January 13, 2008 by Dan Siegel.

My father was a gentle man who understood people. He had an ability to immediately sense who was good, who was trouble, and who to “be careful” with. And he always encouraged me to follow my instincts. He was right, and I only wish I had followed his advice a little more closely recently. I’ve instead learned two lessons, both people- and business-related.

First, if you’ve had prior dealings with someone and they weren’t positive, don’t have more. An attorney came to me for some technological services. I had been involved in a case with him a few years ago; his client was reprehensible, but so were some of his actions. He convinced me at our meeting that what happened then was an isolated incident. My gut said no, but I still took the job. Guess what? My gut was correct, and he acted no differently with me now compared with his conduct years ago. I have terminated our relationship — quickly.

Second, follow your instincts, not the clients. Another client came to me for technology consulting. This person was adamant about the person’s tech skills, and I made training recommendations based upon that representation, rather than my experience. When the person didn’t learn everything as quickly as my underestimate, I became a villain. Bottom line — if you know something should take X hours, and a client insists that he or she can do it in less, continue to estimate based upon what has been historically correct, not what the clent says. If you complete the project or training early, great. You’ll be thrilled and so will the client. On the other, if you don’t meet the expectations you set based on the client’s representation, you lose, and you lose a client. And if the client is particularly vocal, you lose even more.

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December 6, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

Trying to save money is a great idea, in theory. Since I started in business, I used a Pitney Bowes meter. It worked fine, but there seemed to be a charge for just about everything. So, a company named ITS contacted me — it shared my firm’s initials, so it had to be good, right? Well, that’s up for debate. I met with their salesperson and we figured out I would save as much as $200 per year switching to their meter, so I signed on the dotted line. Mistake!

First, there was a problem that the initial postage wasn’t set up right, and then I couldn’t even download the postage. ITS, to its credit, sent a tech person right over and he fixed it. He also assured me a customer service person would call to address my emerging concerns. That was in September, still no call. But the machine worked, even though I had now wasted over an hour of time on the problem (and the value of the time is equivalent to how much I was going to save annually).

Fast forward to November, and I receive an American Express statement with a meter charge that I couldn’t identify. So I called Hassler. Guess what? They didn’t know what it was either, and told me to fax them the statement. More time on my end, but I did it. Plus, I called ITS, spoke to the head of tech support, who promised the president of the company would call me. So far no call.

Today, more than two weeks later, I called Hassler again. After 15 minutes on hold, I hung up, but sent an email to the ITS sales rep asking about the status. After all, on November 29th, she wrote that she had contacted Hassler and said that “They should be getting back to [her] today, or tomorrow at the latest.” Not quite. I just called again and they don’t have a clue what the charge was for, but they will get back to me.

Bottom line, when calculating how much you “save” when switching from a product that works, remember to factor in the value of the time you may spend resolving hassles that arise with the new vendor. In my case, those hassles cost me more in time than I saved.

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August 10, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

The Internet is there, like the air we breathe, right? Wrong. Stuff happens. And then you wait, and twiddle.

This week I learned that lesson. My Internet connection began to slow down, and get slower and slower. So I called Comcast, which is reputed to have excellent customer service for its business customers. They checked my connection, and found nothing wrong. They then promised me that someone would come to my office the following day.

Unfortunately, by the same evening, the Internet connection was dead, and so was my overall ability to communicate (although, Thank God for the Blackberry!). When I called Comcast the next morning (the day of the service call), I was placed into a maze of push this number, then that number, eventually leading to a black hole of “leave your number and someone will call you back.” I’m still waiting.

At 3:30, 30 minutes after the anointed hour, I called Comcast to see where the service person was. A very unconcerned person, who said, “I’m just in a call center,” advised me that my call was scheduled for between 3:30 and 7:30, and he couldn’t do a thing for me — nor did he show the slighest inclination to do anything (except perhaps take a snooze). At 5 o’clock, the repair truck arrived, and two very helpful and pleasant workers quickly discovered that my three month old modem had died. They replaced it, and I was up and running.

The lessons: Comcast business service ain’t so great. Businesses need an alternate way of connecting to the Internet (a Blackberry is OK, but a broadband card would be better).

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July 15, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

Lately, I’m the poster child for backups and restores. Yup, another story. I finally took Ellen Freedman’s advice and installed Copernic at home — it’s a far better desktop search engine than Google. I did it while also ridding my home computer of Norton Anti-Virus (which slowed it to a crawl at times) and installing the easy-to-use CA Internet Suite 2007. Google Desktop Search, however, didn’t want to uninstall and instead, after much frustration, I tried a variety of self-help options (don’t do this at home!) and then rebooted. Windows rebooted, but Explorer (the program that lets you access everything on the computer) was completely unavailable. I had a desktop, nothing else.

So, I embarked on a program to restore the computer. Five hours later, it works. Why? After trying some simple solutions — they simply didn’t work — I began to get creative. First, I had to verify that everything had been backed up properly, then I re-backed up all my documents so that if I had to reinstall Windows XP, I wouldn’t lose all of my and my family’s work. Then I tried restoring just the Registry — not enough. Then I restored all the Windows files and Google Desktop. That worked, but of course my installation of CA Internet Suite had to be redone. And Google Desktop is still there — and won’t go away.

But thanks to my backup, everything went well.

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April 7, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

People who know me know that I love computers and software, and that my technology business, Integrated Technology Services, LLC, is just fun for me. It’s like getting paid to play. But it’s still a business, and after a year and half, it’s still a learning process. What have I learned? Some companies treat you nicer than others. Some of the big companies just want to squeeze out the little guy (like I could possibly kill their businesses) while others embrace the little guy. One example is Lexis-Nexis, a monolith no doubt, but a company that has embraced my business and knows that as I succeed, so does it.

I’m now a Certified Independent Consultant (CIC) for Time Matters and am in the process of becoming a CIC for Hot Docs. The people have generally been really nice, and they are committed to working with me. The same goes (10X over) for the wonderful people at Case Soft (they make Case Map, Time Map, etc., and I support them all). They have always been a pleasure to deal with, even after Lexis-Nexis bought them.

On the other hand, other companies get bought out and the first thing they do is try to eliminate me. One company immediately ended my reseller agreement (I made about $50 commission per license) and raised their prices so high that most of my clients — solos, small and mid-size firms — probably aren’t going to buy their product anymore. Do they care? No. They say the number-crunchers told them what to do.

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