We were led up the garden path. The Karoo Technical Forums, as posted about elsewhere here, which had said about it that it hailed in a new era of business to customer relationships. It is now all but dead in the water after just 3 meetings spanning 4 months. Why?
Well, we told them what their customers wanted. We told them how their home customers needs have changed and what they needed to supply to those customers. In return they said major change to their ADSL offerings was coming and they would integrate "what we can" what we had told them into those offerings. They said they would look into providing reverse DNS as an option and multiple IP's again a an option, probably, they said, to their premier package (which is now named Karoo Pro). They said at the time it was discussed that reverse DNS and multiple IP's "should be no problem" and "pose no difficulties" in implementing them. They said faster downloads via ADSL2 would be available. Offering these in a cheaper package would be good too we said to which they replied "that is a possibility."
So, we took this information back to our news group and while we had some distracters the overall majority was pleased with both the information relayed and we two for taking the time to talk to them.
When the new service offerings appeared very few of the things we had told them their customers wanted were listed. Not even in their premier package Karoo Pro. Not as an add-on option. Nowhere. We had been sucked in, digested and spat out in disdain. They had effectively lied to us and made us look stupid to our peers for believing a money grabbing company like KCom and their ISP offspring Karoo, cared about what their home based customers wanted and for us to believe they cared at all.
At this stage of the game the future of the Karoo Technical Forum looks uncertain. What is certain is our utter disgust at what they have done. If, and this is big if, they reply to the email we sent them about these new offerings and the total lack of new features held within them and they can somehow patch up our now total distrust of them then it may yet have a future. But, from where we are sat right now that seems like mission impossible.
We shall see what comes back and take it from there.
Well, we told them what their customers wanted. We told them how their home customers needs have changed and what they needed to supply to those customers. In return they said major change to their ADSL offerings was coming and they would integrate "what we can" what we had told them into those offerings. They said they would look into providing reverse DNS as an option and multiple IP's again a an option, probably, they said, to their premier package (which is now named Karoo Pro). They said at the time it was discussed that reverse DNS and multiple IP's "should be no problem" and "pose no difficulties" in implementing them. They said faster downloads via ADSL2 would be available. Offering these in a cheaper package would be good too we said to which they replied "that is a possibility."
So, we took this information back to our news group and while we had some distracters the overall majority was pleased with both the information relayed and we two for taking the time to talk to them.
When the new service offerings appeared very few of the things we had told them their customers wanted were listed. Not even in their premier package Karoo Pro. Not as an add-on option. Nowhere. We had been sucked in, digested and spat out in disdain. They had effectively lied to us and made us look stupid to our peers for believing a money grabbing company like KCom and their ISP offspring Karoo, cared about what their home based customers wanted and for us to believe they cared at all.
At this stage of the game the future of the Karoo Technical Forum looks uncertain. What is certain is our utter disgust at what they have done. If, and this is big if, they reply to the email we sent them about these new offerings and the total lack of new features held within them and they can somehow patch up our now total distrust of them then it may yet have a future. But, from where we are sat right now that seems like mission impossible.
We shall see what comes back and take it from there.
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