It was an absolutely DELIGHTFUL story. Charming, evocative, mysterious, fun, and cheerful for the most part. One of those stories that is just made for reading aloud, and which keeps the audience enthralled to the last word, and which provides a simultaneous sense of satisfaction mixed with disappointment when it ends. We read it together as a family, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. In fact, it is high on my list of Must Read books for children – oh, not very YOUNG children, because the story is too long for them, and requires connecting the dots between several story lines woven skillfully together. But 10 to 18 year olds – yes, even teens love this story. A lovely way to create bonds of shared memories for families with teens that they aren’t sure how to connect with again.

But the story itself is not what provided the lesson. It was the movie. We bought it, in hopes that it would capture some of the essence of the story. To our great disappointment, it failed in every respect. Other than the name, and a few shared names of characters, and the mention of soup, the movie bore no relation to the story in the book.

The creators of the movie, from some misguided notion that they had to rewrite the story to capture the movie audience, managed to strip it of every defining characteristic, and to create a story that was not only devoid of any of the charm or enjoyment that the book possessed, but completely, and utterly uninspired and pathetic. It was a waste of money to even make such a travesty. Other reviewers have agreed that the movie was on the low end of the scale. In fact, it is something that could only be appreciated by someone who had a very short attention span, no taste, and who had no previous exposure to the original story (the very young kids who appreciated the endless string of Land Before Time movies comes to mind).

It truly was not even the same story! They changed the settings, left out essential elements, threw in completely meaningless and worthless replacements, created environments in the story that had no reason for being there, and in short, utterly ruined it. I am not too harsh, in fact, there are not words available to truly describe the vandalism perpetrated by the unskilled crew who created the appalling monstrosity.

The sailing ship in the opening scene was the first clue that something catastrophic had occurred – the book does not go near the sea at all. The absence of essential character discovery, and the remake of the dungeon into something like the dark side of the rat city from Flushed Away were obvious and unpleasant changes which displayed the ignorance and amateurity of the vandals who posed themselves as screen writers. The cook – a female character with personality and some humorous appeal – was replaced by a male chef who was merely a caricature, and a bad one at that. The movie was replete with illogical changes such as this, bad whims, carried out with no purpose, and with a sense of pathetic uselessness. The crowning atrocity though, was the vegetable man (an incredibly stupid creation of dancing vegetables which completely destroyed the story line without any kind of benefit whatsoever) – which had all the feel of an addition by a recent graduate artist, who had created something like it for a school project, and just HAD to use it SOMEWHERE, whether it fit or not.

This book could have been recrafted as a movie that was worthy of the excellence of the original story. But because this company purchased the rights, and made such a travesty, they not only polluted the world with so much animated refuse, they also blocked those who would do it right from doing so for some time to come. I think that is the saddest thing about it. In the afterlife for film creators, there must be a special torture chamber reserved for the perpetrators of such heinous actions – where they are first blessed with the good taste they lacked in mortality, and then forced to view bad films through eternity!

The lesson is applicable to many business concepts. Great business ideas contain an element of genius – a bit of something different, skillfully woven into the fabric of the business, which define it as something unique and attractive. It succeeds BECAUSE it is different.

Often, a thriving business will be bought out, or will go public and have other voices dictating decisions, or it may just reach a point of growth where the business owner starts to automate or delegate the wrong things to the wrong sources. In the changes, the wrong things are changed – the very things that define the uniqueness are lost, and it becomes like every other mediocre look-alike.

In the case of bringing in other decision makers, they often wish to recreate it in the image of that which is familiar, little realizing that as they do so, the very thing that made it successful is diluted or lost completely. After all, if it were like all the rest, based on familiarity, it would not have grown in the first place! It is the DIFFERENCES which define a good business. And it is those differences which uninspired or uncreative people simply cannot wrap their heads around. Genius works – but is often not appreciated by those who would like to capitalize on someone ELSE’S genius, when they do not possess it themselves.

The moral is, that in making changes to something that works, don’t lose the ESSENCE of what works. The movie of The Tale of Despereaux is but one example of the destruction of something precious, and the lowering of something effervescent to the worst of the common.

The unexpected, the twists, the uncommon brilliance is in fact, what makes it work.

Most security problems online don’t happen because a really brilliant hacker slaved to break into your bank account, website, or eBay account. Most of them happen because you left the house with the doors unlocked and the windows open, and the burglar walked right in.

See, most of them happen because someone programmed a bot to go looking for obvious easy targets. Just like the burglar who goes looking for unlocked doors or open windows. They aren’t looking for a hard job to show off their brilliance, they are looking for a quick and easy mark.

Unless we understand how online security compromises take place, we won’t understand how to reduce the risks. The good news is, that the vast majority of problems occur from things that are VERY easy to stop. They happened because someone made it easy to take advantage of them, and the bad guys are mostly opportunists. Stopping most just means not giving them easy opportunity. In other words, just lock your doors and close your windows. Cyber criminals aren’t much different as a whole than the average burglar – for the most part, they spend a few seconds on easy possibilities, and then move on to find a sucker if they can’t get in.

Some simple rules:

1. Don’t EVER click a link in an email to go to a secure site. Go there by entering the address into your browser yourself. No matter how convincing the email sounds, DON’T TRUST IT. Any email that tells you that a sensitive account (including email accounts, bank accounts, etc) requires validation or it will be shut down is a LIE, and sent for the purpose of stealing YOUR data.

2. If it sounds too good to be true, it absolutely is. If it is on a one page website with tons of hype and dozens of invitations to click here to buy, there is a 99% chance it is not legit. If they pressure you to buy now, don’t. Listen to that voice of caution in the back of your head, it knows what it is talking about.

3. Change default usernames. If you do an install of some popular software into your website, it has a default admin password – Change it! (Joomla users, that means YOU.) NEVER leave a website username as “admin”, or anything else that was there when you got it. Every scammer in the world knows what the default was on that kind of site, and they’ll go looking for sites that didn’t have it changed. Username and password combinations are easier to break when they only have one of them to guess.

4. Use a more secure password. Don’t use just a single word, or two words. Add a number or two. Use a capital letter or two. Make it easy for you to remember, but hard to guess. Adding numbers and changing a letter or two to a capital does that. Symbols make it even harder to guess, but not all systems allow them. Some sources tell you to use different passwords for every site, but really, you can’t. There are too many! The reality is that most people do use the same password for everything. But it is wise to use a separate higher security password for bank accounts, and do NOT use a password reminder or key program to keep the high security ones.

5. If you have a website that uses software, make sure it is up to date. Periodically, someone will find a way to break into a site structure – like Joomla, WordPress, OSCommerce, or whatever. And when they find that way, they publish it to all the other unsavory sorts. If you keep running an outdated version that has a known security hole, it is only a matter of time before one of those persistent little bots finds it, and walks right in through that open door.

6. Don’t share your passwords. Not ever. Once it gets out of your hands, it can go anywhere, and someone you trust may let someone else know, because THEY don’t value it as much as you do. No one can guard your own security quite as well as you can, you are the most motivated person.

7. Don’t trust web professionals to keep things for you. You have to trust some people with access, but give them as little as possible, and always make sure YOU are the one who can kick them out, not the other way around.

No need to be paranoid – just be sensible. Just like closing all your windows, locking the door and throwing the deadbolt. Unless you are in a high risk online neighborhood that makes you a particular target, there really isn’t any need to put up bars or hire a bodyguard. Just like you do the simple and sensible stuff for home security first, do the same with online security.

Don’t make it easy for someone to rip you off.

About a year ago, we were approached by a consultant for a certain Direct Sales company, to create a site system for the consultants of that company. We had no affiliation with the company, we just created a site system that their consultants could use to more quickly set up a working website.

I was unprepared for some of the issues that came from it. Technically, it has been fun, and challenging, as we worked out the details to provide exactly what the consultants needed, with enough flexibility to allow each consultant to customize it for their particular way of doing business.

It wasn’t the technical stuff that threw me. It was the personal and relationship stuff I was unprepared for.

Working with these ladies (ok, there is an occasional man, but most are women) has been great. They are, overall, terrific people, and most are very enthusiastic and willing to work at it. But since they are linked to each other through their signup genealogy, I not only have to deal with relationships between us and the client, I also have to cope with relationships between the clients! This isn’t something we usually have to deal with, since most of our clients don’t know each other unless we introduce them (which we often do if we feel that it will help them both).

I can’t go into detail – that would violate confidences, and I’d not want to make one of our clients feel singled out or embarrassed. But there are some generalities that will give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

• If a consultant does not like their upline, they may come to us for things that are really outside our expertise – we are not experts with the parent company, we are only experts with our own website system.
• If two consultants have a falling out, it may have reverberations through many of the site owners. It challenges our professional ethics to handle things without taking sides, and without being unfair to either client. Standard confidentiality policies are put to the test – in ways we had not anticipated that they would be.
• If one consultant decides that it is too much work to own a site, and leaves with a bad attitude, it may affect many prospective clients – because the consultants are not only networked through the company with each other, but also with a huge body of prospects. It means that we have to have fair policies, and then we have to meticulously enforce those policies.
• If we grant a refund outside our policies, word may get around, and others may purchase, feeling they can get the same refund, even though our policies would normally prohibit it. If we refuse to grant a refund, and our policies don’t clearly back up our position, then word may get around about that. Our reputation is more visible within this community.

The interconnectedness of the clients is a strength – they refer their downline. But that very strength has also meant that there are other challenges with it that we hadn’t expected to have to deal with. It has meant that our policies and standards with this particular line have had to include provisions that we’d never considered as being a potential issue previously.

Overall, it has challenged us in ways we did not expect. But it has also been worth it because this single line, which launched in February, has yielded profit in five figures, in less than a year. Expenses are low, and sales are good, and this line is becoming a significant factor in our income picture. It has provided a means for testing our automation software, and has proven a successful income model which involves partial automation, partial customization, at a fairly low cost to the client, combined with a fairly low workload for us. We spend an average of 1 hour per site sale on personal service, and about half an hour on long term development or maintenance for the entire program (averaged per client). We invest in custom programming as needed to maintain the infrastructure. When we are paid for a new site, the majority is profit, and the workload is light.

I sometimes tire of the soap opera of relationships – it can make me feel like a Mom with a houseful of other people’s kids. But the ladies are wonderful for the most part, and worth those moments of exasperation.

I’ve just really realized with this line of business, how much the individual marketing arenas can change, depending on factors we might not have considered ahead of time.

I was referred to the FedEx support number to resolve an issue with a shopping cart. The referrer told me that they were very helpful. I tried to call – and was shoved into a frustrating and fruitless loop.

I didn’t mind the “press one for this, press two for that”. At least a computer can UNDERSTAND that. After I did that, I was greeted by a recorded voice which demanded to know what I wanted. I’m supposed to tell it, and it is supposed to understand. Only what I needed was pretty complicated. I took too long in replying, so the recorded voice helpfully suggested things I might say – none of which was remotely close to what I needed. I didn’t need help printing labels, and I didn’t need help with their online site.

I took a stab at it – “I need help setting up our shopping cart.” Clear, and a whole lot neater than saying, “We can’t get commercial ground to show up during checkout, and your people told my people that I should call you to find out what the heck you mean when you tell me to generate an XML transaction request to send you so you can diagnose the problem.”

The voice said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Here are some things you might say…” and went back to the same unhelpful things that it offered before.

I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time to play games trying to guess just exactly what a computer wants me to say to get in the front door. I feel like I’m standing in front of Ali-Baba’s cave trying to guess the right password. Hmmm… I didn’t think to try “Open Sesame”, but I doubt the computer would be smart enough to get it if I did.

Are they TRYING to drive their customers away in frustration? While that might be a terrific way to contain support costs, it is NOT an effective way to retain the customers.

At this point, because of the complexity of setting up cart interfaces with FedEx, we warn our clients that it is fussy and aggravating. They now rate even higher on my “Beware” list. I’ve never been fond of them anyway, because they are inherently dishonest about how they handle rural deliveries (they are not the only shipper that does it – you can pay for overnight shipping, but you won’t get it in a remote rural area, you’ll get the item overnighted to the nearest big city, and then sent the rest of the way by Priority Mail, meaning overnight shipments take longer than 3 or 5 day shipping). Their own service reps don’t even know this, but it is standard company practice.

They also are not the only company that has decided that voice recognition is the way to go for telephone support. It has to be one of the most inaccurate, and unfriendly ways of handling things! I HATE talking to computers. It makes me feel like a child being forced to play with a talking toy. That particular technology is one that already offends me, but add to it the inaccuracy behind it all, and it leaves a high percentage of people frustrated because they cannot get past the automated genie who demands that you say just the right thing, but isn’t about to tell you what it is!

It begs the question…

Who, REALLY, thought this was a good idea? And how in the world did someone with so little sense EVER get into a position of enough power to actually do anything about it?

Yes, I’m feeling catty today. A headache and a bad encounter with a senseless system will do that to me.

The continuing saga of the site system theft…

I’m not being vindictive or vengeful. I’m just informing the guy of real problems that he walked into without really thinking about it ahead of time.

Ok, so if someone steals a replicated site system, they are probably biting off more than they can chew. Their actions may come back to bite them in ways they never anticipated. These are the things that have been pointed out to the person who duplicated our site system:

1. Copyrighted material is recognizable. If you copy someone’s site, you are using copyrighted material.

2. You may not just be stealing one person’s copyrighted material. You may be using material created by another person, and used by permission by the person you stole from. You do NOT have permission to use it!

3. When you steal software, it may be highly complex. Copyrighted material may be woven into it in places that are difficult for you to detect. The original owner may be able to spot things you do not even know are there.

4. When you steal a website, it is very difficult to get all of the original ownership information out of it. Your site may in fact send mis-directed emails to the original owner without your knowledge.

5. When you steal software, you have no idea what someone else might have changed. If you steal a software site structure, it may have had custom alterations. If you update the software using standard update procedures, you may break something, and not even know where the problem is.

6. If custom alterations have been made to a software site structure, they may be insecure, or they may have introduced bugs that you will have to troubleshoot, and you won’t know where they are coming from in the code.

7. Images can be anywhere in a site, and identifying images may be dropped into places all through it where they can be accessed by direct URL. You will never be able to find them all. You are a sitting duck for a copyright lawsuit.

8. If you steal a website and use it for yourself, it can cause problems. If you steal a website and then use it as the backbone of your services, you are staking your entire reputation on someone else’s stuff. Not only can the original owner sue you, your clients can sue you also. And if the structure is unreliable or unsustainable, your clients will make you pay!

We didn’t have to do anything other than point these things out to the person who copied our system. They are his problem to deal with.

Frankly, I find it much faster and cleaner to just build my own stuff. Stealing other people’s stuff is just too much work!

One of my associates emailed me yesterday, informing me that someone had duplicated my entire vertical market site system for a particular market. Yes, I’m going to name names here.

We build websites for Norwex Consultants (the domain name when this article was written, was norwexwebsites.com – the domain name has since been removed due to changes in the Norwex policies). We have done so for about a year now. We were the original dynamic Norwex shopping cart provider, and we are the most experienced and successful at it.

One of our clients has taken the liberty of partnering with another technician. I think they thought there was an easy goldmine there (little do they know that anything good takes WORK).

Their site, located at http://www.norwex-websites.com (the hyphenated version of our domain name – this website is also no longer valid, though it was at the time this article was written) contained text straight from our site system, and cloned the shopping cart down to the typos. I saw this myself. I was told that he even used MY templates… Badly edited, according to a reliable source. I did not see these for myself, but this woman knows my work, and has seen the templates I created, and future actions of the site owner would tend to lend credibility to her claim.

My friend took the liberty of emailing him, and informing him that he was using copyrighted information, and that it was unethical. This is where it got fun!

Over the next few hours, we watched as parts of his site became unavailable, then came up again, totally different than what they were before.

His entire template gallery disappeared, and then reappeared one page at a time. It is pretty obvious that he thought if I was using Artisteer to create templates, that he could too. He clearly did not spend as much time learning the fine points of creating good templates with it, because the templates were so easily identified as having been created with a template generator, that you really have to feel sorry for the guy. Artisteer is a GREAT program, and the hands of a skilled designer who takes the time to learn how to use the hidden features and who takes the time to create great graphics in PhotoShop ahead of time, can make this program SING. He didn’t. His templates reuse the same images over and over, and they are all identical, with only some color changes. They aren’t even color coordinated, and they do not use the preferred colors of the target market. The layout and design does not change from one to the next, they have the appearance of having been created in a hurry.

Our templates are unique, color coordinated, and attractive, and we have taken great pains to make sure they reflect the mindset of the target market we are serving. We purchase high quality stock photos for each template, and make sure we are using them according to the terms of use – no shortcuts. We know our stuff, and we know what makes sites work. About half of the consultants want our templates as-is, without any changes other than asking for their site name to be added.

Other pages began to disappear and reappear also. Each time, with new content. Must have given him quite a bit of panic. I suggested to him that he might want to make sure that every bit was removed that was ours, whether he thought it was private or not, because if he failed to, he’d never be quite sure which client we sent to purchase a site and check it out for us.

I guess there are three lessons from this.

1. I don’t think there is a reason to feel threatened by competition. I mean, if someone honestly sets up competition against me, go for it. If they do a better job than I, they deserve the success.

This was different than that. We took action, notifying him that he needed to stop using our copyrighted items, because when you copy something of someone else’s it is THEFT, not innovation.

But I am still not worried about competition from this kind of person. I am not a lazy business woman. I did things right, and I took the time where it mattered. I need not fear anyone who takes shortcuts because they lack the understanding of what makes a website really work, and what makes it fail. There are so many points on which he simply cannot compete with us in quality, and where his site falls down on basic marketing messages that he does not pose any real threat to our business. His sales site is so unattractive (this was the first thing one of my students commented on) and so lacking in essential conversion points, that it is doubtful that he will be able to make a sale.

In this instance, he is actually going to do a LOT of marketing for us – because people remember domain names WITHOUT hypens (and search engines pay more attention to the original than to the knock off. Hyphenated names have absolutely NO higher weight with them, they provably parse both with equal accuracy). So a good deal of his marketing will benefit us, but NONE of ours will benefit him!

2. If you do something illegal (by intent, or by being mislead), you are likely to get caught. And when you do, you’ll spend your time running around trying to cover up the evidence, rather than being able to use the time in productive activities that move your business forward. Not only that, but someone may publish the truth of what happened, to which you will have no defense, and it will give your company a black eye, potentially costing you the time you already invested, or more.

3. When someone does something like this, there isn’t a reason to seek revenge. There are legal steps you can take, and the law can provide its own consequence. That is how it should be.

I’ve never had someone blatantly steal something from me in all my years doing business online. I’ve had clients who reported having their sites cloned by someone else, but it has never happened to me. Having it happen with an entire system was rather a surprise.

I’ve actually had a good evening, peeking in periodically to see what is being frantically replaced next. It has been rather amusing, sort of like pulling the strings on a puppet. I’m also writing a few other emails, informing a few other people who need to know, whose work was also involved in the system.

I really sort of feel sorry for the guy… To be so handicapped in business as to think this is a way to get ahead!

Spam is unsolicited email. Spam is illegal. Therefore, we may conclude that any company that sends you unsolicited email advertisements for their services is breaking the law. We may further conclude that their primary aim is NOT to help your company to grow.

This little piece of logic seems to be set aside each time we receive spam email that contains something we are hoping might be true. That a company that is breaking the law really DOES want to help us get to the top of the search engines. That a company that is breaking the law will honor their word. That a company that is breaking the law somehow will give us what we want at a lower price and higher value than good companies that DON’T break the law.

Sometimes I think there is just a disconnect. We forget to think of it in those terms.

The rule is one you may depend upon to keep from getting ripped off by email scams. If it came through the email, and you did not ASK for it specifically, it is Spam, it is illegal, and the company that sent it is either too ignorant, or too dishonest for there to be any kind of good outcome if you risk it.

Some companies may be sending from outside the US, where it may not be illegal. But… consider…. Do you want a company to work for you, promoting your company worldwide, that is not aware of the laws of your own country? We have actually seen such companies do things on behalf of site owners that were huge legal risks in the US, and which are likely to come back and harm the site owners. If you pay them to do something, then you may also be held liable for any misrepresentation, false statements, or claims that they make on your behalf. If they are ethical, and want US business, they’ll take the time to learn, and RESPECT, the laws of the US.

SEO scams are one of the most rampant, we have businesses contacting us almost daily about this, asking us whether it works or not. Oh, some of them will do the tasks they say they will do. But they do them SO BADLY, that they don’t do you any good at all. You will be throwing money down a hole – and in some cases, the things they do can actually HURT your business. Many other scams are not just false on the end, they are false right from the get-go. They will take your financial information and abuse it with no pretense of delivery of anything.

It doesn’t matter WHO the business is. If they send you an ad, and you did not sign up for it FROM THEM, or if you did not ask a question on a forum that they replied to (and mentioned the forum), or if a friend did not introduce you, or something else that tracks them to a known source, it is illegal for them to send you the ad!

I bombed two weeks of computer classes in high school. Ok, it was really a math class, but the teacher took liberties and immersed us in command line for two weeks (TRS-80s). I wallowed. Could not figure it out, and HATED it. Swore at that point that I’d never touch another computer as long as I lived. I had no use for them AT ALL.

About 1994 my father-in-law gifted us a Mac Classic. Kevin was a teacher at the time, and he took right to it. To my utter shock, I did too. I began writing poetry and short stories. I sought out freeware and shareware games for my kids – educational stuff. After about six months, I reformatted the hard drive just to see if I could. I was hired as a computer aide at a local school, and within a few years, was buying, refurbishing, and reselling Macs (desktops and laptops). I could quote you the specs of any Mac model off the top of my head.

There was something about the Mac. I could actually USE it. And using a Mac early on in my computer business career taught me some valuable lessons, which have been part of shaping our business into something both original and successful.

1. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. Keep things simple on the surface, and leave the layers of complication for later.

2. Make it fun. The Mac was a lot of fun. There were hidden messages and games in many of the programs (nicknamed Easter Eggs). The computer greeted you with a smile. Mac instructions were written with a sense of humor (David Pogue’s were some of the best, in Macs for Dummies). You could change the desktop patterns and even make your own (remember, all of this was brand new concepts at the time, Bill Gates was still trying to mimic it).

3. Think Different. More than different – think about needs, and meet them, instead of being trapped by rigid standards arbitrated by those who really don’t get what the needs actually are.

4. Don’t be afraid to use what works, regardless of what everyone else is doing. I defended my position to use a Mac over and over, and it taught me to do what worked for MY business, and not be made to feel inadequate because I wasn’t doing it the way someone else thought I should.

5. Meet higher standards. The Mac had higher customer satisfaction standards than PCs had. They also had higher compatibility and performance standards. They met them too.

6. When you make changes to keep up with technology or growth, don’t lose what makes it work. The Mac fell apart when they made some decisions that lost many of the things users loved about it. It lost some of the humor, much of the reliability, and much of what made it unique. The end came for us when they released an operating system that was incompatible with the firmware (part of the built-in hardware coding) on our Mac, combined with a decrease in available software for our industry. We moved to the PC because the Mac no longer had what we needed – It did not matter that the iMac was cute and colored, the hard drive crashed repeatedly and had to be reformatted due to the incompatibility. It was unsustainable.

7. Just because you screw up once, or twice, or even a dozen times, doesn’t mean you can’t make a comeback. While we haven’t gone back to the Mac (it would be prohibitively expensive for us to do so now), an increasing number of our clients and students have done so.

The Mac was responsible for a huge learning process for me. It took all of my half-talents, and combined them together into a combination of skills which had value. And Mac instructions were so much clearer than PC instructions (which always seemed to assume you already KNEW what you were doing and only needed a reminder of a single concept). In fact, I learned more from Macs for Dummies, More Macs for Dummies, and Mac Secrets, about how to operate and diagnose a PC than I did from a huge combination of PC books. Because I learned more foundational computer concepts, and I learned more practical applied troubleshooting concepts, which I could then adapt to the PC.

I function using a PC. But it isn’t fun, and I miss my Mac. I don’t know if it will ever be feasible to go back. But I appreciate the lessons I learned from it. The whole philosophy of the Mac had a huge impact on how I thought about business, and has helped to take me someplace extraordinary.

This is the average process I go through lately to edit a page for a client.

1. Type in the URL.
2. Wait for 30 to 45 seconds for the page to load on average. Often this may take as long as 2 full minutes.
3. About 3 out of 5 times, the page will fail to load completely. About half of the page load failures are incomplete loads, and about half are “Failure to Connect” notices.
4. Make changes when the page finally loads, click Save. Go through the frustrating page load process again, hoping the changes are not lost.

This is a daily aggravation. We have two satellite dishes on the site of our house. One from Wild Blue that costs us $69 per month. One from HughesNet that costs us $79 per month. Each is so unreliable that we have to have a backup – that is more than $150 per month for internet once taxes are figured in.

WildBlue was adequate when we first got it – but we outgrew it fairly rapidly. And they have no options for growth beyond a certain point. When you hit the ceiling, they simply shut you down until your usage comes back in range – and that can take 3 weeks or more.

We got HughesNet in an emergency, and it was good at first. Their limits work differently than WB, so we’re never shut down for long if we exceed bandwidth. But lately, we’re having to be really careful what we do, because we’ve outgrown them too. We can get faster speeds, but we cannot get more bandwidth. When we first signed up with them, they had a higher bandwidth option. But they’ve since decreased the available options, and we have no place left to grow.

And the worst is that both companies have degraded seriously in performance. WildBlue is now behaving like they’ve throttled us, when we have NOT exceeded bandwidth. The performance is hideous – pages don’t load at all, and email takes forever to download. It is completely unacceptable, we are not getting anywhere near what we pay for, we aren’t even getting USABLE internet most of the time now.

HughesNet is also apalling lately. If you call them, they will run you through diagnostics, tell you you have to be reporting the wrong numbers (which are so slow their own techs cannot even believe they are real), and then wander off – they do follow up a few days later in hopes that the problem has miraculously solved itself. It never does. Our friends who also use HN have called about the slow speeds, and have been told they exceeded their bandwidth, when they have not even USED the internet in the last 48 hours! (HN has a 24 hour revolving limit.)

I ran some diagnosics recently, and they returned latency speeds that were 5 times longer than dialup speeds. This isn’t the speed of the upload or download data, rather this is the delay between the request from my computer, and the response from the other end. Often there simply is no response at all, so the browser returns a failure to connect error.

It is clear that both have vastly overloaded their satellites, and no longer care about usability for their clients. We are losing money on both – if we had an alternative, we’d be gone in a shot. I believe they make their money from people who accept it because they have no choice. The dumb thing is, many people would pay more for decent service – we would if we had the option, because our business is entirely dependent on good internet access. It is very frustrating to have no choices at all. It hurts our business, and there is nothing we can do about it.

It looks like an alternative is coming. We have two companies which will be bringing in high speed internet options soon. We’ll test them, and assuming performance is even a little better, HN and WB will be dropped. Sadly, a year ago, we’d have known we’d drop WB first, and keep HN as a backup. At this point, there is nothing to choose between the two, they are both so bad that neither is even good enough for a backup!

I don’t expect this post to change anything. The net is littered with negative comments on both of these companies. They do not listen when you contact customer support, so I doubt they are concerned with a negative reputation online either. They should be – internet options are growing for small towns across the US, and if they do not get their act together, they will simply fade out of existence.