Bus Shopping Tours Melbourne & Sydney
Some four years ago an American corporation changed hands. The new CEO
decided he no longer needed my services and that he would not pay for services
rendered.
At the time, the site was on page one on most engines for the relevant
search terms. Needless to say, it did not stay there.
The site has recently struggled back up to page two in Google after
having been totally invisible for years. The CEO saved $1500, but at what
cost?
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=health+watch
Two years ago I had a similar problem with another Melbourne firm, Great
Car and Boat Rentals - they did a lot of advertising and were very high
profile. Ray Evans, a man well known to Corporate Affairs, failed to pay
the money he owed for web development.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=great+car+and+boat+rentals
Chris, who worked at the shopping tour company for some 15 years, decided
it was time to move on. The reference she was given was adequate tho by
no means glowing. The third job interview went just as well as the previous
two, but again she was unsuccessful. However, the interviewer was kind
enough to suggest that she no longer use the bus company as a reference
as they had badmouthed her - after 15 years!
Debt Collector
Prushka 03 9874 5000
@ $200 to $300 fee to begin
http://www.geocities.com/ugeneugene/ugene.html
http://www.westernaustralia.worldweb.com/ToursActivitiesAdventures/ShoppingTours/
Diabetes
Australia - NSW: Healthy Shopping Tours
http://www.communityguide.com.au/community.cfm?/australia/cat/shopping/shoppingtours/
Virtual Shopping Tours Australia
Fixed.
Any joy with getting Melbourne IT to give you the registry key?
Cheers,
Russell.
At 12:02 PM 25/05/2004 +1000, you wrote:
> Hi Russell, Fundraising spelt wrong a few
times. Please fix for us.
>Thank you Michelle SHOPPING SPREE TOURS PTY LTD
>HAVE WON THREE CONSECUTIVE TOURISM AWARDS AND ARE IN THE VICTORIAN
TOURISM
>'HALL OF FAME'
------------------------------
Michelle, did you get this one?
------------------------
Can you pass the following on to Dean, please Michelle:
2) Fix all images, some mispelt (ie heading_fr_melb.gif), others distorted.
3) Fix all misspellings in text, spellcheck all pages. DONE
4) Include tourism associations and awards logos on front page. DONE
5) Extend blue dividing line currently directly beneath main logo so
that it continues across page dividing two sets of pink buttons. DONE
5b) On ie fundraising page, make space between first & second rows
of buttons.
Deleted space, see result, let me know.
6) Delete superfluous pink contact buttons (there are currently two
at top of most pages) DONE
10) Create new mailbox for Dean: drust@shoppingspree.com.au
Dean, can we leave this til the site's moved to the new server? It's
a doddle to do on the new one, and a pain on the old one.
Remainder will get to tomorrow, most likely. That's about 4 hours so
far.
Cheers,
Russell.
Changes:
Index.html (and possibly other pages, lost track)
Old Sentence:
Melbourne is renown as a fantastic shopping city. With approximately
85% of the manufacturing for Australia based in Melbourne, Shopping Spree
Tours give your clients the
best value shopping in Australia.
Changed to: is renowned..." and "gives your clients...
New Sentence:
Shopping Spree Tours has won the Koala Award for tourism marketing
in Asia, and is a triple Victorian Tourism Award winner - resulting in
their inclusion in the Hall of Fame.
Old sentence:
Shopping Spree Tours won the Koala Award for tourism marketing in Asia
are triple Victorian Tourism Award winners - resulting in their inclusion
in the Hall of Fame.
Old sentence:
<p>We have the knowledge and the skills, combined with
our friendly staff to ensure you have a fun filled and memorable day.
Our
professional, friendly guides will ensure that your day will
run
like clockwork.
New:
<p>Our friendly staff combine the knowledge and the skills to ensure
you have a fun filled and memorable day. Our
professional, friendly guides will ensure that your day will run like
clockwork.
At 02:41 PM 1/06/2004 +1000, you wrote:
> Hi Russell, On our website the word fundraising is still
spelt
>incorrect in a few places, also Barry in Sydney is still unable to
print
>out pages from the internet correctly. There is a date which
is wrong with
>Sydney's prices. Should be valid until 31/03/2005. Please fix.
Regards,
>Michelle SHOPPING SPREE TOURS PTY LTD
>HAVE WON THREE CONSECUTIVE TOURISM AWARDS AND ARE IN THE VICTORIAN
TOURISM
>'HALL OF FAME'
--------------------
Dean, the following is one of the emails I sent and for which I await
a reply. It refers to the squashed images on the website.
------------------------
Michelle, did you get this one?
------------------------
Can you pass the following on to Glenn please Michelle:
Glen,
need originals of:
Front_Girls_2.jpg on melb_fr.htm
front1.jpg on group.htm
Front-Main.jpg on melbourne_shopping_tours.htm
jag1.jpg on t_tours_splash.htm
| The Crazyguy Letter
Congrats on new toy. It's like a miniature Wurlitzer, but with more
records, yes?
Have had no work at all much for the past couple of months, then this
past
fortnight flat chat most days updating, revamping and building new
sites.
One for a mate with a business jet charter operation - I get to go
flying
in a Citation as part payment. Another for a US client for his toy
- it's a
160 foot yacht with a 3 million dollar helicopter on the back, total
package worth well over $30m. He'll pay me for the site about what
he spent
on lunch yesterday.
One of my clients went mad, but they didn't shoot him. He shot himself.
In
both feet. As briefly as possible: he gave me oral instructions for
large
number of mods to site which someone else built. I emailed him a precis
of
those instructions as I understood them, carried out all I could very
promptly and emailed his associate for items I needed to complete a
part,
and phoned him about another part - in particular my repeated request
for
the registry key so I could move the site to another server as the
one it
was on I could not give him access to. He wanted access so he could
update
the site himself, but as access to the server also gave him access
to other
sites on that server security would be compromised. He knew all this,
as I
had made it very clear what the story was.
Some weeks went by after I'd emailed him yet again with an outline of
where
I was up to, and still no replies or phone calls. I didn't worry, as
I'd
had this happened with them before.
Then an email comes, firstly accusing me of doing none of the work
requested, and demanding access to the server. I replied that there
must be
some misunderstanding, and later that evening re-sent one of the emails
which made it obvious that it had been sent twice before, one requesting
images to finish part of the job.
The following morning he phoned, absolutely frothing at the mouth, again
demanding access to the server. Let me mention here that this is a
guy who
up until very recently could barely spell "internet", let alone update
a
website. Of course I again refused access. He began calling me all
the
names under the sun, repeatedly using foul language, and threatening
to
send thugs around to "sort me out". I twice hung up on him, the second
time
taking the phone off the hook.
As you may imagine, I was very upset.
I sat down and wrote him a terse letter, giving him seven days to pay
his
outstanding account (he hadn't paid it for 9 months, mind), and to
move his
domain elsewhere.
He replied with a long rant of almost incomprehensible gibberish with
further threats (tho not this time of physical violence) and very little
punctuation. He writes the way he talks.
I did not reply.
So there he is, hopping about on one foot. He'd tried to bully me to
cover
his own incompetence - he actually used the hackneyed phrase "the customer
is always right" - and ended up losing the best webmaster he's ever
likely
to come across. (That's me, in case you were wondering, so shut it!)
Now for the second salvo. It seems my prompting did the trick, coz as
I was
doing an update which involved his site (more on that below), I discovered
it wasn't there anymore. Great news, says I, and dash off to see what
he'd
put up in its place. Nothing. Nada. Just a nice white server page saying
there might be a site here one day. BANG! Perfect shot!
Did I chuckle, or what? :)
And re the Amazon thing, I think I've sussed it, at long last. I believe
that it is the use of the highlight pages used on numerous sites to
cross-link with others. My guess is that these have been interpreted
as
link farms, and have been penalised accordingly.
And the really nice thing is that I found it when I was researching
the
link structures used to get aforementioned CrazyGuy's site to the top
of
the pops in the search engines (#1 in Sydney, #2 in Melbourne). I won't
know for sure whether I've fixed it until the hits jump back up again.
This
past month has been a total disaster - [Deleted]
If I recall correctly, it was around last August that something similar
occurred, and once I fixed it the hits came back in a matter of days.
If I
get so lucky again, I think rather than send CrazyGuy a writ, I'll
send
roses. And maybe a get well soon card. :)
Cheers,
Russell.
Add a box of nutbars, Snickers perhaps ;)
J. |
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