IntuitiveDesigns

Here are a couple of commercial vector illustrations that I did last month using my businessman character. Simplified versions of these ones plus other commercial illustrations were intended to be on sale at iStockphoto but lately I’ve been changing my mind about working with them. On the first place I don’t think their commission and way to set up prices is really fair for the artists. Also, their policies to approve the vector work are really restrictive, and it makes the submission of the art as difficult as finding the holy grail.

I’ve been trying to get approved by iStockphoto myself for the last three months, because they require the final artwork in files that may be compatible with really old versions of the applications. I know of a lot of other artists who have the same problem as me.

I’m actually looking for other choices to sell commercial illustration on the Internet rather than iStockphoto. I hope to feature my work in other galleries soon. If you have any suggestion I would appreciate it. Meanwhile, there is an extensive part of my commercial illustration for web sites at our shop.

When we started this blog last year, we decided to have a rants and raves section where we would place one rant and one rave in the same post. Kind of like yin and yang, to balance each other out. So, here is our first rant/rave.

Rave: Ma.nolia.com
Why?: Their excellent service and nice website.
Details: I had been playing for a few years with del.icio.us for awhile, but I just never got into it. The idea of social bookmarking is pretty cool, but the design of the site totally turned me off. It’s just so bland, that as a designer it kills me to look at it. I know it’s simple and functional, but something with a little kick would be nice.

Then Ma.gnolia came along. When I first saw the beauty of a site that it is, I thought wow! It’s well laid out and just as functional as del.icio.us, but has enough extra features to make it stand apart including screenshots of the bookmarks, bookmark ratings, and what I think is a better community system. And did I mention that the design is nice?

But, that’s not what stole my heart. What really moved me to use their site was the excellent help they gave me. I had almost 2000 bookmarks that I wanted to import from my Firefox browser to their site. They have an easy to use tool to import, but the bookmarks were not going through. I got in touch with the product manager, Todd, who was extremely helpful.

After we tried importing a few times without success, I didn’t hear from them for a few days. So, I figured that they gave up on me. You know how that works on the internet, people just ignore you until you go away. I was really surprised later when Todd got back in touch with me and thanked me for my patience. I finally managed to get my bookmarks imported and they even offered to do it for me if I couldn’t. On top of that, they were extremely kind and professional. I am definitely a fan now.

Rant: Yahoo Groups
Why?: They killed my group.
Details: I belong to a very active yahoo group of web designers that is more than 7 years old. About 2 1/2 weeks ago yahoo decided to improve their email messages by adding extra features. About two days after that, the email from the group just stopped. The messages could be posted on their site, but the emails were not going through and many of us were getting bounces. The group owner tried to get help from Yahoo and so did a few other people in the group including myself.

In the first place, finding help was almost next to impossible. Yahoo doesn’t have any support links to talk to a real person unless you search their help database first. This was totally frustrating because I knew that help for this particular problem wouldn’t be in the database and I spent about half an hour trying to find a way to contact them.

When I did find a contact, they asked for my group name, email address, and comments. Since I have 3 email addresses that I use for the Yahoo Groups, I gave them my hotmail address. They replied two days later saying that it was hotmail’s fault and that I should contact msn for support. Huh?

So, I wrote again saying that I was having a problem with all of my email addresses and none of the members of my group were getting their emails either. They wrote back again asking for all of my email addresses that I use on the groups and a list of all of the message numbers that I didn’t receive. So, I sent them both things. Now I haven’t heard anything back. That was over a week ago and still nothing. They even sent me a request for feedback on their support a few days ago. What support?

Now the owner of the group is moving the whole mailing list to her own server because Yahoo won’t help any of us. I think that they shouldn’t offer a service they don’t want to support, free or not.

I was looking over our site logs yesterday and realized that we are currently in the number 1 position in Google for a curious term and I just had to share. The term is “nicest website in the world”. Wow! Google must really like us! Although unintentional, it is kind of amusing, isn’t it?

What are some funny terms that you have had high rankings with unintentionally in Google?

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.

Yahoo news has reported that anger is actually good for you according to livescience.com. Speaking of which, we have decided to add a category to the blog called “Rants and Raves”. This will be a little section where we will talk about small grievances with the condition that we also have to add a rave at the same time. First rant/rave coming up shortly!