For Sale POOL back with the tail between the legs?

[Sharpy]

eMail from pool:

Pool.com has put together its first customer survey. We would like to ask you a few questions in order to help us understand and better satisfy your needs. Your feedback on Pool.com's services is very important to us. The survey should take you no longer than 2 minutes to complete.

Please click on the following link to access our survey. You must log in to your Pool.com account to fill it out.

http://www.pool.com/MyAccount/Survey.aspx

We would greatly appreciate your participation in completing our auction survey.

Regards,

The Pool.com Team
www.Pool.com
[email protected]

MY answer to the last question: the new system is bogus, and you know why.

 

[iBizStart]

I put something similar "You guys are a bunch of crooks"

 

[Jack Gordon]

My answer:

I have stopped using Pool entirely as a result of the new auction system. Why should we bother when your system bids domains up to the full retail value? You might as well just be honest and capture the domains for yourself then sell them at retail like BuyDomains.

 

[Theo]

I put "I stopped using Pool when you introduced the new system."

I hope they get the message.

 

[Jernet]

I told them the new auction system sucked ;0)

 

[mole]

"I have stopped using Pool entirely as a result of the new auction system. Why should we bother when your system bids domains up to the full retail value? You might as well just be honest and capture the domains for yourself then sell them at retail like BuyDomains."

Touche

 

[MediaHound]

I told them it's quite a fishy design.

 

[Steen]

Telling them that you don't like the new system will make them change. Change will regain some marker share. Then we'll have these shady people back in the big biz.

 

[mole]

Then we'll have these shady people back in the big biz.

I didn't think of it that way.

That's a good point, steen.

Let the shady cartels bleed dry and be financially devastated with Pool's new system, I say.

 

[skylight]

Tell them the seal bid ROCKS ! Keep up the good work :bandit:

 

[mole]

I did :-D

 

[Promediary]

Open Letter to Pool.com
Survey response submitted on 9/18/04


"Insofar as Pool management is finally listening, rather than dictating; and at the risk of offending those who have long offended the domain community with their arrogance, allow me to be uncharacteristically blunt:

Just as Coca Cola foolishly stumbled over its own success by replacing its cornerstone brand with "improved", yet substandard Coke Classic, Pool's classic reformulation of a successful business model has succeeded only in chasing away market share and diminishing its brand leadership by exhibiting such transparent greed and corporate arrogance that its core market -- domain speculators -- now celebrate the rise of your competitors. Few, if any, speak of Pool kindly. And you've rightly earned their disdain.

You are distrusted. You are disliked. You are disrespected for the disrespect you exhibit toward your bread-and-butter customers and the affiliate partners who fueled your success.

Your piggish Coke Classic blunder into 2-stage, sealed bid auctions has predictably depleted your market dominance and given rise to marketworthy competitors. You shook the marketplace and the marketplace shook back. And those whom you've alienated are now chuckling that you've finally blinked.

Pool.com has become Fool.com.

Still, this corporate blink affords you an opportunity to evaluate your follies, exhibit a little humility, and readjust your business practices to restore client confidence.

Lose the sealed bid auctions altogether. NOBODY likes it. NOBODY trusts it. And only the most foolish of domain zealots are willing to submit to it.

Lose the attitude. And the arrogance. You're Avis now, so you damned well better try harder to impress your clientele with customer service policies that put the customers' interests ahead of your own. That's right, AHEAD of your own.

Iron-fisted conflict resolution must be reversed. If satisfying occasional customer dissatisfaction costs you a few hundred bucks a month, consider it an investment, not an expense. And although the customer might not always be right, customers lost are a fiscal and PR liability you can no longer afford.

For 26 years, major corporations have paid me handsomely to help solve complex public relations crises and bluntly advise them in reversing blunders such as yours. You just got an earful for free. I suggest you pay heed, and seize this moment in time to hear and respond to the echoes of universal discontent."

 

[seeker]

very very well said!!!

 

[MediaHound]

add my john hancock to that one, too.

Well said!

 

[Jack Gordon]

one little nitpick...

Coke Classic was the solution to the problem. New Coke was the problem.

Otherwise, a nicely worded letter. I am afraid it is too obvious and common-sense to have much of an impact. I suspect Pool is much more interested in finding ways to repackage the same product in a less offensive way.

 

[nitronet]

The survey is simply so they can say "Due to overwhelming response, we are retuning to our old auction system".

Ha, too funny, the scumbags at Pool already lost all of their customers.

I voted that I LOVE the new system, keep up the good work.

 

[Whois-Search]

"Due to overwhelming response, we are retuning to our old auction system".

The thing is people won't return to using it because it makes them look bad to

Time for Enom and Snapnames to get as many registers as they can while Pool is bad news

 

[chatcher]

Just as Coca Cola foolishly stumbled over its own success by replacing its cornerstone brand with "improved", yet substandard Coke Classic...

It's funny you should choose the New Coke example to compare to Pool's recent moves. Did you know that prior to the introduction of New Coke, Coca-Cola's market share had been eroding, but after the (re)introduction of Classic Coke it soared? Planned or not, the result of that "fiasco" was free publicity, a revival of loyalty to the Coca-Cola brand, and a huge increase in profits. Some think it was planned that way from the beginning.

I don't know what Pool's motivation was in changing their seemingly successful system, and I don't know what their next move will be. They don't have much to lose as long as they keep catching names, since simple greed will keep their customers coming back. I'm sure a lot of the people complaining about the new system never did stop using their services. I hate the new system, but I go back again and again. There is no competition. (There is competition in catching the names, but for the ones they catch, there is no other place to go.)

 

[Promediary]

one little nitpick...
Coke Classic was the solution to the problem. New Coke was the problem.

Ouch! You're right! New Coke was the folly. I bow to the G-ds of onset senility :-#

Actually, I'll pin that embarrasing lapse on the clock. I finished it with heavy eyelids at about 3am.

It's funny you should choose the New Coke example to compare to Pool's recent moves. Did you know that prior to the introduction of New Coke, Coca-Cola's market share had been eroding, but after the (re)introduction of Classic Coke it soared?

Correctomundo. New Coke was Coca Cola's thunder-blunder counterstrike intended to offset Pepsi's blitzkreig ad campaign, "The Pepsi Challenge," in which blind taste tests effectively hailed that a majority of consumers preferred the taste of Pepsi to that of Coke. Coke's sales had flatlined, while Pepsi was gaining market share on the strength of its follow-the-leader marketing campaign.

79 days after Coca Cola replaced its signature brand on store shelves, the company caved to public outcry, ridicule and plummeting market share, and hastily reintroduced original Coke as Coke Classic.

Hmmm ... 79 days. Let's see ... August 20th to September 19th is about 30 days since Pool introduced its "exciting new innovation" ... public outcry, ridicule, plummeting market share ... 49 days 'till Classic Pool ?

 

[chatcher]

... 79 days after Coca Cola replaced its signature brand on store shelves, the company caved to public outcry, ridicule and plummeting market share, and hastily reintroduced original Coke as Coke Classic.

... with a "minor" change in formula - Classic is sweetened with corn syrup, a cheaper alternative to the sugar used in the original. Could "New Coke" have been a masterful ploy to make that switch without anyone noticing? Whatever Pool does now, you can bet it won't be returning to exactly their original formula. That would require admitting a mistake. Much more likely they will "improve" the formula based on "customer input".