Erik J. Heels is a high-tech lawyer whose blog I read from time to time.
Back in 2007, Erik posted about trying to watch a movie with his wife on Verizon FiOS TV’s video-on-demand (VOD) feature on Valentine’s Day and the subsequent problems, tech support calls, router restarts and tech support incompetence and inability to solve the problem. Also, his wife fell asleep.
I was cracking up reading Erik’s post, because it reminded me of a similar situation back when my wife and I were dating. Before I had a DVD player we tried to watch a DVD movie on my new laptop that had a DVD drive.
I got the laptop connected to the TV and the sizing was never correct. Pause, rewind, and fast forward didn’t work. But the problems started about a quarter of the way into the movie when the skipping, stuttering, and erratic playback started. Like Erik, I tried in vain to fix the problem and the end result was my date was asleep, I was angry and frustrated. I bought a DVD player soon after.
While this story has no direct advice for a successful Internet business, it implies that if your products do not function as advertised and as expected you will have unhappy customers, and that’s not good for repeat business.
The moral of the story: Don’t mix cutting edge technology with romance!
You can read Erik’s story here: Verizon FiOS TV Problems.
Fred
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