It was an advertisement for an Internet hosting company.  It makes what ‘sounds’ like a very positive statement; regarding the quality of their service – until you think about what they are actually saying!

Here’s what their marketing message said:

“We guarantee that websites hosted on our servers, will be working 99% of the time!”

However, 99% reliability for an Internet hosting company is AWFUL!

The promise of your website being online 99% of the time, if you select them to host your website MIGHT sound like a great deal – but it’s not!  It’s shockingly poor!

What they are ACTUALLY saying, is that if your business has it’s website hosted with them, you can expect it to be down, off-line and unavailable for the equivalent of THREE FULL WORKING DAYS EVERY 100 DAYS! So, over a period of little more than3 months, your potential clients or customers will be unable to find your website for a combined period of 24 hours – (that’s three working days, based on the 8 hour working day model).

There are 2 marketing lessons here

Lesson 1:

The power of a well-crafted marketing message is enormous.  You can make something sound irresistible and inspire people to contact you and buy from you in their droves – even if your service actually sucks!

Lesson 2:

Even with great marketing, unless your service is excellent, you will lose clients just as quickly as you gain them – perhaps even faster!  When I searched for that hosting company’s name on Google; it generated page after page of people complaining about the service they received. If only this company was as devoted to service, as it seems to be with its marketing, it would be massively more successful.

Marketing success in technology companies is just like everywhere else! It comes only when you are able to win AND retain high quality business.  Looking after your clients and providing them with more than they expect, every step of the way, is not only great customer service; it’s extremely good business practice too!

It also stops people posting stuff like this!

I was originally going to write a long post; all about the appalling service I received from web hosting company Dreamhost.com.
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My Dreamhost server was a joke!

I was going to tell you all how Dreamhost put one of my blogs on a server that wasn’t working – then refused to move it onto a working server because; (I’m serious), their server software wouldn’t let them move my blog!  Yes, a hosting company claims they use software that can’t move a blog from one server to another!
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Dreamhost customer service – The worst I have ever experienced

I was even going to tell you that Dreamhost provided me with the worst customer service experience of my whole life! For example, their customer services manager actually advised me to leave them! Embarrassingly for him, he forgot to check my account or he would have known that I had already closed my account, by the time he decided to get in touch! :)

His email, advising me to find another hosting company, came with the offer of payment, if I recommended Dreamhost to people (honestly, I am not making this up!)

Dreamhost suck on Google

Why didn’t I write the full review?  Because I found out that when you do a Google search for the term dreamhost suck, there are already over 60,000 thousand pages you can choose from!