You Don't Always Get What You Pay For, But Sometimes You Get It For Free

Here in the UK we're used to bad or non-existent customer service, so much so that it's virtually ingrained into our genes. We're well aware of the oft used expression that you get what you pay for except that you actually don't; you continue to pay and act pleasantly surprised when you actually get what you've paid for, murmuring "well that's a turn up for the books". We look longingly across the Atlantic to the US and talk admiringly of the "American service culture" whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that our US counterparts get paid rock bottom wages and have to work damn hard to garner enough tips to make a living.

But there are exceptions and the global geographic reach of the Internet means that those here in the UK we get to benefit from these exceptions. Consider the following case of Internet startup (and yes, it's a US Internet startup but let's just conveniently overlook that for a moment) posterous.com. Now I know I'm writing about Posterous a lot at the moment but indulge me for a moment.Whilst playing with Posterous' free, yes free, service I noticed a slight ... deficiency which I documented here. Posterous claims to handle links to images in a sane manner; their FAQ says"We’ll do smarter things for photos, MP3’s, documents and video (both links AND files)”.So I tried a sample post with links to TwitPicYFrogFlickr and, pushing it a bit, Facebook. YFrog and Flickr worked flawlessly, Facebook didn't but that wasn't unexpected, but TwitPic didn't and that was unexpected. So I noted this in a Twitter post directed at the Posterous Twitter account: And there I left it, either expecting a non committal response, or none at all. Twenty four minutes later, two four, twenty four, I got a reply.

What? Just like that? Surely not, they obviously meant they'd added it to the list of stuff they really need to fix. But apparently not. And I tested it and it worked. Conditioned as I am to the UK norm, this was pretty unheard of, hence the need to write this experience up. So on the Internet, at least, you don't always get what you pay for, but sometimes you get it for free. Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Gary
Gary Gale

I'm Gary ... a Husband, Father, CTO at Kamma, geotechnologist, map geek, coffee addict, Sci-fi fan, UNIX and Mac user