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On September 02 2010 06:43 Manifesto7 wrote:Show nested quote +For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time. That is unbelievably weak."We will be up and running for your future business but in the mean time everyone who has already paid has to get their money back on their own". Unreal.
they just have no time for there paying customers man
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I feel that this very well may be a case of inexperienced business owners encountering unforeseen issues, however, if you are trying to perform some sort of 'damage control', actions will speak louder than words. By forcing your customers to go through a PayPal dispute, (a nightmare for anyone who hasn't had to dispute a transaction) you are increasing the fallout of this bad situation, and making it worse. I feel that you should issue, if not a personal email, some sort of form email, and sort out the refunds process on your end. This would create good faith among a community, which I believe to be a major customer base. How a company handles errors speaks volumes about how they will conduct business in future ventures, and customers recognize this.
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On September 02 2010 06:43 Manifesto7 wrote:Show nested quote +For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time. That is unbelievably weak."We will be up and running for your future business but in the mean time everyone who has already paid has to get their money back on their own". Unreal.
I would prefer to be more proactive on this, I'm just dealing with a close family members death and the associated travel, then travelling for my day job next week. With the state of our organization this is the best and fastest way to get a refund. Obviously I won't be keeping money people are owes but fail to explicitly ask for, it may just take longer.
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I think that its a classic example of some one trying to take a simple idea, and it exploding into something more then they expected/could handle. I hope that you can get every one their refund and have every thing sorted out.
I think you need to bring on people that their sole purpose is to do the logistics of the site, and not take on the burden yourself.
PM me if you are looking for help, or man power to aid with the admin of your site.
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I love how everyone laughed at me, when I said they refused to contact me for weeks
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On September 02 2010 07:47 xyos wrote: I love how everyone laughed at me, when I said they refused to contact me for weeks
I dont think it was so much as refused then it was under a pile of emails,
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On September 02 2010 07:08 Louder wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 06:43 Manifesto7 wrote:For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time. That is unbelievably weak."We will be up and running for your future business but in the mean time everyone who has already paid has to get their money back on their own". Unreal. I would prefer to be more proactive on this, I'm just dealing with a close family members death and the associated travel, then travelling for my day job next week. With the state of our organization this is the best and fastest way to get a refund. Obviously I won't be keeping money people are owes but fail to explicitly ask for, it may just take longer.
Can you say anything about why the coaches aren't getting paid, even if only for a "small window" (where by "small window" i mean up to 3 weeks)? Are they not getting paid for lessons that they conducted, or are they not getting paid for lessons that were scheduled but never delivered?
See the other thread, starting here.
If the reason they're not getting paid is because you need to be able to cover mass paypal chargeback penalties, then I'm sorry but I feel this is unacceptable.
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I don't understand the general good will and encouragement in this thread. At this point in time, the founder of the company, and the company's second in command, have publicly announced different stories about the current going ons of GosuCoaching. As a consumer, it seems unrealistic to trust GosuCoaching at the moment, when they haven't even properly refunded every costumer for money put down in expectation of services to be rendered.
Incontrol, arguably the public figurehead has claimed GosuCoaching is in fact shutting down, while Louder, the manager of GosuCoaching claims a temporary hiatus.
If GosuCoaching did not have the members associated with TeamLiquid as it does, I'd personally bet the attitude would be completely and entirely different. Which is to say, personal biases and friendships are obviously shown in this situation.
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This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
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01 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't understand the general good will and encouragement in this thread. At this point in time, the founder of the company, and the company's second in command, have publicly announced different stories about the current going ons of GosuCoaching. As a consumer, it seems unrealistic to trust GosuCoaching at the moment, when they haven't even properly refunded every costumer for money put down in expectation of services to be rendered.
Incontrol, arguably the public figurehead has claimed GosuCoaching is in fact shutting down, while Louder, the manager of GosuCoaching claims a temporary hiatus.
If GosuCoaching did not have the members associated with TeamLiquid as it does, I'd personally bet the attitude would be completely and entirely different. Which is to say, personal biases and friendships are obviously shown in this situation.
Personal biases are not anything new or weird. They are simply a fact. Objective truth cannot be percieved (even though it exists in theory). InControl has a great reputation that he did not gain by being useless and running poor businesses. His reputation is well deserved which is proven by the general support from this community.
The fact that they both have different stories just strengthens their claims of intra-communication issues.
I can't believe that you are getting this upset over a business failing it's administrative aspects, especially in a time where banks are going bankrupt left and right (I'm not misinterpreting the failure as bankrupcy just stating that bigger and more solid companies fall as well).
GoseCouaching with all of it's coaches including inControl and Louder has my full respect for attempting to create a successful business out of something we all love. Unfortunately it seems that good StarCraft players are not as adept businessmen. What I am trying to say is that the initiative in itself should not be discouraged.
Regarding monetary issues I have nothing to say really, I do not have a personal stake in this since GosuCoaching does not owe me any money but I understand customers being dissapointed. I just hope that the community is not as unforgiving as with other things (Combat-Ex) and acknowledges the effort put in by the staff.
TL;DR A for effort.
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On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
It appears he got *sunglasses* out of control.
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On September 02 2010 08:13 Genovi wrote:Show nested quote +01 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't understand the general good will and encouragement in this thread. At this point in time, the founder of the company, and the company's second in command, have publicly announced different stories about the current going ons of GosuCoaching. As a consumer, it seems unrealistic to trust GosuCoaching at the moment, when they haven't even properly refunded every costumer for money put down in expectation of services to be rendered.
Incontrol, arguably the public figurehead has claimed GosuCoaching is in fact shutting down, while Louder, the manager of GosuCoaching claims a temporary hiatus.
If GosuCoaching did not have the members associated with TeamLiquid as it does, I'd personally bet the attitude would be completely and entirely different. Which is to say, personal biases and friendships are obviously shown in this situation. Personal biases are not anything new or weird. They are simply a fact. Objective truth cannot be percieved (even though it exists in theory). InControl has a great reputation that he did not gain by being useless and running poor businesses. His reputation is well deserved which is proven by the general support from this community. The fact that they both have different stories just strengthens their claims of intra-communication issues. I can't believe that you are getting this upset over a business failing it's administrative aspects, especially in a time where banks are going bankrupt left and right (I'm not misinterpreting the failure as bankrupcy just stating that bigger and more solid companies fall as well). GoseCouaching with all of it's coaches including inControl and Louder has my full respect for attempting to create a successful business out of something we all love. Unfortunately it seems that good StarCraft players are not as adept businessmen. What I am trying to say is that the initiative in itself should not be discouraged. Regarding monetary issues I have nothing to say really, I do not have a personal stake in this since GosuCoaching does not owe me any money but I understand customers being dissapointed. I just hope that the community is not as unforgiving as with other things (Combat-Ex) and acknowledges the effort put in by the staff. TL;DR A for effort.
I'm just personally surprised by the amount of support they're currently receiving. Mostly, I'm trying to bring up the point that the support seems misplaced in this particular organization. Maybe not the specific members. I suppose I disagree with you and I would prefer the community be less forgiving and generally more negative in response to their actions so far.
If you want to talk more, I don't mind talking in PMs, and I do understand your position, and don't necessarily frown upon it, it's just our particular argument is probably off-topic now.
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Make it so the coaches just give a 2 hour (or so) block that's open and have people schedule it in there. Consistence makes it easier to do it at you're scale. I hope it all works out!
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On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
You're kind of misrepresenting what happened. Nobody closes due to too much interest. They close due to not being able to HANDLE too much business. Plenty of companies, even large corporations, have grown faster than they were prepared to handle and suffered the consequences.
He claims he wants to rebuild with a more scalable business model. But it's difficult to make that happen overnight. Only time will tell if it's going to work or if the negative fallout from this event will have done too much damage.
Not that I'm taking his side or anything. Quite the contrary, I still want an explanation for why coaches didn't get paid for lessons delivered.
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On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
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On September 02 2010 07:47 xyos wrote: I love how everyone laughed at me, when I said they refused to contact me for weeks
we laughed at the fact you called it a scam website, not that they didn't contact you.
I think one flaw in the plan is people pay potentially days beforehand, sign up for a time slot to get coaching, and go on. With the overload of people signing up that just means people will have to wait weeks to get on. Instead maybe a small timeline of hours the coaches are avialable can be put up, and a little grey button that says "purchase this time slot".
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Osaka27118 Posts
On September 02 2010 08:29 PokePill wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act. I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this. It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
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On September 02 2010 08:31 Manifesto7 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 08:29 PokePill wrote:On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act. I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this. It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand. The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
I don't know. Normally you would just accept money with a "promise of services". In fact, that got me to thinking. Maybe instead of all these refunds, they should just cease accepting new requests, work with existing coaches to figure out availability and schedule all the outstanding lesson requests, and just get it done. That would the best thing for the brand, the business, the students, and the coaches. This paypal chargeback thing is for the birds. If Louder is busy, give iNcontroL access to the email account, put differences aside, and just get it done. After that they can go their separate ways, but it would show a sense of integrity from both parties and would probably be a confidence booster for people thinking about future services.
In the meantime, while they're getting all this sorted out, they can work on figuring out how to come up with a more scalable business model. I don't know how big the backlog is, but if the coaches are willing to hunker down and just get all of this crap knocked out, I would imagine they can push through the lessons in 2 weeks or so. But who knows, maybe they had way more requests than even I can imagine.
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I too don't understand all the goodwill. Why would they take peoples' money without a set date for a lesson, at the very least? It sounds like they just took money in and then blew people off, which is closer to 'unethical' than 'well-intentioned'. Add on forcing people to dispute with paypal and this seems really obnoxious.
Am I understanding something wrong?
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nope thats basically how it went, they got the money within 2 emails, than dont respond for weeks ;0
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