some NSYNC shit we get a cut deposited into our Dreamhost affiliate accounts?
September 20th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Ha, it’s the Dreamhost Phone :-)
September 20th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I’m hoping it’s their SIP service/compatibility-with-domain feature. Didn’t they tout that a couple years ago? It’s somewhere in the blog archives.
September 20th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Will it be a Macintosh Tablet computer?
Or, even better…101% uptime.
In the end, I’d really be stoked if DreamHost installed FiOS to my home as part of my Crazy Domain Insane package. Maybe I should suggest it and put it up for a vote.
September 20th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
+2 for dreamhostPS for all!
September 20th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I know what’s happening next week! =D
Thursday, to be exact. But it’s awesome enough to last the entire week… month… year! :’D
September 21st, 2007 at 7:11 am
Holy foreshadowing, Batman!
September 21st, 2007 at 10:13 am
IPHONE control panel???????
September 21st, 2007 at 11:51 am
Uh man. I think I need to do some expectation management now!
It’s nothing TOO awesome, really.. settle down please.
And I’m not sure what MK is talking about!
September 21st, 2007 at 12:01 pm
As awesome as keywords? :D
September 21st, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I hope it’s that we get upgraded from unlimited domains to unlimited domains plus one.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:49 pm
I heard a rumor that for every day you have been a Dreamhost customer, Dreamhost is going to credit your account $0.10.
Which translates to every year you’ve been a customer, you will get %36.50 credited to your account.
How awesome is that!!!
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I hope it’s the ability to use NGINX web server.
It uses less memory than Apache is crazy fast.
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Josh
Does the Monday Dreamhost release have anything to do with Wordpress releasing version 2.3 on Monday ?
September 24th, 2007 at 6:26 am
It’s Monday baby!
September 24th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Rumor has it, it has something to do with VPS resource. Eg. like files forever or growing disk space.
September 24th, 2007 at 10:19 am
It’s like the iPhone launch all over again!
September 24th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Probably just the end-of-beta for DHPS.
September 24th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[...] was hinted last week that DreamHost would announce something today Monday - and I’ve got a hunch about what it [...]
September 24th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I bet it is a special birthday promo for DreamHost’s 10 Years Birthday!
Happy Birthday DreamHost!
September 24th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
See comment 33. That was I refering too. ;P
September 24th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
[...] 500 GB Disk Storage, 5 TB Monthly Bandwidth, plus many more features - from $5.95/month! [...]
September 24th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
MK - Do you know which new features they will introduce?
September 24th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Check the home page. If it isn’t working; refresh. (;
And DH’s bday was the 24th? I thought it was the 27th X:
September 24th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
[...] and if you read the whole thing, you might feel a little less let down about the announcement I mentioned last post just being a freaking birthday [...]
November 24th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Man thats one huge difference between 179 and 55. Thats almost impossible. the old intro offer at 55 moving to 179 after three months is not even that big of a difference.