By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Bob Dylan’s Love and Theft. Didn’t
get a whole lot of ink when it came out, probably because it was released on
September 11, 2001:
Zingo, Inc., a worldwide IP communications
service provider is happy with the juice it got from its marketing plan using
Yahoo! and Google, Zingo now begins a major marketing plan with MSN.
ZingoTel reported an increase in sales
by over 400% , which they attribute to the dollars they sunk in the marketing
plan on Google and Yahoo! flogging their $14.95 US/Canada unlimited plan. Going
for more glitz, ZingoTel, will be introducing its VoIP service via top rated
television show as well as an aggressive “Hollywood” marketing campaign.
ZingoTel most recently announced that its services will be used by the United
States Federal Government, which will use an emergency phone system “identical
to the systems being offered to the general public,” according to ZingoTel’s
consumer department this week.
…
Roll up, everyone. Virtuas Solutions, LLC, an open source
professional services organization, has announced a list of its support offerings surrounding Apache
Geronimo’s latest release. With Milestone 5 backing, Virtuas’ strategic
migration and educational services for Apache Geronimo will be what company
officials are claiming is “the first of its kind” and will “assist companies
transitioning to best of breed open source.”
With its capabilities of being able to, in his words, “roll your own”
application server, Apache Geronimo M5 offers customizations, according to Jeff
Genender Virtuas Practice Leader and Geronimo PMC member: “This allows
organizations to choose only those components of the J2EE architecture that
they need, not forcing them to implement a full stack.”
From its conception, Apache Geronimo was built to support the assembly of
custom open source components. With the release of Milestone 5, two of these
assemblies, Jetty and Tomcat, are now J2EE 1.4 certified.
…
Mercado Software, a vendor of e-commerce
search & merchandising products for online retail and B2B organizations, is
announcing the release of their new
bSMART product for B2B-focused online businesses. BSMART is supposed to
help product line, channel, and marketing managers sell online to other
businesses and through partners.
Built on Mercado’s Commerce Search & Navigation platform, bSMART provides
online businesses with product search and catalog navigation, allowing
customers and partners to locate and purchase products.
There’s also a “power buyer” to create custom catalogs for someone
who knows specifically what he’s looking for and buys it repeatedly, in accordance
with company contracts or with his specific role within the company.
BSMART also provides searching of detailed product catalogs, and lets business
users create, schedule, and maintain programs to up-sell, cross-sell, and even
down-sell if appropriate.
…
Amazing when you lend victims
of Caiman.com’s
terrible customer service a sympathetic ear how much you hear. Lots of
comments about how orders were simply ignored, filled months after promised
ship-by dates and some of the worst, most uncaring “customer service” this CRM
reporter’s ever seen.
Recently this comment from a “Leo Nicholson” was posted on
the April
First CoffeeSM entry which started the whole thing:
As somebody who’s
ordered from them more than 10 times before, and somebody who also sells on
eBay and Amazon Marketplace, I’d like to put a different perspective to it. I
have received my items in a timely fashion every time, and their prices are
generally pretty good. I can’t comment on their customer service because I’ve
not needed to use it.
As somebody from
England rather than the USA I can’t comment really on shipping policies, though
as a seller I can relate to their policies. In England the Royal Mail service
refuses to investigate claims of lost packages until 15 working days (21 total
days) after the item is sent. The investigation can take a couple of weeks, and
after it’s taken place the Royal Mail tell the sender whether the item was
actually delivered or not. If it was not delivered the sender receives
appropriate compensation. If it wasn’t received it’s up to the sender to report
the buyer for mail fraud. Can you guys see that it’s not fair for me to
immediately believe the customer and hand them a refund or a new item, without
any proof that they’re being truthful? I think it’s unfortunate that people
only ever talk about etailers when they’ve screwed up, or else you guys would
have a better opinion on this company.
First CoffeeSM must note that people have accused
Caiman.com of seeding positive feedback on Amazon.com, but there’s absolutely
no reason to suppose Leo’s anything other than what he says he is here.
Nevertheless, it is the first positive thing anybody’s posted about Caiman.com
in the seven months the post has been up. Then yesterday this answer to Leo was
posted:
No, Leo - we would
not. I think what you’ve missed is that the company ADMITS they did not send
the item, then fails to issue the refund for months after saying they would do
so in 3 days. I am not the only person who needed to get my state’s attorney
general involved.
I also sell on ebay
and have bought on ebay and amazon for seven years. I’ve never cried fraud
before. I would like to report that involving the government did finally result
in a refund, those interested.
First CoffeeSM is also a veteran of online
purchasing of many years’ standing, and has never experienced a company as poor
in either order fulfillment or customer service as Caiman.com. Such
irresponsible online vendors particularly rankle First CoffeeSM
because of how they give the rest of the honest, considerate vendors a bad name,
it’s not like online ordering is as widely accepted as it could be, as it
should be, but with vendors like Caiman.com out there it’s hard to tell people
afraid of ordering online why they should trust it. Which is bad for e-commerce
overall.
One hopes that some day Amazon.com will stand up and do the
right thing by its customers in what standards it has for vendors who sell on
its site.
…
Here’s a good idea: FundingUtah.com will combine speed-dating with venture funding at its first-ever
speedpitching luncheon next week.
The luncheon will feature 10 of Utah’s top entrepreneurs giving five-minute
pitches to several groups of three-five accredited angel investors, rotating in
a fast-paced, speed-dating style. The luncheon will take place at the Provo
Downtown Marriott on Nov. 8, at noon. The fee’s $25 for investors, which
includes a sit-down lunch.
Representatives from vSpring Capital, Utah Angels, 0-60 Ventures, Olympus
Angels, Blake Capital, Infobase Ventures and others will be in attendance.
Presenting companies include Frog Marketing, LingoTek, NetFundz, RappidMapper
Inc., SimpliPhones, WriteExpress and others.
…
Here’s another one: The
Tonight Show’s Jay Leno, in an arrangement with Sprint,
now has last night’s monologues and favorite comedy sketches such as “Jaywalking,”
“Headlines” and “The Fruitcake Lady” available
on mobile. Two new “Tonight Show” features will be added daily and a total
of four will be available at all times.
NBC Mobile produces an average of 20-25, 2-4 minute short-form programs daily,
including breaking news, original newscasts, original features and in-depth
stories produced especially for the mobile phone.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.
