IntuitiveDesigns

If you’re like us, you use Google for just about everything already, but did you know that you can use it to look up weather, to look up movies, to look up news in a certain location, and other fun stuff like that? Here is a great list of Google advanced operators that just might come in handy more than once.

We have been loyal customers of ya.com for over 2 years now, but after the horrible treatment we have received today, that will no longer be the case. They have literally left us with no other choice.

It all started last month, in November, when we received notice that they were cutting our internet dsl service for non-payment. We went through our payments and noticed that they had been paid the bill for the month of July 6 times, which was the starting cause of the whole issue. All of the payments had been paid, however. When we tried calling that day, the customer support representative was so rude that when we asked for her name and to speak to the manager because she wouldn’t listen to us, she hung up. That was only the beginning.

Later, they told us that we could straighten out the issue by sending copies of all of our payments by mail with the reference numbers, which we did. We assumed that the issue was taken care of because we didn’t receive any response from them and that was more than 3 weeks ago.

So, this morning we received an email stating that they will cut our service for non-payment. When we called to straighten it out, they informed us that our service was already cut and we were no longer customers since they had put down our contract, all the while admitting that the mistake was theirs and even having the papers that we sent in front of them. Apparently, they got our papers, but no one bothered to take care of the issue. This we finally figured out after talking to about 10 incompetent people and spending 6 hours on the phone going in circles just trying to get a hold of a person in the right department.

Now they say that we must sign a new contract with them to get service back. This takes 15-20 days. As we saw no other option, we decided to go for a new contract. Once again, nope, we couldn’t do that either. It takes 20 days to terminate the old contract. So, not only did they cut our service for a fault of their own, they have done absolutely nothing to rectify the situation and keep us as customers or even help us to become new customers.

Not speaking of the amount of stress and frustration this has caused, the burden financially for us is significant because we do all of our business online and any downtime is hurtful. The situation is completely unacceptable. Since they are clearly not concerned about their customers, we will be searching for another provider. If you live in Spain and you are considering Ya.com as your internet service provider, run away as fast as your legs will take you. They don’t value their loyal existing customers and don’t want you as a new customer either.

Would you like to change the world? If so, We Are What We Do has wonderful suggestions about how you can change the world or at least your own, one small step at a time. Some of the actions are: read a story with a child, plant a tree, try watching less TV, seize the moment, take time to listen, etc.

You can even maintain your own list and check off the items when you accomplish them. It’s sort of like a goodwill to-do list!

We at Intuitive Designs are constantly learning and growing every day. One of the things we do towards this goal and study web standards and make each new web site we do more standards compliant.

456 Berea Street has just published a great list of ten reasons why web standards are important to learn and use. Some of the reasons we think are the most outstanding are:

2. Make your clients look good (so that their web site can serve the most people possible)
4. Faster loading and reduced bandwidth usage (speaks for itself)
6. Improve search engine rankings (always a great thing!)
8. Future-proof content (if there is such a thing with electronic documents)

One reason that doesn’t stand out so much:
10. It’s the right way to do things (we’d rather leave that to designers to decide for themselves)