July 2010 Archives
Jul30

Gowalla Doesn’t Understand

Posted at 10:38 AM • 5 Comments

If you follow me on Twitter or read my last post, you’ll have a good idea of what’s going on. Since whoever handles Gowalla’s main email contact doesn’t respond to my emails, I went to the top of the company by emailing Gowalla’s CEO, Josh Williams last week.

Josh seems like a very nice guy, but seems to lack the authority to get things done right away. This is what I’m getting from our correspondence, but I could be wrong. Being the CEO of any company one would think all you would need to do is bark out some orders and your employees do as you say. Doesn’t seem like that at Gowalla. Josh said that last week he’d have someone look into my situation. Nothing happened so a week later I emailed Josh again. Josh’s reply last night said that “We’re going to be reinstating several accounts that were turned off a couple weeks ago do to Terms violations and I’m sure your account will be included in that group. You’ll be able to resume your check-ins soon.” Ummmm… “soon”? Why not just tell someone to reinstate my account now? Why wait? What are you waiting for? What’s the hold up? It should be a very simple process to do.

My email to Josh on Wednesday mentioned in great detail on how they have ignored my emails on requesting to become a Street Team Elite member since January and with being banned for doing something less than cheating, while the person that cheated was unbanned within 3 hours and was sent a pleasant email from their main contact email. Josh said in his reply to me “Thanks for your patience for a reply. I know you’ve been disappointed with our response time on this one.” All I have is patience for lots of things and sometimes, just sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting (like waiting to become a STE after 7 months) just erupts like a volcano.

Josh also mentioned that he was saddened with the fact I’ve taken my “frustration public in such a lengthy manner. It seems very unnecessary to me.” So now, it’s obvious that they are watching my Twitter feed (or just looking for mention of “Gowalla”) and maybe reading my blog. I’m not always the one to complain, but after being ignored with my request to help make the user experience better for all Gowalla users for 7 months while others got a 1 day response & acceptance and with no response as to why I was banned & someone that did something worse than me was unbanned very very quickly, just has finally pissed me off enough to scream my frustration to the world. This happens a lot. People need to voice their opinions about how they’ve been wronged by companies that didn’t do the right thing at first or just ignored their customers.

Although I have loved Gowalla since day one and made the entire state of Delaware and everyone else that follows me know this, I fell that I’ve been wronged so I made myself very vocal about the situation.

Companies should never ignore their customers/users. Never! They need to listen, find out what the issue is, and promptly try to fix it while communicating to their customers/users what’s going on. Gowalla got a lot of heat back in March during the item drought and when GowallaTools creator Ben Dodson gave up developing with Gowalla’s API a few months ago. Negative reviews and press are heard 5 to 10 times more than positive press. It’s a fact. Look at the issues with Apple’s iPhone 4. What a cluster-fuck that was. A simple issue that’s in every other smartphone blown out of proportion by the blogsphere, tech sites, and making all the news outlets in the world. Apple’s first few replies about the issue where received with a lot of shock, but they bounced back by trying to make the entire situation right with their customers and letting them know what was going on and what their plans were. And because I know that negative press is heard 5 to 10 times more than positive press, I went very public with the situation.

Josh, please don’t let your users be ignored. Communicate with them. Don’t give them the opportunity to become this frustrated with Gowalla that their only outlet/recourse is to be very outspoken & public about their issue.

Oh yeah, I am still banned from Gowalla. I’ve been playing with foursquare a lot in the past 2 weeks. I’ll have another post soon about all of that.

Jul25

Gowalla Doesn’t Like Me

Posted at 5:33 PM • 6 Comments

You might be able to title this post “Why I’ve Been Banned From Gowalla” or even “Why Does Gowalla Ignore Me?”.

I’ve hinted at my recent issue with Gowalla on Twitter. Many have asked what’s up, but I haven’t brought forth any details as to what’s going on since it is a long story. Now, here it is:

About a week and a half ago, the Red Bull user on Gowalla started picking up the new Red Bull can item from locations. I asked them if this item was everywhere and they said “yes”. I mentioned the new item to a friend of mine on Gowalla and we started to try to locate the item locally. Around the same time, my friend noticed another person in our state checking in to Gowalla spots across the country. This is what Gowalla & their users consider cheating. Yes, it is. We watched him for a day or too. My friend inquired with him on how he was doing that and learned how to also. I was also sent the information on how to cheat, but since I was at work, I couldn’t try it out (all blocked by a nice firewall). I contemplated the idea of trying it out, but didn’t know if I really would. I mean, come on, it’s cheating. So, still at work, my friend tells me to check into a local spot and that there’s something for me. I do and what do you know, a Red Bull can sitting there. So I picked it up and placed it in my vault.
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