Search, Marketing and Whatever

Amazed at the MSN response I drafted a response. The response was actually sent 1-2 weeks after the support email was received. The delay was caused by a very busy work time and the fact that when I first read the support email I was too frustrated by the lack of customer service to respond.

K.

Forgive the late response, I had an emergency that came up and took my focus away from the adcenter concerns.

“I would also like to suggest that you email the representative that was handling your account in the QuickLauch Program and advise them of the issues that have caused you concern.”

Can I ask why you would like me to contact this person? From an outsider’s perspective I have requested help from Adcenter Support regarding a problem and now been told to contact someone else from Adcenter staff to fix it, which seems highly curious to me. Shouldn’t any support person from Adcenter be able to fix the problem? Shouldn’t the support person I originally talked to, or the person who followed up with me (you), take ownership of the problem and come up with a solution?

“If these steps should prove unsuccessful we ! as Microsoft adCenter Support agents would like to offer our services to walk you through the steps of creating new Campaigns and Orders.”

So I’ve talked to someone at Adcenter Support, been emailed a response from Adcenter Support, and now as soon as I get done talking to the person who originally signed me up to Adcenter, Adcenter Support will be happy to offer their services?Kathy, I’m not angry with you I promise. : ) You are likely caught in some goofy system that requires you to request customers like myself to jump through hoops that make no sense. I will try to find the contact information for the adcenter quicklaunch person who helped me originally. (That would be the same person who told me at the end of the setup that all questions would be handled by Adcenter Support in the future.) If he is able to take care of my problem easily I will be pleased but still baffled by the process. If he cannot assist me I will likely just deal with the problem myself, no offense intended. You see, I already know how to set up new campaigns and orders. I contacted Adcenter Support to let you know that while you seem to reject hundreds of on topic keywords in orders I set up you allowed words and ads that were clearly not on topic to run in the campaign set up incorrectly by your own people. Oh, I was also hoping someone would be willing to refund some of the campaign spend since it was clearly wasted money.Sincerely,

PS - I really do hate to grumble from the sidelines so if you know of any job openings in Adcenter send me a link to the application page. I’m pretty sure I could help sorting out system and customer service concerns from the customer perspective. ; )

Following is a copy of the email response that I recieved from the adCenter Advertiser Support Team (the bolded text was added to highlight and was not a part of the original email):

Thank you for contacting Microsoft adCenter Support, my name is Kathy.

It is my understanding that on December 29, 2005 you had your ads created by our Quick Launch Program. Upon the completion of these services your ads became active. Time has passed and you have been looking into your account and have realized that there are some errors in some of your Campaigns and Orders. I understand that this may be causing you some inconvenience and I am going to assist you to the best of my ability.

In regards to the phone conversation that we had this morning, we would like to suggest that until a resolution to these issues have been found that you pause any orders that may be causing you concern. I would also like to suggest that you email the representative that was handling your account in the QuickLauch Program and advise them of the issues that have caused you concern.

If these steps should prove unsuccessful we ! as Microsoft adCenter Support agents would like to offer our services to walk you through the steps of creating new Campaigns and Orders. If you require any further assistance regarding this issue please refer to service ticket #1013939481.

Again, I would like to thank you for your patience regarding this matter and would like to offer our assistance in any way possible.

Thank you again, for contacting Microsoft adCenter. If you would like you may also contact us by phone. We can be reached at 1-800-518-5689. Our hours are 6am - 6pm PST, 7 days a week. Microsoft adCenter also contains a complete set of help topics to answer your questions, guide you through tasks, and provide useful tips. Help topics will appear on a narrow pane right beside the Microsoft adCenter page you are viewing. Simply click Help in the upper-right corner of any Microsoft adCenter page.
Sincerely,
K.

Microsoft adCenter Support

Coming up next: My Email Response in MSN Support Trouble Part 3

In December I received the chance to to join the MSN adCenter quicklaunch program. This program allowed a small group of people to test out the upcoming MSN search advertising program before it went into a full beta program. As a part of the quicklaunch I was designated an adCenter representative to facilitate the set up process. It was a good thing that I had help or I would have never gotten my account up and running. I had a series of quirky issues getting my username and password accepted which took multiple emails, phone calls, and only ended when J. (my adCenter rep) created an account for me out of frustration. However, once things were up and running I was pleased with the quality and price of the traffic I received and added additional campaigns to my account to take further advantage of the program.

Fast Forward to late April/early May. While doing some checking on my account I decided to look over one of the campaigns originally set up by quicklaunch. I had only looked it over briefly when it went live at the end of December and wanted to compare this campaign to some that I had set up since. Most notably, I was curious if I would see any “rejected” keywords since in campaigns I have set up adCenter has rejected a rather large percentage of them. I didn’t find many rejected keywords but what I found was quite surprising. The quicklaunch representative had set up multiple campaigns for me for different websites/markets. In one campiagn (hypotheticaly for auto insurance) I found my most productive order was full of keywords that were intended for MP3 players. (again - hypothetically) I was quite frustrated to see that the two ads for the order went to the two different sites, used the same keywords and yet there were no more than 5 rejected keywords for either ad. In other words, my order was sending people who saw an ad for auto insurance to my MP3 site in addition to sending MP3 interested people to my auto insurance site!
I called adCenter support which was a chore in itself since the help information kept pointing me to a page that was supposed to have a contact number that didn’t have any information on it. After a bit of sleuthing I found a number and spoke with a very friendly adCenter support person. S. was very friendly but didn’t strike me as being very familiar with the system. I had to basically explain to S. some of the features of the program (really!) and was informed by S. that she was not really sure how a particular function worked. At least S. created a ticket for me explaining the problem and assured me that I would hear back soon as to:

• how they could quickly and easily fix the account for me to save me time and hassle.
• whether they could refund some or all of my campaign spend since it was clearly not sending users to the type of information it was supposed to.

Now, I fully admit that I should have been more careful in looking over the campaigns set up by J. the quicklaunch representative, but it didn’t seem like I was asking a lot to have adCenter support fix the problem for me and to refund some money. Well, I’ve been wrong before.

Coming Up Soon - adCenter Woes Pt 2

Okay, the big advertising push that Vonage is making is that you can save up to 50% off your phone bill. While I’m sure that is true for some people it is not going to be true for me. Here is a look at what the first year expense will be and would have been.

Current Phone Company

• $33.00 X 12 for one line, caller id, and call waiting
• $0.00 for long distance (cell phone is used for all of that)

Total for current phone - $396.00
Vonage

• $25.00 X 12 for the same features + unlimited long distance in the U.S.
• -$25.00 for first month free
• $30.00 for set up fee
• $10.00 for shipping and handling
• $1.00 regulatory recovery fee
• $1.00 911 cost recovery

Total for Vonage - $318.00

So I should save about $80.00 over the first year which isn’t bad. However, keep this in mind. If I choose to cancel Vonage after the first month and before a year contract is up then I will have to pay them an additional $40.00 disconnection fee. Also, I would encourage anyone looking at Vonage to keep their current phone plan for at least the first month to see if they are happy with the service. I have a friend who signed up for Vonage but had trouble with their DSL service making it unworkable to keep Vonage. You wouldn’t want to cancel your local phone company, try Vonage out, find it didn’t work for you and have to “re-signup” with the local company. That being the case I have to add another $33.00 into the Vonage plan for the first year. So, realistically I will save $45.00 over the year (under $4.00 a month) if I keep Vonage. If I cancel at the 11 month mark I would save $5.00 as long as my local company didn’t charge me an activation fee.

Am I saying that Vonage is a bad deal? No, not at all. I’m simply suggesting that before you sign up thinking you’ll save 30-50% off your current phone bill you should do the math to find out if it works for you. My guess is I’ll keep Vonage if for no other reason I’ve had no options for a home phone service in the past. Vonage probably wins just because I like to stick it monopolies.

I signed up with Vonage (VOIP) recently and actually got my “internet phone service start up kit” in the mail yesterday. Today I was able to get everything connected and operational so I thought I would give my early impressions of the process so far.

Online Sign up: As I begain the online signup I was asked to input a phone number. It wasn’t clear (to me) if putting in this number meant that Vonage was going to have it switched over to their system. (I’m keeping my standard phone service, at least for now) It became clear I could not sign up without inputing a phone number so I gave up and called their sales toll free number.

Telephone sign up: The telephone sign up went more smoothly. However, while giving my credit card infomation the person helping me misheard one of the numbers and was forced to ask for them to be repeated as the card was rejected when she tried to process it. After getting the number a second time she assured me I was all set.
CC Processing: Getting off the phone with Vonage I received an email thanking me for becoming a customer. I also learned that my credit card had been rejected. I wasn’t worried knowing that the representative had run my card twice. I figured I by waiting I would get another email assuring me that my VOIP startup kit was being shipped. Unfortunately, I still had not received a new email by the next morning. I logged into Vonage and for the third time I gave my credit card information - this time everything went through.

Shipping: I paid an additional few dollars to have my startup kit shipped by DHL in 2-3 days. I orignally paid for the service on Wednesday and then had to re-submit my card information on Thursday morning. I did not receive my startup kit until the following Wednesday which seemed like a long 2-3 days. Yes, I realize they probably shipped it on Friday and then it likely sat somewhere on Saturday and Sunday but I still count that as four days. Maybe I’m just impatient though.

Setup - The setup of the broadband router (which has the special phone plugin) was simple, really. Plug in your broadband connection, connect your computer to the back of the router and connect your phone to the back of the router as well. You’re done.
Website account - Looking at my account information on the vonage website was for lack of a better word goofy. The website was very slow and I was forced to re-enter my username and password when I went to check my voicemail settings within 2 minutes of initially logging in. Luckily I suspect I won’t need to change my account settings that often.

Okay, that’s my initial thoughts. I will post more soon, including why I don’t think Vonage is as good of a deal as I initially thought.

A friend dropped this url to me in IM today. It’s called redneck surfing but I think the more accurate title is “people do very dumb things”. Take a look: Redneck Surfing

When I was a kid I used to read a lot, biographies, science fiction, even encyclopedias. I grew up pretending to save galaxies, discover a new cure for a deadly disease, or fight for the oppressed and down-trodden. Then life happened- high school, college, a job, marriage and kids. While I still like to read and dream of doing extrodinary things my reality is one without blasters or life-threatening dilemas. My big issue on any given day is whether to make dinner before the wife gets home or hope she is less tired than I am and is up to making it.

For most of us the things that we take for granted will be our legacy for good or bad. Did you give extra support to your spouse on a day they needed it? Did your relationship with your kid come first? Did you do anything for someone else without the thought of what you would get back? I’ll never have my name listed in an encyclopdia like Commodore Matthew Perry (who is credited with opening Japan to trading with the west). Instead what will carry on from me after I die will be my children and the relationships I created with others. Thus the terribly mundane things in life are what really matters, a realization that most of us get too caught up in surviving jobs, bills, and dreaming of the weekend to remember.

“It’s likely that the greatest things you will achieve in life will come out of the most mundane parts of your life.”

Welcome to Weasely One.
The plan is to record one weasel’s thoughts and experiences, for better or worse. Not a diary per se, just an outlet for whatever comes to mind which is likely to be quite a varied list of subjects.  Drop by anytime and feel free to comment on whatever interests you.