You want annoying? I'll give you annoying... :: The Life of the Traegorn

The Life of the Traegorn

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You want annoying? I'll give you annoying...
Posted Mar 21, 2004 - 13:41:03

Okay, everyone here knows that I spent several years of my life as a salesman. I did full service sales, and was pretty good at it.

Salespeople are a part of life, really. When we all walk into a major retailer, we know that we're going to get a few may-I-help-yous and how-are-you-today-sirs, it's just a part of retail. But when we shop ONLINE, we expect a different experience. We expect to be left alone to research and make our decisions. I mean, that's why we went online to look in the first place, instead of calling their toll free number - we wanted to avoid the people.

Well, one company has decided that this browser's market wasn't working well enough for them. As Forbes is reporting, and I have since annoyingly verified myself, Rackspace hosted servers has decided to add live salespeople to their arsenal of selling tactics. That's right, if you're browsing their website (and you have Java turned on) you may recieve an instant message of sorts, from a live representative, asking if you need any help.

Geh...

And yes, they'll leave you alone if you tell them that you're "just looking", but really - we all know how annoying that is. Again, if this were a retail store, where you couldn't do the reading yourself, I'd understand the neccessity. In retail, the information center is the sales person. You don't have any other access to the information there. But, online, you're looking at the information. You're doing the reading yourself, and you don't want any help. If you did... you'd call up their live phone person.

Again... THAT'S THE WHOLE BLOODY POINT OF SHOPPING ONLINE. To NOT have to talk to people... yeesh.

Of course, if they were smart, they'd replace their paid salespeople with convincing bots. But heck, that's just what the crooked salesperson I keep chained up in the back of my head tells me to do... but I usually just ignore him... *grin*

On the upside, after I told the salesperson to go away, they haven't contacted me again - and I've been browsing their site for the last fifteen minutes. That's nice.

I think this says though that I'll stick with my current hosting solution, and if I ever decide to change servers, it won't be to Rackspace... yeesh.

In regular life news, I went to go see the 'Tosa East production of "Children of Eden" last night. It was actually pretty good, and they've got some kids there with some real talent (the girl playing Yonah pretty much blew me away). I said hi to Mrs. Traeger and various other individuals, and it was good to see the old theatre again. I missed it. I also ran into Collin Donohue while I was there. I went to highschool with Collin, he was our sound guy. Apparently, East has hired him... to be a sound guy. Go figure.

Anyways, it was a good time. Those kids are doing a good job, and have made that theatre their own. I'm glad.
- Traegorn