501derful.org
Those of you who were at the March F & I conference may recall that I announced I was going to set up an internal blog for staff. That idea morphed into a password protected knowledge blog that I terminated this morning.
The problem: I attempted to pay for the blog using my corporate P-card. Typepad kept sending me e-mails saying my card had been declined and suggesting I use another. Calls to my shared services center and then to JPMorgan Chase, who issued the card showed that my card was NOT being declined by them.
Eventually, with Typepad’s help, we narrowed down the problem to my three digit security code. I was told by the customer service rep at Typepad that they used an outside vendor to process credit cards. I verfied the security code with my company, the customer service rep manually entered it, and still my card was declined.
I’ve since discovered that David in CA and David here in Austin had the same problem when they attempted to set up their blogs.
Typepad is noted for legendary customer service and I’m disappointed that I haven’t heard back from them. They are fantastic at handling the typical "internal" problems, but when one crops up dealing with external factors such as their outside vendor, then they drop the ball.
Now, Typepad’s parent Six Apart was having numerous difficulties in October with slowdowns and other related issues so it’s possible I was forgotten about. But the two Davids and I work for a company with 6000 employees and we are just the leading edge of potential customers that Typepad isn’t going to get if they can’t resolve this issue.
Who knows anything about WordPress?
This is too bad, but it’s the right response. I’m going to send the Permalink for this post to TypePad through their help ticket system and see if it sparks any workable response.
It’s definitely something that needs to be fixed. When I set up my blog, I decided to choose my own domain and have it hosted for $7.00/month. I use WordPress as my blog interface. Since WordPress is free, my total overhead was the cost of the domain name and a yearly charge of $84.00. Typepad seems to be a great product, and the upside is that if there is a problem with the blog, you can call tech support. However, there are other, less expensive, alternatives for those who are willing to do their own maintenance and the barriers to changing are not that high.
Glenn, I love the idea of an internal knowledge blog (even though as a volunteer, I’ll never see it) and I’m hoping that you can find another hosting option. Could the ACS provide space? If so, you might want to check out WordPress, or, if you want to stay with Six Apart, which is a great company, you could try out their Movable Type 3.