community at lists.openmoko.org

Mark wolfmane at gmail.com
Fri Oct 26 04:44:13 CEST 2007


AVee openmoko-comunity at avee.org
On Fri Oct 26 00:40:21 CEST 2007 AVee wrote:
>Did you buy a GTA02? No? Well, in that case, your not a customer, so quit
>bitching about 'customer service'. You are getting a peek into the
>development proccess at FIC, that not something you usually get with other
>companies and you surely can't claim some sort of right to be informed about
>this.
>If you can't handle it, unsubscribe from the community list and wait for the
>announcement you telling you the thing is available, *like you would with any
>other product*. Or be happy with whatever information you may get, realizing
>it's all extra.
>
>AVee

Here's the deal: I'm already a customer in the same way that I'm the
customer of a store the instant I pass the threshold. My experience in
the store determines whether and how much money I spend in the store.
If the employees ignore me (repeatedly) when I ask them a direct
question, and allow other "customers" to scream and yell at me for
simply asking a question, then I certainly will immediately exit the
building and spend my money elsewhere. I also will tell everybody I
know about my experience to prevent them going through the same thing.

Whether you like it or not, OpenMoko will never get off the ground
without the Neo1973, and the Neo1973 will never get off the ground
without early adopters like me to buy it and spread the word. This is
a business venture, not a pet project.

On the other hand, if everything that prospective buyers hear is
negative, that doesn't offer much hope for the future of this project.

Question: Who is it wiser to treat well, someone whose money you
already have, or someone whose money you need?

Anybody here ever hear of the Agenda VR3? Probably very few. History
is littered with multitudes of great ideas and great vaporware that
never made it to mainstream because those behind it either didn't
understand or thought they could get away with ignoring the rules of
business.

The first rule of business is not to alienate potential customers.

Another of the biggest rules of business (and strongly associated with
the first rule) is that when you know you aren't going to make a
deadline (that you have plastered in multiple places all over your Web
site), *before* the deadline passes you let people know what's going
on. Making a single vague reference that buyers may or may not find is
not sufficient.

It's up to you: do the right thing, or go the way of the Agenda VR3.
But if it's the latter, you can't say you haven't been warned.




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