The past 10 days were probably one of the most frustrating days in 2010. The websites including all email services were down for more than 4 days because the server where I hosted was dead. All files were back-dated to the last backup a couple weeks ago. I guess it was such a bad luck for me considering in about the same period after the last backup, I had recently launched websites including this blog. So potentially it’s difficult to recover some information such as changes, likes or comments that have been entered in these websites.
Until today, I couldn’t think of any reason why I could have been so wrong in my judgment to choose that webhosting company. That company had the best rating and the best review/recommendation from peers. So I wouldn’t do it differently if I could turn back time as a customer. I just picked based on the review and recommendation from others.
The real frustration came not from the downtime of the websites but really from their lack of communication or slow response or lies throughout the downtime period. I emailed them several times, most of the time it took them almost 24 hours to respond. I kept ringing them to find out what happened, nobody knew the real situation and of course kept promising that someone would be in contact with me personally.
Relating the above incident to my profession as a wedding photographer, I learned that even though we were mostly booked because our clients heard a good review about us, we definitely couldn’t take it for granted that we could fail too. I am sure the review about the webhosting was true, they were good and reliable company. It’s just a matter of bad-luck I say. So if I can put it myself in their shoes, I’d definitely communicate and be responsible by updating the relevant clients so they knew that they were in good hands. Rather than keep saying “We sincerely apologise for what happens” but the action does not reflect their sincere effort to put me out of misery.
I still remember in my early career as a wedding photographer, I had a really really traumatic experience where I lost the whole images of preparation and photo locations from a wedding. As a typical photographer who just started the business, I didn’t have enough memory to shoot for the whole day, so I transferred the files to portable HDD. The HDD fell out from my camera bag in the park during the photo location. I kid you not, that was my worst experience as a wedding photographer. But I informed the couple straightaway with the hope that I could replicate some of the details or some other moments if possible while still trying to find the missing HDD. The couple could easily realised that was a pure accident and that I was being professional about it to try to complete the job – they were completely fine with it. The good news is, after a few days effort in trying to search all possible places, I finally found it in the lost & found section. It’s all good for me. In return for the shock news I gave them, I threw a family session for the couple since I knew their family flew from overseas for the wedding. I knew the fact that I was blessed to have that couple but I think if I didn’t come clean with them, I would not be the same photographer I am today.
I hope you know promises and integrity are the most important words to keep in service business like ours.
Note: All comments and likes that this websites received were all gone. So If you want to look at the previous posts again, that will be good 