Follow-Up: Vista Print Class Action Lawsuit September 9, 2008
Posted by essentialadmin in General Tips, News Releases, Virtual Assistant Tips.Tags: vistaprint
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Earlier this year I wrote about VistaPrint’s sneaky “rewards” program, and wanted to provide an update as of the end of August. On August 21st, VistaPrint announced they’re party to a class action lawsuit related to these practices.
Here’s additional information provided by wikipedia that I found interesting, specifically how much these referral program (‘majority’ being the reward program) revenues add up to each year ($27.6M for FY2008) as compared to their net income for the same period (39.8M):
VistaPrint’s partnerships in the United Kingdom have attracted criticism. Critics have stated that VistaPrint’s customers are enrolled without their knowledge in a reward voucher scheme operated by an associated company, VPrewards.com, at a cost of £9.95 a month, that no information on the reward scheme is provided to customers subsequently and that it is up to the customers to detect the fact that they have been enrolled as members and to cancel unwanted membership. A similar scheme operates in the USA. The number of complaints is significant enough to generate awareness on the web and to be a cause for concern. For complainants, the company claims publicly to cancel the membership, and refunds the monthly membership : however there have been examples of complaints where the company has not done this or responded as quickly as customers would have liked.
In August 2008, the company announced that class action lawsuits relating to the membership discount programs offered by third party merchants on VistaPrint’s USA website have been filed against VistaPrint USA, Inc., VistaPrint Corp., and two third party merchants (Vertrue Inc. and its subsidiary Adaptive Marketing LLC) in Texas and New Jersey. Two additional class-action suits were subsequently filed in both Massachusetts and Alabama. The four complaints, all filed in federal courts, allege that the defendants are in violation of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (which protects from unauthorized charges) and the federal Electronic Communications and Privacy Act (which prohibits the unlawful access of financial information). “As we allege in the complaint, we believe that VistaPrint and Vertrue are acting in concert to access consumers’ credit card information and then begin charging them relatively small amounts,” says Jerome Noll, counsel for the plaintiff that filed the Massachusetts suit. “You’re talking about $14.95 a month or $12.95 a month, hoping that consumers just won’t notice.”
It should be noted that in its latest 10K for FY 2008, the company states “we expect that referral fee revenue from membership discount programs will decline in absolute dollar terms over that period of time ["by the end of calendar year 2010"], including possibly to as low as zero.”
From a financial perspective, some observers and analysts contend that this type of highly profitable third-party revenue distorts the company’s finances. A relatively small referral revenue can have a relatively large impact on the net income. While VistaPrint, as a public company, properly includes this revenue in its quarterly figures, it is argued that excluding this revenue gives a better picture of the company’s true profitability and the value of its stock. For example, in FY 2008, VistaPrint’s revenue was $400.7m with 6.9% of this ($27.6m) coming from referral fees, the “majority” of which comes from the rewards program. This can be contrasted with the net income for the same period of $39.8m.
VistaPrint and Other Deceptive "Rewards" Programs April 16, 2008
Posted by essentialadmin in General Tips, Uncategorized.Tags: complaintmemberworks, consumer affairs, mwi, vista print
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More and more I’ve been hearing complaints about VistaPrint’s “deceptive” enrollment into their “VistaPrint Rewards” program. First, I heard grumblings from colleagues who had experienced it, and now from one of my own clients. During his tax compilation tasks, he noticed a recurring $14.95 charge to his credit card for this “rewards program” posting for several months. He linked the first charge back to around the time he made a one-time order through VistaPrint.
Here’s the skinny.
On www.ConsumerAffairs.com I found a complaint log dating back to 2005 regarding this issue. Complaint after complain after complaint mentions the same thing.
During the checkout process, a buyer is presented with a “$10 VistaPrint cash back offer”. Sounds good, right? WRONG! What it really is … enrollment into the VistaPrint Rewards Program … not even administered by VistaPrint, but instead by a 3rd party (Vertrue, formerly MWI, alias MemberWorks Inc.). It’s just one of many “negative-option” schemes making the rounds. In the case of VistaPrint, during the order process, you’re presented with this misleading option. If you don’t read all the fine print, you’ve now enrolled yourself into a (completely unrelated to VistaPrint service offerings) travel, entertainment, rewards program. They use all the information from your order process (i.e., credit card number, name, email, etc.) to supply to this 3rd party (i.e., you don’t go to another screen or website to enter in your credit card number to order this service).
After the 30 day “trial” period (that most people don’t appear to even know about), your card starts getting automatically charged $14.95 each month. And, if that card is a debit check card, this could mean bounced items and NSF charges because you didn’t know the charge was coming.
Sure, VistaPrint says you’ll receive an email confirming your enrollment, but we all know that more than likely, that’s going to end up in your spam folder — and since you weren’t looking out for a confirmation of this enrollment, since you don’t even realize you were enrolled, you would furthermore take it as spam.
Here’s what one poster wrote:
“Jim of Colorado Springs CO (03/17/08)
I needed some business cards quick and ordered from Vistaprints. Soon after, I received unauthorized recurring charges of $14.95. I called American Express who initially agreed to investigate the charges. While on the phone, I Googled this site and directed American Express to the site. They changed the investigation to a ‘fraud’ and credited my back the charges. I left Vistaprint my opinion by email and will report them to the BBB.”
Here’s an excerpt from VistaPrint’s FAQ page:
After completing a VistaPrint order, customers may be presented with an offer page offering the opportunity to take advantage of a $10 VistaPrint cash back offer for joining the VistaPrint Rewards Program. This offer page contains details about the VistaPrint Rewards Program including offer benefits, services and the associated monthly fee required to participate. If a customer chooses to accept this offer the credit card used for the customers VistaPrint purchase will be automatically charged the applicable monthly fees after a 30 day free-trial period, and VistaPrint will transfer certain personal information, including the customers credit card information, to a service provider that administers the program.
Obviously, with the shear number of complaints still occurring (most recent was a couple weeks ago), those so-called “details” are still not obvious enough to the buyers.
To learn more about this third party company and what is now being called the “negative-option” schemes (where companies enroll you in their plan without your asking, and it’s then up to you to cancel the enrollment),
check out this ConsumerAffairs post regarding Vertrue, ex-MWI.
Here, you’ll find similar types of “schemes”. One gentleman writes:
Don of Omaha NE (12/20/07)
On December 14, 2007 I discovered a questionable charge of $249.95 on my bank cash card account from something called Simply You. Having no idea what this was, I called the phone number ( 888-242-0180) listed with the charge. I told the rep that I didn’t know what this was and he said that it was some kind of membership that I had become involved in resulting from a purchase I made in 2003! I asked to have this credited immediately and he wanted to send me some kind of trial material first. I remember it having something to do with discounts and rebates on certain services and products. Wanting nothing to do with this, I insisted on the credit and he said it would be processed, which it was a few days later.
After hanging up, I was suspicious and so I looked my old bank statements back to 2003. I found the original purchase which was for $27.44 in February 2003. I don’t remember what this was for and I certainly don’t recall enrolling in any kind of ‘membership’. I found the first yearly charge from Simply You in Dec 2003 for $109.95. Then each December from then on they were sticking me a charge. Here they are: Dec 2003, $109.95, Dec 2004, $199.95, Dec 2005, $219.95, Dec 2006, $239.95 and Dec 2007, $249.95. All total $1,019.75. As I said earlier, I have received credit of $249.95 for the Dec 2007 charge but that leaves a total of $769.80 in bogus fraudulent charges to me. I have initiated a claim with the Neb BBB and have reported this to the Neb Attorney General. I have sent emails directly to Vertrue and they are not answering me. I am thinking about paying a personal call to their offices in Omaha to see if that accomplishes anything.
A similar thing happened to my Grandma a couple years back. She had ordered an item over the phone and provided her checking account number for payment (check draft). Later, we found they were debiting $249 each quarter via a check draft (so it was very difficult to dispute), and we couldn’t get them to stop. We finally had to close the checking account. When I called on her behalf to complain, they had the recording available where she accepted the “discount program”. Interestingly, it was the evidence that showed she was actually bamboozled … it was clear on the recording that they were confusing my grandma, and when she would say no, they would continue offering it, but using different words and phrases. It was about a 5 minute conversation! Finally she said, ” …. uh, okay”, but it was absolutely clear she was worn down (her breathing was labored as she’s on oxygen), and she didn’t understand. My gosh …. she’s in her late 80′s!
So … here’s a buyer beware caution, not only as it relates to VistaPrint’s checkout procedures, but when ordering from any vendor these days!! When they say something like, “Would you be interested in our free gas program”, or “rewards program” or “discount program” … say NO and don’t change your mind!
I used to have a VistaPrint affiliate link on my website that offered special discounts not normally available on their website … I have now removed it. I cannot support these types of masked selling methods as I, too, consider it a “scheme”.
Realogy “Opens” Openhouse.com to Entire Real Estate Industry February 11, 2008
Posted by essentialadmin in Broker Tips, News Releases, REALTOR Tips.Tags: brokers, franchisors, open house search, openhouse.com, purchase real estate, real estate, realogy
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Excerpts from News Release: Parsippany, NJ 1/9/08:
Realogy Corporation, a global provider of real estate and relocations ervices, today announced that its OpenHouse.com site will begin accepting bulk data feeds from any franchisors or brokerages who wish to post their open house listings on the site, free of charge. Previously, OpenHouse.com accepted open house listings exclusively from Realogy’s Centery 21®, Coldwell Banker®, ERA® and Sotheby’s International Realty® brand networks.
OpenHouse.com will make available a comprehensive listings distribution agreement for all non-Realogy brokers who are interested in posting their open house properties on OpenHouse.com. There will be a nominal, one-time, set-up fee to establish each broker’s incoming data feed that will vary depending on the technical complexity of the set-up, but there will not be any recurring fees charged for the posting of open houses. OpenHouse.com anticipates being able to sign listings distribution agreements and activate data feeds for non-Realogy brokers to go live by the beginning of March 2008.
“This move to aggregate even more open houses on the site is timed to coincide with the traditional spring open house season,” said Ben Phillips, vice president and managing director of OpenHouse.com. “We remain committed to our promise that we will not charge any brokers to post their open houses on this site. All customer leads from OpenHouse.com go directly to the listing agent or brokerage, and we do not redistribute the open house listings or leads in any way.”
Any franchisors or brokers interested in establishing a bulk data feed to list their company’s open houses on OpenHouse.com should send an e-mail to Inquiries@OpenHouse.com in order to receive a copy of the online listings distribution agreement.
About OpenHouse.com
OpenHouse.com has approximately 15,000 to 20,000 open house listings in markets across the nation on any given weekend. The easy-to-use site allows homebuyers to see schedules for open houses in their area, view detailed information about homes, print a route planner, request information or a private showing, and sign up for e-mail alerts. The site offers home sellers greater exposure for their open house listings while also providing an online marketing resource for real estate brokerages and sales associates. OpenHouse.com consistently ranks among the top organic search results for “open houses” on the top Web search engines. OpenHouse.com is owned by Realogy Corporation, a global provider of real estate and relocation services.
For full release, see:
www.realogy.com/media/pr/show_release.cfm?id=486
Realtor.com: Changes to Enhanced Listings & Sort Defaults November 12, 2007
Posted by essentialadmin in General Tips, REALTOR Tips, Realtor.com, Virtual Assistant Tips.Tags: enhanced listings, real estate virtual tours, Realtor.com, showcase listings
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For those of you who are REALTORS or Virtual Assistants who explain the benefits of having a Realtor.com Showcase/Enhanced Listing account to agent clients, I just wanted to give you an update that just happened.
First, when I refer to an “enhanced listing”, I’m making the assumption a person has actually enhanced the listing with at least two images.
It used to be that the biggest benefit of the enhanced listing package (in my and my clients’ opinions anyway) was that the enhanced listings showed first in the search results. Same thing with having a featured tour. These were the only ways of achieving SEO within Realtor.com without having to purchase the really expensive featured property package.
Up until about 6 months ago (or so … can’t remember exactly), a person would search Realtor.com and, before showing the results, it would present them with a screen that allowed them to choose if they wanted to “display listings with multiple images first” or “display listings with virtual tours first”. Realtor.com stats showed a great majority of people selected one of these choices. Therefore, there was great benefit to having a listing enhanced with multiple photos (only available with the paid enhanced listing package) or having a tour uplinked to Realtor.com.
Then, they changed this, adding further benefit to the showcase agent or agent with a featured tour. They made their “default” sort view act in the following way:
There were two groupings.
The first grouping included all the enhanced listings and those with a featured tour, sorted by price. In other words, say your search criteria was for homes up to $250K. The first 5 pages of search results would only display enhanced listings and listings with a virtual tour, sorted lower price to higher price. This was great for the agent who had either of these.
After those displayed, the second grouping included all the standard listings, sorted lower price to higher price. Bummer for the agent who didn’t have either of these because, more than likely, the visitor would tire before getting to those pages and their listing would never be seen.
Therefore, whether you had an enhanced listing or a featured tour, your listing was given the excellent preferred sort status.
However, they have now removed this preferred sort status. Evidently, a lot of visitors complained that it was confusing … they’d view the listings noticing they were sorted lowest price to highest price, but would get further down and the lower priced listings would start all over again (i.e., they reached the unenhanced listings).
Now, the default view just shows all listings from lower to higher dollar amount. The only sort benefit now of having an enhanced listing is within the same exact dollar amount. For example, if there are 10 listings at $250,000, the enhanced listing(s) will show before all others. Virtual tours have no preferred sort benefit now.
There is an orange nav link that allows a visitor to select a different sort view (i.e., by featured tour or multiple images); however, in my opinion, it’s not obvious and I can’t see people really using it.
I only mention all this because this was a huge factor to my clients when weighing whether to purchase 1) the enhanced listing package (it’s definitely not cheap, especially for top producers … or when it came to offices purchasing the office enhanced listing account), or 2) the Realtor.com virtual tour uplinks (generally around the $25/listing range for agents without the enhanced listing package).
So, if this preferred sorting feature was a deciding factor to you or your clients in the past, it’s now gone … and as of today, they don’t have any plans on bringing it back.
Relocating Your Business: Interview with Amber Drake October 28, 2007
Posted by essentialadmin in General Tips, RV VA Tips, Virtual Assistant Tips.add a comment
Amber interviewed for Loosely Speaking re: Relocating Your Business … Read all about it here
Calling all VAs in the Inland Northwest (WA, ID Areas)! July 20, 2007
Posted by essentialadmin in RV VA Tips, Virtual Assistant Tips.1 comment so far
Are you a VA in the area of Spokane Valley, WA? This includes Northeast Washington and Northwest Idaho? We’ll be having an IVAA VA Connection (VAC) next Friday, July 27th. Because we work virtually, this is an awesome way to connect face to face with fellow VAs. It’s a casual lunch ‘among new friends’ (and professional drop-in childcare is also available right upstairs from the restaurant).
Or, perhaps you’ll be in our area? Katie Baird over a LooseEnds incorporated our VAC into her travel plans … she’ll be stopping in on her way to the airport, just a few minutes away … see her blog about it here:
http://blog.looseends.net/?p=215
We have VAs coming from Idaho: Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Rathdrum, Hayden, Twin Lakes & the Moscow area, and Katie’s from Prescott, Arizona!
So, if you think you might be in the area (or perhaps within a 2 hour radius since our get together is at 11am PDT), contact me for the details! Or, if you’re an RV VA in the area, our local Wal-Mart in Post Falls, ID is RVer friendly, and there’s a full service RV park just up the road (I’d lend out our driveway that has water and electric hook-up, but our 37′ 5th wheel is currently for sale and is taking the space!).
VA Connections are also open to those wanting to learn more about the VA biz.
Update: Realtor.com June 19, 2007
Posted by essentialadmin in REALTOR Tips, Realtor.com, Virtual Assistant Tips.Tags: property search, real estate listings, Realtor.com, shocase enhanced listing, virtual tours
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Nov. 12, 2007: Another Realtor.com update just occurred that affects previous Realtor.com related posts … click here.
———-
June 19, 2007:
Here’s an update to my previous post related to the benefits associated with having a virtual tour linked to a Realtor.com listing.
Recently, Realtor.com has updated the way their property search results are displayed. Previously, when a person entered search criteria, before displaying the search results, Realtor.com funnelled the visitor through a gateway page that allowed the visitor to indicate whether they’d like to see listings with virtual tours or multiple images first. Most visitors chose one of these options and as a result, those listings would display first in the search results. For example, say the visitor entered a criteria of Hilo, Hawaii; $250,000 – $350,000. If your listing was $325,000, unless it had a virtual tour or multiple images, a visitor would most likely never see it because it would be numerous pages behind the first $250,000 listing. However, if it did have a virtual tour, and the visitor indicated they wanted to see listings with tours first, that same $325,000 listing would jump ahead of any plain listings, even at lower dollar amounts. In effect, this was the way to “Search Optimize” your listing.
So, what’s recently changed?
Realtor.com has removed this gateway page. Now, by default, Showcase Enhanced listings with multiple images and those with virtual tours, display first. So, ALL the listings with those features meeting the search criteria display first, followed by the plain listings.
What does this mean? It’s now even more important to either:
- Have a virtual tour linked to your Realtor.com listing.
- Have an Enhanced Showcase Listings account — and ensure you at least upload multiple images. Some MLS feeds upload multiple images by default (i.e., Hawaii Information Service), but most do not. You have to manually login to your account and upload the images yourself (or have your Virtual Assistant do it for you!).
There are numerous Real Estate Virtual Assistants who can take care of this for you to ensure your listings get top ranking on Realtor.com. Let me know if you need a referral.
Favorite Virtual Phone System May 26, 2007
Posted by essentialadmin in General Tips, REALTOR Tips, RV VA Tips, Virtual Assistant Tips.add a comment
Whether you’re a Virtual Assistant, REALTOR working with a VA or VA team, or RV remote professional, one of the “staples” of your business will be a virtual phone system. What is a virtual phone system? It’s a virtual PBX … it combines a toll-free or local number with an autoattendant, Internet fax, call forwarding, voicemail, call screening, “click-to-call me” feature, and more.
I’ve used several different systems, including FreedomVoice, Onebox, UReach, and a host of others for whom I can’t even remember their names. But, my all time favorite, and the one I use and recommend to clients, is RingCentral.com (BTW, they were voted “Best for Toll Free Numbers” by Inc. Magazine).
They have everything you could possibly want:
- Toll free numbers and the ability to “port over” your existing toll free number (in most cases) for free
- Local numbers in some areas
- Really affordable ($9.99/month)
- Faxing, both receiving via email attachments or web access, and sending out
- Really important for the RV Professional — Internet voice recording/uploads. Many systems don’t offer this and when you’re a full-time RVer you don’t have a clear landline … and when you record greetings (especially for clients), you need a clear line. With RingCentral, you can use the mic on your computer and their control panel (no extra software needed) to record your greetings.
- Numerous extensions ($9.99 plan has 5). This is great for the REALTOR working with a Virtual team. Each person has their own extension, own recording and own call forwarding settings. When they send out communications (i.e., letters, emails, their signature block, etc.), they represent themselves as a part of your team … your clients don’t even need to know they are virtual (and perhaps not even in the same state!). If your team grows, you also have the ability to add on additional extensions for just $2.99 each.
- Same with faxes. You can setup the fax extension (which isn’t one of the 5) to email each person who should see the faxes that come into the “virtual office”. Since the faxes (and voicemails) come into the specified email, they can be filed for future reference, or included in the client file.
- There is a “whisper” feature for the call recipient’s convenience. This whisper announces the caller’s name as well as the phone account it’s coming in from. This is especially important for the Virtual Assistant who services multiple clients. For example, say I provide services for Jane Doe, REALTOR, as well as John Brown, REALTOR. When my office phone rings and I answer, the “whisper” feature will announce, “You have a call for [Amber Drake, Jane Doe Team], press 1 to accept the call”. Immediately, I know which “hat” I’m wearing. Additionally, if my doorbell rings and the UPS man is delivering a package (and the neighborhood canine patrols are barking), I know that isn’t the best time to answer the call. If most appropriate, I can let the call go to voicemail and in a matter of seconds, I’ll have the voicemail delivered to my email box, and can return the caller’s message in just a few moments. Note: if you choose not to have callers “announce themselves”, this is also available as part of the control panel setup.
- They also offer International Calling options. My husband currently travels weekly to Canada hauling RVs. To call him from my office or home phone (even though I have unlimited long distance), I’m charged about .60/minute for a call to Canada. Calling him on his cell phone isn’t really an option either, as Canada is considered roaming and those calls are about $1.00/minute. I can pick-up office phone, cell phone or a pay phone if I’m out and about, and dial through my RingCentral line for a fraction of the cost at .05 cents per minute.
- Easy billing. Keep a card in your profile and set it up to autopurchase mintues. You’ll never run out of minutes while you’re on a call!
- They have lots of free minutes included. On the $9.99 plan, it includes 100 minutes per month, but they also give you a free bank of 100 roll-over minutes. For example, say you use 110 minutes the first month. They would first subtract from your 100 monthly minutes, and then they will subtract 10 minutes from your roll-over bank. This free bank is good to use anytime in a 12 month period.
- They don’t double leg bill! Here’s an overview of this. Say a caller calls you and the system forwards the call to your designated number(s) (i.e., your office phone). A forwarded call consists of two connections, an inbound call to your virtual number and an outbound connection to the phone you used to answer the call. Other companies charge for each of these connections separately and charge you twice their published rate for each minute. For example, a company advertising 2.9¢/min would actually charge you 5.8¢ for every minute of talk time or 58¢ for a 10 minute conversation. At RingCentral, they only bill for one minute of a connected domestic call. This is a very important question to ask when evaluating a provider.
- Call logs are available. This may be important to a REALTOR hosting the virtual office for his/her virtual team so he/she feels comfortable regarding its usage.
So, what this looks like for the:
VA: You now have the ability to post a toll-free number on your website and marketing and present a more professional presence. Your calls are announced to you when you pick-up the phone, allowing you to decide if it’s the most appropriate time to field the call. It’s affordable at only $9.99/month . You can get rid of your Internet fax service as this takes care of that need as well. Call forwarding to your office and/or cell (and/or any other numbers) assures you don’t miss a call.
REALTOR: Offers the perfect virtual office solution for your vitual (or not so virtual) team. Can also be used for a team of agents and/or in-house assistant(s). Can usually port over an existing toll free number for free so you don’t have to change existing print and internet marketing materials. Provides call logs so you may monitor its usage.
RV Remote Professional: It’s simply a must have! It gives you the ability to have your calls forwarded to your cell phone wherever you are. Gives you a fax in and fax out solution without a fax machine or phone lines (a scanner is helpful, but you probably already have that!). Greetings and account setup can all be done online … no need to find a landline to record a clear, professional greeting or waste cell minutes stepping through a system’s voice prompt for setup.
They also have a free trial, so I encourage you to check them out.
So ….. who’s your favorite Virtual Phone Provider and why? I invite you to post your reviews here.
Join “An Overview of Listing Coordination” Teleconference 6/5 May 25, 2007
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An Overview of Listing Coordination
Join IREAA member and guest expert, Amber Drake of Essential Admin on June 5th at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern, as she discusses Listing Coordination.
This class is ideal for assistants looking to specialize in this highly sought after field. Amber will provide a general overview of the field as well as discuss vendor options and resources for supporting this important role.
This is a free teleclass. Membership is not required to participate.
Click here to register now!
See you there!
Advanced Access Fiasco May 25, 2007
Posted by essentialadmin in REALTOR Tips, Virtual Assistant Tips.1 comment so far
Now that most of us have recovered from the Advanced Access Fiasco earlier this week, I wanted to offer some insight regarding a couple items, primarily:
- What to do if your host’s service goes down and your site is inaccessible (which generally also means email is also inaccessible/bouncing)
- How to manually back-up a hosted/template site such as Advanced Access just in case the ultimate nightmare should occur …. data is unrecoverable and your site must be rebuilt from scratch.
For those of you unfamiliar with the issue that brought down something like 10,000 REALTOR sites, in a nutshell, this past Monday morning all sites (including Advanced Access’s own sales site) went down. Phones weren’t being answered, voicemail boxes were full, people were panicking. I personally was attempting every departmental and personal extension I had on file with no luck. They finally posted on the ActiveRain.com blog very late Monday evening (actually, it’s timestamped 12:10am Tues), “At this time, Advanced Access is having significant power issues at our offices and all services are currently down ….”. They had anticipated having sites back up Tuesday morning; however, that did not happen until late in the day for some, and others reporting still being down the next morning.
So … if something like this were to ever happen again with AA (or any other vendor-based website), what do we do in a pinch … and how do we best prepare ourselves going forward?
First, as you’re reading along here … if your head begins to spin with the technical tasks presented, just remember, you don’t have to know how to do this stuff. There are Virtual Assistants out there that can do all this for you!
Second, for ease of illustration since this is all going to be fairly technical as it is, I’ll pretend my site is hosted by Advanced Access (which I’ll refer to as AA). I’ll also pretend my actual domain was purchased and is managed by GoDaddy since they’re my preferred domain vendor).
Third, let me begin with a couple clarifications. When I refer to a “vendor-hosted website”, I’m referring to those sites like AdvancedAccess, Homestead, iHouse, PropertyMinder, etc. These are sites that are not “portable”; meaning you built the site using their proprietary site-builder tools and not a program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. When I refer to a “custom site”, I’m referring to those sites built more from scratch using HTML, Dreamweaver, FrontPage or the like.
One other item to note. The average REALTOR will sign-up for a vendor-hosted website and part of that package will include the vendor securing the domain name (i.e., www.amber-realtor.com) [not a real site]. Generally, when the vendor secures/hosts/renews the domain name, it is at a higher cost than an independent domain registrar, such as GoDaddy. Additionally, the client loses virtually all control over that domain, and there are less features (such as the number of email addresses) available than if the domain were purchased through a registrar such as GoDaddy.
With my clients, I always recommend the domain be hosted with GoDaddy because:
- It’s less than $10/year
- The client retains complete control over functionality (more on this in a bit)
- The account includes 100 alias email addresses and 1 POP3 address, with the ability to purchase more at a very reasonable rate
So, my first recommendation is to make sure you transfer your domain to an independent registrar like GoDaddy. After it’s transferred, you’ll need to update your nameservers (your website hosting company can give these to you) in the account control panel. At the same time you do this, you’ll need to email some “MX Record” information to your host so you retain your email on the GoDaddy servers. GoDaddy has complete instructions on this … just call their customer service and they can walk you through it … they’ll even send you the email that you forward to the website host. Note … during these processes there will be some short downtimes … a small price to pay for keeping control over your business’s web presence.
After this is complete, my second recommendation is to prepare & familiarize yourself with these emergency procedures in case your website host goes down and you need your email and a temporary web presence.
If your website goes down for an unacceptable length of time, you’ll want to do the following:
The first priority is your email:
- Login to your GoDaddy control panel and set the nameservers back to the GoDaddy defaults (customer service can tell you what those are). This does not happen instantly … it can take hours for it to update.
- Once this occurs, your emails will start coming through again.
The second priority is getting your web presence up again.
- If you have a secondary website, you would now “forward” your domain to that website via your account control panel. You can also utilize the “masking” feature … when you mask a website this is what happens: a person types in www.amber-realtor.com and even though it’s forwarded to www.ambersothersite.com the browser’s address bar reads www.amber-realtor.com. It’s “masked”.
- If you don’t have a secondary website, perhaps forward it to your blog, your franchise “free agent site” (I know Keller Williams offers these), your virtual tour inventory page (i.e., http://www.tourfactory.com/ offers a great looking agent inventory page), your Homes & Land webpage they gave you when you placed that ad, or any other webpage that markets you and your listings … think through all the marketing you’ve done, and all those companies who included a web presence (that you never use) with the product or ad you ordered — let’s face it, at this point, any of these pages are better than a “page cannot be displayed error”.
In preparation … in case you have to implement the above procedures, after you have in mind the website you’d most likely forward your domain in a pinch, write the URL down or keep it in a computer file you can access later.
My third recommendation is to backup your vendor-hosted website. Depending on your site, this may be a bit of a feat … but it will certainly be less of a feat than having nothing and starting from scratch if the unthinkable ever happens.
I am a FrontPage person myself, so I would complete this tasked based on the use of FrontPage. A Dreamweaver expert will know how to do this in Dreamweaver. The key is having a web design product like one of these that enables a person to “open” a live webpage and save it locally. When this occurs, all elements won’t save (i.e., images or other host specific elements like slideshows, featured property modules, search modules, form submission elements) as these types of elements will display on the page when the site is online (it pulls from the file online); however, but if the site were to go down, those “links” would be broken. So what is the benefit? I have a client who has invested hundreds of hours customizing his AA site. We’ve put together relocation pages, buyer specific pages, seller specific pages, client pages, team pages, community pages, a ton of custom written text, etc. I have all the custom images already on file. The most time consuming part of recreating his website would be the custom verbiage and design of the actual layout. If we had all the verbiage on file, and the general page layouts, it would save countless hours if we had to recreate the site. You could hire a reputable web design virtual assistant for a one-time project of “backing-up” your site. At least that way you wouldn’t have to start from scratch.
Even despite this really really bad fiasco with Advanced Access … I have to say, they’re still my favorite of all the REALTOR specific vendor-based websites out there. I love their Intellicards, the ability to almost 100% customize the site, unlimited pages, and they’ve done a phenomenal job with their premier marketing for one of my clients … he is always ranked on the first page (and generally in the top 3) on Google and Yahoo for his (very competitive) areas in organic search results.
But, as a precaution, I have backed-up the majority of his core pages and suggest you do the same ;o).
Happy Thursday!
Amber
