Why Did Skype Tell Me To Upgrade?
Today the truth started to surface about the Skype outage and it got me thinking, really thinking. The more I thought, the madder I got.
After 25 years working for large corporations, I recently started my own small business. It's the realization of a long held dream - finally I'm my own boss. No one can tell me what to do anymore, except my clients. Like a lot of small businesses cash flow is tight and that means I have to bend over backwards to keep my small but growing clientele happy. I just can’t afford to lose one client. I must provide the best quality service bar none. If I don’t attend to all my clients’ whims and needs I won’t see them for the dust, that’s my biggest fear. We all know it’s a competitive market out there.
I use Skype like a lot of small businesses these days and ironically the day of the outage had a payment issue with a client that had to be solved immediately. The account had to be settled that day so I could pay my sole supplier. The whole house of cards could have fallen down, right there and then. Luckily I had the foresight to have backup VOIP and was able to make the call. There have been many pivotal moments over the last 3 months and the most powerful supercomputer in the universe couldn’t have predicted any of them.
So the Skype outage was caused by the new version 5.0.0.152 of the software that they encouraged me to download. If I hadn’t read the reports today I wouldn’t have downloaded the fix, version 5.0.0.156. What cheek, it’s nearly 2011, aren’t new releases supposed to be improvements and fix bugs? Not cause them. Do these large corporations care about their products, services and customers? Could I treat my customers like that?
There’s the rub, we live in a world where the corporations rule and no humans have any accountability any more – the bigger the corporation the less the accountability.
These corporations use the media to fool us into thinking we have no power, no choice – but we have. I’ve had enough of being lied to by powerless customer service pawns with no skin in the deal. Whenever I can I’m going to put my business with the small guy, like me, a 21st century online mom ‘n pop who can’t afford to lie.
Here’s my New Year’s resolution: whenever I search on Google don't check any of the listings till page 10.
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