Net­work Solu­tions is, I’m sure, a spec­tac­u­lar com­pany to work for, and they have some very sat­is­fied cus­tomers. These facts will not sway my opin­ion of the com­pany, how­ever. They’ve been around since the Inter­net world was dank, dark hole peo­pled by troll-nerds in base­ment caves with green and amber mono­chrome mon­i­tors, and mem­ory was denoted by the let­ter “K” instead of “M” or “G” (which may be the source of the prob­lems I’m about to outline).

Today, I’m attempt­ing to set up a client with a test site so that they can see the supe­ri­or­ity of a con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem over their exist­ing sta­tic web­site. It’s a redesign job that, when I took it, looked like a few fun hours at the office. In ret­ro­spect, I’m going to start charg­ing a “Net­Sol” fee…

Cute, huh?

That’s right, they’re hosted at Net­work Solu­tions (but then, I’ll bet you guessed that already). So, they’ve given me the accesses I need to make the changes I need to make, and all should be well, right? Wrong…

I fol­lowed every link on their site to find infor­ma­tion which should be dis­played on the main account man­age­ment page (even in a lit­tle ajax pop-up would be nice). After an hour, I decided to call the sup­port num­ber which thank­fully is promi­nent. I’m sure I’m not the only per­son who’s had dif­fi­culty find­ing some­thing on their site. Even their site search turns up noth­ing use­ful. Two words, Net­Sol… Usabil­ity Study… Per­form one. You have the money, and the technology.

I under­stand, it’s Sat­ur­day, so I can’t expect instant ser­vice, but I spent 27 min­utes on hold, wait­ing for a cus­tomer ser­vice rep. No too awful, except for the fact that the only song in the hold music cue is Pachelbel’s Can­non in D Major. Once through is enough, but as a divorced man I can think of some pretty bad punk rock I’d rather hear than that tune.

Here’s a piece of advice for any­one with a call cen­ter. If you are likely to have any­one on hold for more than say, five min­utes, try play­ing up Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons. I can’t think of a sin­gle per­son who would con­sider slit­ting his wrists to stop hear­ing it, and it likely won’t remind any­one of a wed­ding. Not only that, but it’s long if you play the whole thing. It’ll help pass the time for those 45 minute waits. When my tech finally did answer, I told her my issue, and her reply puz­zled me. She said, “Oh, your prob­lem is that we do not host that domain.” Really? That’s funny, because a quick whois and tracer­oute says you do. Not to men­tion the account infor­ma­tion I’m look­ing at in your account manager…

For some com­pa­nies, it seems like all their web­site efforts are aimed at mak­ing a sale, and once the sale is made, you’re on your own. Net­work Solu­tions, GoDaddy, and pretty much all the big reg­is­trars do exactly that. The con­stant up-sell attempts and gen­eral lack of post pur­chase infor­ma­tion on their web­sites is enough to make even the ardent cus­tomer groan. The ben­e­fit of GoDaddy is, their site is tacky, busy and loud, so you expect it. That and the con­ve­nient “skip to the end” but­ton when you just want a domain name. Inci­den­tally, GoDaddy’s host­ing is ter­ri­ble from a tech­ni­cal stand­point as well (maybe more on that later).

If you have an account with Net­work Solu­tions, please tell me that you’ve had an eas­ier time find­ing any­thing or reach­ing a tech­ni­cal sup­port rep­re­sen­ta­tive (and I don’t nec­es­sar­ily mean on the phone. I mean really reach­ing them and hav­ing them under­stand your ques­tion). If not, it’ll just cement what I’m say­ing here.

I, for one, am tired of con­stant up-sell attempts. I under­stand the need for a com­pany to make money, but not every­one needs your stu­pid web­site builder, and pretty much no one needs 90% of the other use­less crap you try to push on those unsus­pect­ing clients who don’t know the game as well as those of us who are in it.

For prospec­tive clients of any designer or devel­oper… Have writ­ten into your con­tract the reg­is­tra­tion of a domain name and pro­cure­ment of host­ing. Make the con­tract say you own it, and can switch it at any time, but let them do the work of set­ting it all up. That way, you’ll get exactly what you need, and avoid some­thing you’ll regret later (like a half hour of your life lost to Cannon).

I’m not bit­ter, but I do hope the “let me make a pur­chase and I’ll let you know if I need any­thing else” idea catches on. There aren’t enough hours in the day to keep click­ing “no” to other spe­cial offers. As the per­fect top­per to the sup­port con­ver­sa­tion, my tech’s last ques­tion to me was, “May I assist you in adding another domain to your account?”

No, dear. No you may not…