It has been too long since I last updated you on the state of PocketDuo and I am very sorry about that.
Shortly after my last blog post the world was thrown into turmoil by some major bank failures (which I am sure you are aware of unless you have been hiding under a rock lately) and as a result we have been planning a new and more appropriate strategic way forward for the product that will best meet the needs of our new customers and a changing economic climate.
Today I am pleased to announce that we believe we have found a niche for PocketDuo and are restructuring the product accordingly. This will set us back a few months in launch but I will keep everyone abreast of progress on this blog.
Happy New Year to you all - I hope that 2009 has started well for you and that it is a blessed and adventure-filled year.
For those of you that took a few hours to read my last blog post, it may come as a bit of a disappointment that I have not finished the story yet. You will also probably be the people to understand that the frustration of such poor customer service upset me so much that I needed a break from thinking about it all, and having now had some time to think about the rediculousness of the situation I have decided not to waste another minute thinking or writing about it.
Suffice to say that I think it is quite evident that WebFusion is a terrible hosting provider and I obviously won’t recommend them to anyone.
Now onto some brighter news…
We are slaving away on PocketDuo and are *almost* ready for launch now. We are conducting some rigorous tests on the applications and website at the moment but hope we will be all set in the next 2 months to let you all loose on the product. It has taken us a bit longer than expected (when does a software project not?!) but I am really pleased with the result.
We have some more interesting news to announce shortly but have a few details to iron out before I can do so - so stay tuned!
I have had so many conflicting thoughts about writing this post because quite frankly I don’t really want to waste any more of my (currently very precious!) time on this issue but at the same time I think this story needs to be told.
It is a story about two hosting companies and equally disappointing results.
The Hatchery (our company in case you didn’t know) has been a client of WebFusion’s for almost two years now, and in my capacity as CTO for Myzan Limited I was a customer for at least another 2 years. So I would consider myself to be a pretty stable and valuable customer to them.
As a result of our business expansion we have two key requirements for our server infrastructure going forward:
Ability to provide both IMAP and POP email accounts to our customers (we currently only offer POP)
Host more sites (and more complex sites)
Since I know Web Fusion support both IMAP and POP (because that is what the marketing blurb on their website told me when I purchased our VPS 2.0 system from them last year), I decided to enable the feature this weekend and check that it all worked correctly. Well unfortunately it didn’t. Not only did it not work but the feature to have IMAP on our VPS 2.0 system never existed in the first place…and that is where the story kicks off as I despise not getting what I pay for.
After a heated discussion with the customer services team I was told I had to license MailEnable Pro (the server only comes with MailEnable Standard) for $280. See their general response below:
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Dear Andrew,Thank you for your support request on the 25th of June 2008.This appears to be an error on the website.
(link too long to display and it doesn’t work anyway)
As such we can not offer the IMAP protocol on our Windows VPS, the error on the website will be removed shortly.
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Well I don’t understand. The link to the FAQ he provided doesn’t work and apart from which, when I signed up for the service I bought something which said in plain sight (and it still does as of 26/06/2008 15:52) that I was getting POP and IMAP mail functionality.
Instead of crying over $280 (and ignoring my frustration with their customer service) I decided that I would seize the moment to upgrade to a Dedicated Server which was going to cost us more than twice the price of our existing VPS but would not only be much faster (and support our growing business) but also *definately* support IMAP (sales person’s words). Ok…I caved and resigned myself to the greater expense and for the sake of simplicity decided to stick it out with WebFusion as the upgrade would be much easier.
Two hours later I received confirmation of our server setup and an invoice. Great delivery but oh dear…
Problem #1: I have been billed for two domain names I quite obviously didn’t register (2 x £6.99 + VAT) - weird.
Problem #2: The account has been created by the sales person under the name starting “cleint…”. Now spelling is a bit of a bugbear with me (let’s hope I haven’t made any errors in this post!) so I asked them to correct it. [Update: Turns out this can't be undone without reconfiguring the entire server!]
Problem #3: I get given login credentials to access their server control panel which is supposed to be an ‘all singing, all dancing’ affair with brilliance (or at least I think that is what the salesman told me) and log right in to start creating accounts (for our clients) and associating domain names with those accounts. Great!…well no. When I went to setup individual mailboxes for each domain I could only specify the prefix (i.e. ‘info’ if I was creating info[at]pocketduo.com for example). I figured this must be a bug as they must surely provide a drop down list for each account to specify which domain you are creating the mailbox for. So I get on the line to their Technical Support department and I am told that it isn’t a bug and that when I create ‘info’ for pocketduo.com, it will create an ‘info’ mailbox for all domains associated with that account! You have got to be kidding right? Has anyone else ever heard of this before? They seem to think this is perfectly normal! So if Joe Soap works for the support site at Web Fusion for example which has the domain name of webfusion-support.co.uk then when they create joe.soap@webfusion-support.co.uk, he will also get joe.soap@webfusion.co.uk and joe.soap@whatever-other-domains-we-own.com? Come on! Really?!
Now I am a bit stuck although I figure my way out of this is to simply log directly into the server using Remote Desktop (it is a dedicated server after all and this is what any client would surely be doing on a regular basis) but I can’t find my password for root access anywhere. So I call Technical Support again and they tell me I can retrieve my password from inside the control panel if I click through a few menus and click on the ‘Request Password’ button…”but you should know sir that once you have requested that password we no longer offer software support for your server.” Am I starring in a movie I think to myself as I argue this crazy point with the support technician who clearly understands nothing about servers and how they are used by their clients.
At this point I am flummoxed or perhaps stunned by the comedy of craziness taking place around me. Is this a business they are running or a circus I ask myself? I face little choice now so I just decide to retrieve the password and kick up a storm if anything goes wrong with the OS or software (which I vow not to touch) and they refuse to sort it out. Done. Now I can log into the server and the first thing I notice is that it is running MailEnable for email handling…and you guessed it…it is only the Standard Edition. I would still need to license Pro Edition to get my IMAP email handling.
I have had enough now so I blast the sales person, I blast his manager (who offers me one month’s free hosting which is just 75% of the cost of MailEnable Pro) and I get put through to customer services who tell me they will cancel the account and will ‘investigate’ any refund I may be owed.
So we are now left with no IMAP, a struggling VPS server and a need for a new hosting partner.
Please stay tuned for Part II…the saga continues…and not just with WebFusion!
The Hatchery is one of around only 4,000 companies around the world that has been accepted into the Apple iPhone Developer Program. With the announcements at the latest Apple WWDC of the 3G iPhone and AppStore, we feel really privileged to be a part of this revolution in mobile technology and are already working hard on a native Cocoa Touch application for PocketDuo on the iPhone.
It has been an extremely busy few weeks since my last post as we are getting ready to launch our product at the end of July. We have uploaded a new ‘unofficial’ video demo of our product to http://demo.pocketduo.com. You will need the latest version of QuickTime to watch it and we hope you will find it useful.
We were invited by mashup* to demo PocketDuo to an impressive array of operators, investors and entrepreneurs this past Thursday at the CBI Conference Centre in central London. The event was a huge success for us so thank you to everyone that showed such an interest in PocketDuo. I have updated the video mentioned in my previous post to the one we had playing continuously during the event so take a look and see the outstanding work Rohan Walsh our Creative Director did! We will shortly be uploading a version of that video with a voice over description of what you are watching as well as a merchant’s perspective on the transaction so ‘watch this space’!
Well I am back in the UK and back in action. I have just finished updating the PocketDuo video demo with the latest versions of our application running on both the iPhone and a Pocket PC device. You can take a look at it by visiting this gallery on my SmugMug site. If you have any problems viewing the video please let us know at info[at]thehatchery.co.uk.The iPhone version shown in the demo is a web 2.0 site rather than a natively running application.
Since Apple has recently released their iPhone SDK we will be launching a natively-running version of PocketDuo for the iPhone shortly.The one element of the video that I have deliberately left off right now is the mobile device authentication which takes place the first time you fire up the application on your device. I will share this with you when we are almost ready for official launch as it is the cornerstone of our security model and a key differentiator between us and our competitors. I look forward to your feedback and comments.
Note: Please do not post this video on YouTube or any other video sharing site at this stage. We will have a much better one for you all to share shortly. Thanks.
Apologies to anyone who has posted even more comments about our technology on Robert’s blog that I haven’t responded to appropriately in the posts below or in the comments on his site. I spent 5 hours in the car today, and having moved hotels I now seem to be experiencing intermitent problems accessing the internet. Apparently they are working on the problem (holding thumbs that this post will submit correctly!) and I hope to be able to post some more interesting information to clarify your vision of our company and PocketDuo over the next few days. Thanks for your patience and once again, for your thoughts and feedback. Some really great and considered insights have been shared.
Thank you to Simon Brocklehurst for his comments about the product. I really appreciate comments from people who take time out of their invariable busy schedules to make constructive comments in the interests of helping others in business. In order to help you better understand the product and to respond suitably to your comment Simon, I have decided to focus on it in this post as I think a number of people will be asking the same questions you have. Unfortunately Robert and I couldn’t go into as much detail about the technology as I would have liked so I wanted to explain our current business model and user experience so that you get a better idea of why we feel this is so ground-breaking.
So firstly - we do not want to replace the credit card in environments that already allow you to use one quickly, easily and securely. You are 100% correct in saying that this is already really easy and secure in Europe with Chip & Pin but there are still a number of ‘offline’ scenarios where paying with a credit card is not possible - for example: most London cabs. When we decided to build this product we were hoping to facilitate these sorts of transactions in a way that was more convenient than making the cabbie stop at an ATM for one to draw cash.
We quickly realised after building a prototype however, that our biggest benefit to everyone concerned lay in online payment processing where credit card fraud is so rife. There is still a benefit to certain ‘offline’ retailers and to users of the system in countries where credit cards are less prolific than mobile phones, but our core focus now is on secure website payments.
Instead of reaching for your wallet and credit card when making a purchase online, we hope you will reach for your mobile phone in the future. Using PocketDuo you will make a completely secure payment (using one of your existing credit cards but never having to enter those details again) and only ever disclose your unique transaction ID to the merchant you are making the purchase from. That way you keep your card details secure, the merchant doesn’t need the burden of managing credit card information, and everyone walks away from the transaction with what they want.
The process is in fact also much quicker than capturing all your card details on a web page as all you need to enter is an 8 digit merchant number, a 4 digit PIN number (simulating the offline Chip & Pin scenario) and the amount you want to pay (as well as obviously select which card to make the payment with from the list shown on your phone). Start to finish this simple process should take between 15 and 30 seconds (competitors and current credit card transactions take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half to process).
I have a video demo of the product which is slightly better quality than the one that Robert posted and I will try and get that up at the end of the month when I am back in London so that you can really see the nitty gritty of the application.
Regarding the SMS payment solutions you mentioned, the first thing to note about them is that they are only suitable for micro-payments (up to £10 in the UK). They also don’t allow you to bill those transactions to your credit card bill (unless your phone bill is paid by credit card) and earn frequent flyer miles or other incentives for using that card. I do however agree with you that some of those solutions work really well, but getting back to our focus on online purchases, they are not solutions we are likely to compete with on any level (at least not at this early stage).
I hope this post clarifies a few things about our business model and the technology. We want to create a product that is as secure as Chip & Pin but that works best in ‘card not present’ situations (such as for online purchases).
I look forward to further comments and suggestions. We are learning all the time from potential customers and merchants how we can improve our product before official launch and we will certainly think about simplifying our offline payment solution when we focus on that market.
P.S: Our application has been developed to work on the iPhone, Pocket PC devices as well as a Java version for most of today’s Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other ’standard’ cellphones. We don’t expect everyone to own an iPhone to use this system even though it looks beautiful on that device.
Thank you to Thomas and Aep538 for taking the time to comment on Robert’s post from this morning’s interview. I enjoyed reading your comments as they have provided us with unique insights into some of our potential customer’s concerns as well as your interest in the business we are building.
I should probably start by saying that the reason we are developing PocketDuo in the way that we are is that almost every other company that has tried to enter this mobile payment space in the Western world has failed because they have done one of two things:
Tried to get the mobile operators to add transactions on-bill (i.e. on your mobile phone bill), which the operators are hesitant to do because it exposes them to substantial credit risk (should a user default on their mobile phone bill) and increases the perceived cost of owning your phone (especially for large purchases one might make on a phone that provided this facility). It is also extremely difficult to get all the operators to agree (certainly in Europe) to implement a new technology, so this route is typically fraught with uncontrollable legal costs and frustrating lead times.
They have tried to make your phone another purse where you top up your cellphone/mobile purse with x amount and can then spend from that amount until you need to top-up again. If you are anything like me, you probably have far too many pockets of money already - what with mortgage, savings, bank, credit and debit accounts, and so it doesn’t make user sense to add another purse to that list.
[I should note here that with our technology (unlike with the first solution mentioned above), the mobile operator will not have knowledge of the transactions you are making and since we highly respect an individual's right to privacy, we won't share that information with anyone unless served with a court order to do so - hopefully very unlikely!]
So in short, we are trying to simplify mobile payment processing by encouraging users to demand greater online security and encouraging merchants to accept our form of payment to not only minimise their risk of financial loss due to fraudulent activity but also sell more online because PocketDuo users feel comfortable making purchases as they don’t have to give their card details to hundreds of companies they transact with online. We also believe that many people like some of their credit cards because of the incentives they offer such as air miles, cashback etc so we want to make it possible for you to make purchases with those cards and still receive the incentive - something not obviously possible with current solutions.
Our marketing dilemma is therefore more a question of how we stimulate user adoption in order to raise funding without allowing established companies to replicate our solution before we pass ‘Go’. Big companies (including the cellphone / mobile operators) rule this space with closed minds and iron fists and venture capitalists typically want to see market penetration rather than massive potential but no existing revenue.
Your idea of approaching the mobile operators Thomas is therefore a difficult one but one we certainly have on our radar. Any other ideas welcome. We are keen to explore all possibilities.
