AlwaysWoW! For a Great Great WoW in Life

Thoughts from me about things that are cool, that are WoW, that blow me away. Observations about businesses and people from a wide variety of life. Daily encounters - and thoughts outside the box, inside the box and without any box. New thinking, and challenging old thinking. Passionate about life, about respect, and about integrity.

Friday, September 17, 2004

An ambassador for GoDaddy - Thanks Anita

I found one – someone who is passionate about a service provided. So passionate that she took the effort to tell me that she doesn’t agree with me. She was looking up something about GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com/), which is a webhosting company. And she came across my blog.

The story is the following: A long time back, I tried to move a domain from Network Solutions to GoDaddy. I think, and still believe that Network Solutions is extremely, outrageously expensive, but they serviced me very well the couple of times I was in touch with them and were very responsive.

But they were also my first webhosting company, and somehow, I stuck with them. Than I wanted to move a domain to GoDaddy. I wanted to move to a different provider and I researched a long time, before I decided to make the move to GoDaddy. I wanted to move to them because they were “recommended” by CNet. It didn’t work out – I never got news from them, even after I inquired a couple of times. They just ignored me, even after I paid for the transfer. Even a mail to their CEO didn’t work out and I never got a refund (to be honest, they state that you don’t get a refund, if a transfer failed).

So I wrote a somewhat nasty blog entry (http://alwayswow.blogspot.com/2003/08/wwwgodaddycom-web-domain-company.html), describing the whole story. That was it for me.

Now, today, I received an e-mail from Canada – and the writer was really good and very supportive of GoDaddy. I would call her an ambassador for GoDaddy and those that recommend services are the best, a company can get.

They work for free for a company and are simply in love with a company – this s beyond simple loyalty. They create the buzz for a company, spread the word and they are the ones that others believe in. I believe in something friends tell me about. I listen to friends’ and relative’s recommendations, more than I listen to advertisements and marketers.

Experiences with marketers are generally bad – just listen to someone trying to sell you something. Everybody knows that advertisement is in the face of the consumer, and most switch TV channels to avoid them. When I see an ad in the newspaper, I flip the page, hardly looking at who is advertising there. Word of Mouth is powerful.

Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/ ) doesn’t “do” advertisement anymore. They believe that they rather spend the money in reducing the price of their products. They retreated from advertisements, after tests showed them, that sales didn’t increase much after a campaign. So Word of Mouth is way more effective, respectable and, most f all, believable, than advertisement, and sales people or marketing.

And she really proved her point, and this blog entry is dedicated to her – Thanks Anita. For those of the readers, who want to see her webpage, check http://www.anitaroy.com/
There is something more funny behind the story with GoDaddy. GoDaddy is not necessarily the right name for a good branding, at least not in the beginning. Some wrong associations. Now, when I ordered a name from GoDaddy (a process without problems – the transfer was the difficult one, that upset me), someone from HSBC Creditcard Center called my wife at that time.

They always call, when I do an online or larger purchase, to verify that it was really me (here is a blog entry about I: http://alwayswow.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_alwayswow_archive.html ) . Normally, my wife (the center has her name) would ask what I purchased to verify it – she knows the staff that I buy, and can quickly say yes (always) or no (never happened, luckily). Only that time, the person from HSBC said – I cannot tell you what your husband bought. Now this is secrecy.

Oh - by the way: Here is her mail:


"HelloI read your blog while searching for godaddy info on something else.Anyway, I really like godaddy and have had nothing but excellent servicefrom them. Network Solutions indeed does make it hard to take away a namefrom them. I have registered dozens of domains for myself and my clients,and always good service.

Anita
Canada"

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