Ahhh just need to vent here- does anyone using AuthorizeNet share an utter frustration with their support? This is a chat transcript after waiting on hold on their support line for over 2hrs and finally getting through only to be disconnected with a “your call cannot be completed as dialed.” I tried their live help system yesterday leaving a chat window open (of course needed to use a different browser because it continuously popped over what I was trying to do to tell me i was #53 in the support queue). Both times their support rep terminated the session due to inactivity when I finally got through because the window was in the background. Today this lovely exchange – and all I want to do is activate AMEX by giving them our AMEX merchant ID:

Matthew B: Hello Sean! How can I help you today?
Sean Tierney: hi Matt, we need to implement AMEX on our acct. i have a merch 
id from them but your knowledgebase says to contact you guys to set it up
Matthew B: Right however,
Matthew B: you would have to call us so we can verify secure information to do that.
Sean Tierney: hehehehh your call queue is even longer than the 30min wait time on 
your live help. can you call me at 480.967.5897 and we'll do it now?
Matthew B: Unfortunately I can't call you sorry I wish it was possible.
Sean Tierney: wow. okay. will get in line and wait on hold for an hour again- 
hopefully it doesn't disconnect again at the end like it did last time. Sorry to 
rant but you guys have some major support issues. should focus less on bringing 
in business and more on delivering reasonable support... thanks for your help
Matthew B: You are welcome I apologize for the inconvienience. 

I don’t blame Matt but I don’t buy the “I can’t call you” line either- that would have been the fastest way to resolve the issue and me calling them is less authenticated than them calling the number on the account. Would take all of one minute to resolve in that situation. If anyone at AuthNet is listening- your support is very frustrating. Seriously consider halting all new business until you can figure out how to deliver a reasonable support experience to your paying customers.

Thus concludes my rant.

I just got it.

I’ve been on the fence about getting an edge card for us recently. The people at the Verizon booth at MacWorld were giving away the cards and waiving the activation fee today- that was enough to tip the decision for me. We are getting to the point where we need flawless connectivity at all times when we’re on the road. The new version (USB727) supports their Rev A network and gets theoretical speeds of 3MB down and 1MB up. I’m on it now in the airport in SJC and here’s the actual result I just got via speakeasy:

Not the fastest connection. I was getting 1MB down earlier today but even though the current speed is slow, I’m still stoked. It’s a classic “Innovator’s Solution” instance of “competing against non-consumption”- I’m thrilled to have any access right now.

The VZ Access manager software that comes with it was trivial to setup and it worked right off the bat on Leopard OS. It has some performance diagnostics built into it, although it appears to be over-reporting the speed according to the Speakeasy results:

All in all I’m very happy with this purchase. At $60/mo with 30 days to try it out risk-free and $175 to back out of the two-yr commitment any time after that, it’s worth the price to me at this point to have guaranteed internet access wherever we go. I don’t know how it compares to Sprint’s EVDO network but I vowed 3 years back to never give those guys another dime. So far so good Verizon.

I’ve just setup a Pledgebank here to encourage Kathy Sierra to start blogging again. For anyone who doesn’t know the story of what happened, you can read her statement and probably find traces of the original post somewhere in the wayback machine but basically some wacko made graphic death threats and scared her enough that she stopped writing. This thoroughly sucks because not only did her writing have huge educational value and daily insights for people making software, but it had massive inspirational value as well. The essence of her mantra “help your users kick ass” absolutely changed the way I look at how we build our stuff.

Kathy’s last post to Creating Passionate Users was a call for ideas on how she could resume her writing while avoiding a traumatizing situation like that one from recurring. At least half the value of her blog was the conversation that spawned the comments of her posts. I propose a member-only community site where yearly membership dues paid to Kathy gets one a year’s-worth of access to her writing and the ability to interact with other readers. I’m willing to set up this private site and pay the fee if we can get 200 other people to commit to joining. If you’re interested in this, sign the pledge here and spread the word. It sucks that those threats occurred Kathy but the software world misses your voice. RSS readers everywhere have a serious void. Please come back.

Expiration for the pledgebank is set for New Year’s ’08.

UPDATE: put this image on your blog if you want to help recruit: