Reply To: The Best Service Website Is BACK!!! [The Deals are Back!!!]

[LinkedMusicians]

Over at Best Service’s official customer support forum, someone was upset that BestService has continued to post promos on their social media channels while refusing to respond to their customers on their forum. I’ll share what I posted in response:

“Those posts were clearly auto-scheduled long ago, as their site is down, as it makes no sense to put up a bunch of non-functioning links to a dead site. Online retailers commonly use social media management apps like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer, etc. to schedule social media posts far in advance (my business does too). My guess is that those posts were scheduled before the month started and someone hadn’t gone into them to turn them off. Which it appears they eventually did.”

That said, while it is unsurprising that a social media manager might forget to turn off those posts, it also could be a sign that the social media person is no longer there. A social media employee could easily login to the scheduling app and turn these scheduled posts off in a minute or so. The fact that they didn’t could be a sign that they were let go and someone else did it.

I edited a post above because I found it toxic — aimed at me — and while the policy here is to NOT edit CIVIL positive, and negative posts about products, services, and experiences with developers, retailers and anyone we buy from for the tools we use, toxic posts aimed at members violates the rules. My tendency is to talk (shoot a PM or an email) to people when they violate a policy, not immediately turn to consequences. But it is laborious on my and the moderators ends. I don’t appreciate people being rude to others, including me.

But I’ll respond to the accusation that I am spreading rumors by having this thread.

(1) I am a customer of Best Service. I am also an affiliate partner. I presently have several hundred dollars worth of unredeemed (never opened) serials for plugins, a DAW and sample libraries I’ve purchased but never had time to register with the developers, because I’ve been so caught up in working on this site.

(2) I take it incredibly seriously when I choose to work with any company as an affiliate partner. I feel a sense of responsibility and could not continue a relationship with a company I don’t feel that I can confidently recommend to others as one that will be ethical, provide great service, and value. Best Service has always met those standards for me as a customer, as has Plugin Boutique (if I’m going to be very candid, while Audio Plugin Deals has never been dishonest, their customer service is non-existent, in my experience; they’ve never responded to support requests, and I plan on putting up a sentiment analysis of the various retailers, sharing my own experiences, and inviting our commmunity to share their own experiences; I may even create a formal rating system for retailers on this site; of course, some retail partners may not love that if they’re criticized; to be clear, I really don’t care; this is my passion project and my commitment is to my own sense of ethics and our community; this site was never planned to be some kind of big money maker like the big forums in this space).

(3) When you are a customer and an affiliate partner with an online retailer and that online retailer suddenly, without notice, has their site close down for multiple days and provides no communication to the public beyond a mom and pop notice on their website that their site is undergoing maintenance, it is incredibly unprofessional and disapppointing, to say the least. This is not a way any responsible retailer should be operating. In the absence of communications from the retailer, customers and pa (SMTPrtners are left to speculate. Best Service has an affiliate manager (and the guy really cares about ethics based on some things he’s been really passionate about — so I respect the man). He has been unresponsive during this period. Best Service has money due me during this period. Full disclosure, they’re really the only partner on LinkedMusicians where people are regularly clicking their links. While — offhand — the affiliate links for Plugin Boutique have bought in a total of around $25 used towards the costs of operating the site, Best Service has bought in around $200, which hasn’t been paid out. LinkedMusicians has received a grand total of $5 US in contributions, and I think we’ve brought in around $15 from t-shirt sales. I’ve spent more than 2,000 hours on this site and invested around $2,500 in the site and have monthly costs including hosting, email service (SMTP), software subscriptions that total more than $100 a month without additional purchases (and, of course,  there are a lot of things I have planned for the site that cost additional $$$$).

So, yes, I feel invested in my relationship with Best Service as a customer and an affiliate partner. But when Best Service chose to NOT communicate with partners or customers, and I’ve been recommending them to people, I feel (personally) that I have a moral obligation to shoot straight with my community. With, what is now, one week without any communication from Best Service, I feel it is the right thing to share my experience, as someone who is widely considered an expert in the area of digital marketing and runs a dot com. What is going on, all of it, necessitates communication by Best Service with customers and partners. Their lack of communications is disappointingly unprofessional and creates an environment where customers and partners are left in the dark, where speculation is the only option. It begs the question, if things weren’t bad, why would Best Service choose NOT to communicate?  It also means that the level of trust for their brand is taking a giant hit.

I have a former colleague and friend who is one of the most skilled PR experts on the planet. He’s held top PR spots at Fortune 500s. I would get him on a Zoom call for free with me to give Best Service some very valuable advice on crisis communications if Best Service wanted it (my credentials aren’t too shabby, but I would defer to my PR pro friend, who is very experienced with crisis communications; yes, if they were paying, it would probably be beyond their budget, but even one call could be incredibly valuable for a small business in this situation).  So this thread isn’t about spreading rumors. It’s about communicating with this community. I feel it’s my duty.

If someone now wants to challenge that, go ahead. But please, do it in a civil manner consistent with our community policy.

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