Thread bouncing whiplash is EVEN worse ... if you can believe that!

Thanks John, from what I can see so far, that has made quite a significant difference.

Calkins, RJBerki, thank you for all of your feedback. It's not being ignored. I obviously can't promise changes overnight, but I can promise that I'll work to make things better.

As for this specific issue, I'll keep you posted on the progress made toward solving it once and for all.

Come to think of it, emulating Baba may be just a little extreme. :-)

John,

dont trouble yourself with the two weeks issue. I meant it when I said it doesnt matter. I have been here 3 years and will likely be here 3 more so 2 weeks is of little consequence. It was just an example. Back to tech issues, I have to say that lack of responsiveness and information will bother me 10 times as much as having to live with a tech issue. I would learn Chinese standing on my head given a good enough reason, and be just fine doing it. I just have trouble with

1. not getting a response

2. someone answering a different question than I asked

3. telling me something is fixed and its not (no follow up)

anyway, enough of this for now. I bought a seat belt so bounce away if you must. I will try to be more like Ghandi, and oh yea, Baba.

John, apology appreciated but not necessary. Sometimes the problem with the internet is that it's hard to know when people are being lighthearted or flippant. I should have read your ":D" at face value.

I also want to make sure that you know I was not aiming my concerns at you directly. You have always been one of the most upfront and open staff members, and you are always one of the quickest to reply with a detailed and thorough explanation.

My concerns are more aimed at the "upper level" at Cpod, upper management I guess. I know the people at the lower levels have few options and are only doing what upper mgmt. tell them. It just seems that upper management does not take these issues as seriously as they should. I base that on 3 years of seeing the following:

- user questions repeatedly go unanswered

- hearing about numerous emails directly to cpod go unanswered

- numerous "ice bergs" that had little or no prior testing before rollout

- lack of clear and timely communication

- the sense of a lack of loyalty to customers (as RJ states above)

These are some of the issues that I've seen on a regular basis since I've been here. I'm not saying those issues are not a priority, but that is how it appears, to me at least.

I'm not threatening to leave (ha ha!), I'll still hang around the boards, as I have been recently, to get a nugget here and there. I'm just saying that I won't pay for any of the services until the service has improved. I honestly hope that happens, sooner rather than later.

Thanks for listening John. As mentioned before, that's half the battle.

I understand. That's frustrating. I'm not normally involved with that part of the customer service loop, but I'll bring it up with the folks that are.

Your experience with AI does sound impressive. I think we do stuff like that pretty well on the lesson production side of things, but less so on tech. Clearly we need to bring all sides of our customer facing operations up to that sort of standard, though.

On a personal note, thank you for the kind words. They are much appreciated.

John, thanks again for trying to improve communications, and I didnt take your tone in any bad way myself. Zhen does have a valid point however and customer service is sorely lacking at cpod. There is no loyalty to those that last longer than the usual 6 months or one year. As an example, I resubscribed recently during a time when an added 2 weeks was offered as a promotion for anybody signing up for premium. I chose the praxis pass this time so I could look at a little spanish if I have time and then I notice I didnt get the 2 weeks bonus - it wasnt a "premium' subscription renewal. Praxis pass is "premium plus" in my book so I wrote to customer service. An oversight I figured. The note I got back was something like, tough cookies, premium only. I dont really care but think about the wisdom of that answer. It gives me pause. You could also take a page from the AI book. I sent them a tech issue and got immediate response that I would hear within 24 hrs what was what. Soon I got another that said we have identified the problem and it will be fixed within 24 hrs and you will be notified. Within the 24 hrs I was notified that it was fixed and the best part - it really was. Wow, I was impressed. They made a friend for life, especially if they keep that up. And please John B, keep in mind, I am speaking about cpod in general, not about you. You have always been most helpful to me.

To be perfectly honest, I'm really sad to see calkins go. He's contributed a lot to the community in the last three years. When he started this thread, bringing up the really bad bouncing problem, I wrote an email to our head of tech, head of production, and CEO, and we got the problem fixed. The larger issue remains, but I've written extensively about it and the challenges that fixing it involves (one and two), and while as I said before I can't set tech priorities, I do intend on fixing it. I totally admit that I should have responded to this thread at the same time that I sent that email, and I will strive to do that in the future.

On a personal level, I apologized for my tone -- it was intended to be lighthearted, and ended up sounding flippant, and I am sorry for that. I made that "we are all adults" comment tongue-in-cheek, and calkins was rightly offended by it. We *are* all adults, and we all (both users and staff) deserve to be treated as such by one another. Lesson most definitely learned.

All that said, though, I'm not going to "kiss [his] arse," and personally I would be a bit surprised if he really expected me (or us, or any other service) to do so.

I will, however, do my best to improve the communication that we have with our users, in whatever way I can. I sit in a relatively special position at ChinesePod, with one foot in marketing and one in tech, and so I can help to explain issues that might otherwise get lost in translation between our tech team and our users. I will also push for our tech team to post more on the site itself (in Chinese, of course) so that our users can get more first hand information.

Is that enough to convince calkins to stay? I don't know. Maybe not. But it's what I can do, so it's what I am doing.

You're saying goodbye to a potential customer and long-time former user, someone who has said he likes your product very much, rather than show him you are ready and fully intend to make improvements immediately that could convince him to re-subscribe (tech issues are one thing. customer service can and ought to be improved immediately)--? Wow, that is really really disappointing.

I'm quite sorry if you felt I was mocking xiaophil (I don't think, based on his response, that he feels that way, and it certainly wasn't intended to be taken that way -- it was a lighthearted intro into a pretty solidly serious discussion of the issue at hand). I totally agree that we do a pretty poor job of explaining issues to our customers, especially technical issues. I was trying, in my own little way, on this one issue, to correct that.

As for the other points you bring up, it would be disingenuous for me to sit here and say that we couldn't improve on tech and customer service issues (or that I myself couldn't improve in my communication skills). It's obvious we can, and, to be quite honest, we are. Tech issues, though, in particular, aren't going to change overnight. Marcom issues could and should improve more quickly.

Again, I apologize for my tone. You're right, we *are* all adults. Thus, though we hate to see any customer go, we recognize that you very much have the freedom to invest your money as you see fit. Good luck with your studies.

johnb, the all-caps was a joke. It was kind of like saying, "Hey everyone at Cpod, look at me, I'm forced to use all-caps because nobody there will respond." Hee hee hee.

And you are right, we are all adults here, so it really shouldn't take days, weeks, even months to reply to your (that's a cpod "your", not a you "your") customers' questions.

Also, while I know I and other users can be little snot-nosed brats and give you guys a hard time when things don't work the way we'd like them to, always remember that we are your customers. No matter how annoying we are, you need to kiss our arses, not the other way around. Mocking your customers (see your link to xiaophil above) or insinuating we are not adults, doesn't help your cause any. Remember, as RJ and others have pointed out, if you guys would just communicate with us openly and timely (yes, like adults), we'd all be a lot happier (even if it isn't exactly what we want).

Cpod could use a refresher in customer service. Take a look at the owner of Plecodict, Michael Love. No issue is too small for him, every issue is as important as the next, whether it comes from a customer who pays a lot or a customer who pays a little. He responds to customers promptly and clearly (no fluffy B.S.). Every issue or request I've had with Pleco, he has responded quickly and been able to fix in a timely manner, even small stupid ones that I knew were small and stupid. But to him, every issue is a big one, because he understands that the more customers that are happy with his product, the more future customers that he will have. Simple, good ole fashion customer service.

I've been using Cpod since 2007, and no matter how great the content is, I just can't see myself re-subscribing and spending my money on what I believe is pretty poor customer service and web development. It truly is sad, because as we all know, it is the best Chinese learning product on the internet. It just needs to improve the areas of technology and customer service. Right now I prefer to allocate my money to other learning products. Hopefully someday things will improve here, as I would very much like the get back into the lessons.

Hi calkins,

AFAIK, there is no equivalent to all caps for yelling in Chinese online, which is probably fine because, honestly, when has yelling ever helped anything? We're all adults here.

A few minutes ago, I responded to xiaophil at length with regards to the bouncing problem. The issue that you started this thread with, the most egregious one, has been fixed, and now the core issue, which I talked about in the linked comment, remains. Fixing it is non-trivial but, as I said to xiaophil, it should be fixed, and is fixable. It needs to be done in a way that won't cripple the existing comment system, because I'm sure nobody would be happy about that, either.

It appears to be due to applying a javascript paging to the comments. Watch the address bar when you click on a comment - it changes from just the comment number to including a page=x term. There must be a better way.

Calkins,

I agree with you completely. When I first brought this to cpods attention about 6 months ago, I was told it was not a priority. To me it was something that they should have noticed and fixed quickly without having it pointed out to them. I got tired of waiting so I brought it up. Its like buying a new Lexus or BMW that has this loud rattle. Yea it gets you to work every day, but damn. I have long ago given up. Complaining only causes hard feelings and they obviously have no intention of fixing it. Its their badge of un-professionalism and I have stopped asking why. I can live with it in its chronic form but this elevated and more severe form that we have experienced over the last few days has got to go. I have whiplash.

真的！

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Really? Rubbish!

Only paying users can use that site. I guess beggars can't be choosers!

It appears that on many Chinese websites, they open a new window whenever you click on a link. Perhaps breaking the back button is not considered a design disastser in China. It's bloody annoying though.

oh really? So it has never been fixed? I only noticed it again these last few days. Heck, early Alzheimers ! I thought this Chinese was meant to stave that off, hehe. Sorry RJ, I just thought calkins cat sounded cute and funny and I had a clear picture of what he was describing, please forgive my sense of humour. But yeah, I think it's good calkins has brought it to the attention of the tech problems group [thanks calkins]. I'm all for it being fixed.

Yes its worse now (including loss of back button function) and this did happen one other time, but this has never been entirely fixed. You may not have noticed it, but it has been there (on long posts) , hence Calkin's statement - its "EVEN worse" now. Im glad you are amused, but I am not.