Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

As sales have gotten worse, I’m down to being a 1 person company. I no longer have time to research this sort of thing. It’s rare that I can even read Chris’s posts on the day they’re published anymore.

I’m frustrated. Between my newsletter, my website & ebay I’m doing 1/3 the business I did in 2000. And with ebay’s recent huge fee increases, declining ebay sales & shipping price limits there’s a very good chance I’ll be shutting down in 2009.

I am sorry to read about your problems and hopefully the problem will be resolved for you and everyone else this affected quickly. I am sure you are not the only one affected in some way over this. That effect may be having actual problems, similar to yours, or it may have caused the “CYA” factor where certain people see a potential problem and simply wants to cover their own butts.

It seems to me that you are co-operating with Trend Micro on this, and they are co-operating with you. Neither one of you seems overly happy this happened and it does identify a potential problem with Trend Micro, which I am sure they want to fix for the future. They really could have sat on their hands over this and given you stock answers, like many other businesses tend to do. This thing could have run on for months, meanwhile you and others on the net could have continued your downward spirals.

My Grandfather told me once that there is a time to sit back and let the experts handle things, and a time to push the experts into actually doing the things they are supposed to be doing. It seems to me that you chose wisely and not sat by thinking those who normally handle these things actually would handle the problem in a timely manner.

If it was me, I would just co-operate with Trend Micro.

But I reckon that other more agressive folks would realise that putting people out of businesss without good cause is also the basis of a large class action suit.

JG

Thanks again for providing this great insight into a potential danger for any internet marketer, and also solutions, help, and support.

Sunny Rivers

Let’s say you began having problems in the first week of September, if you would have immediately went to work to resolve those problems and they seemed to be fixed by the end of the week or during the next week… you most likely would have figured the problem was resolved and dropped any further investigation. Why wouldn’t you? You would have been bringing in money from sales and consulting, and your email was flowing again. Those are sure signs a problem has been fixed, but the real problem may have still been their with Trend Micro and no one would have been aware of it. Meanwhile you may have been nailed again with problems, or someone else who you may or may not ever run across might have developed the same symptoms. Once again people would have worked to resolve the immediate problem and the real problem may have been missed.

It’s too bad you were the one that this happened to, but it might have been a good thing you were hit with this problem for not everyone would have been aggressive and obnoxious enough to go the whole 9 yards, you know. It may have been months or years before the real problem was revealed, meanwhile many internet marketers and bloggers may have been doomed to suffer unnecessary problems.

I don’t condemn Trend Micro in this affair, judging by what you wrote they were victims of a policy or program as much as you. The people at Trend Micro should be commended for going to the extra work of finding out a solution, instead of simply providing a set of well rehearsed excuses from some worn out book on handling customer complaints. This type of behavior by Trend Micro makes me want to deal with these people, instead of finding someone else to deal with.

I applaud your stamina is sticking with this and your ability to use what you know to help others. I don’t see where turning this into some blog post or e-book would benefit people the most for not everyone reads and comprehends equally well. I could foresee many out there wanting to rip apart your findings because they don’t understand it or they simply are of the nature to bash… in this way you could help a wider group of people by taking what you learned and doing it yourself for them. I am sure the people at Trend Micro would rather deal with one person than 10,000 too. lol

Chris, inside of this dismal cloud is definitely a silver lining. As usual the storm clouds appear at the most inopportune times, but in the long run it may be for the best.

I personally think it would be a great idea to do an Internet Radio show about this, maybe set up a weekly broadcast where users can email or IM their comments and questions… as well as call in. Maybe someone at Trend Micro would see fit to be your first guest.

What I did catch was that he was sending his payment URLs in TinyURL links. Definite spammer signature, don’t send comercial links in TinyURL. Just because Twitter uses it does not mean we can.

A good rule of thumb is DO NOT do what spammers do.