Death of pitchablogger... reasons why... and a shout out to WuFoo

So, after thinking it through, I've decided to retire the pitchablogger.com idea.

Why? Simple. The concept came from me being a PR guy, and looking for an easy way to attract more attention from the blogosphere for my clients. On my side of the fence, having bloggers say "yes, I'd like to receive information about Client XX because they are certainly relevant to what I like to write about " while also telling me the best way to contact them was a no-brainer. In fact... it seemed like the type of idea that someone should have some up with a LONG time ago (small interjection here: let me state, unequivocally... the intention wasn't to create a brand new list of people to spam. Rather... it was to create a lit of how people wanted to be engaged (and I say that, not from the brand engagement perspective you hear so much about these days.. but from a personal engagement point of view that @Chrisbrogan would be proud of).

That said... the long story short is as follows. I still think it's a good concept, but I don't have the time to actively promote it to the blogosphere, so its value is incredibly limited. Add in the fact that tools like FriendFeed or Twitter make it easier to find and relate to members of the blogosphere, and it seems like the need for a project like this is minimal.

That said, I want to end this post with a shout out to the team at WuFoo, who was providing the back end for pitchablogger's database. In the wake of plenty of people having massive issues with customer service (Delta, I am looking at you), I am floored with the level of service I received from their team.

Here's the back story: Yesterday, when I decided to pull the plug on pitchablogger, I logged in to cancel my account. The process seemed straight forward enough, but I never got to any sort of confirmation page, nor did I receive an e-mail stating the account was canceled. Today, I got the latest invoice from the company. Convenient, right?

So, I went back to the site to cancel the account (again). I got a confirmation, and did their exit survey. In the survey, based on the question "what can we do better?" I said something like "Make it easier to cancel without getting a bill the next day. And, by easier, I mean, make it easier for your user to leave without getting hit with a bill that seems terribly convenient for you."

Within an hour, I got an e-mail from Chris in their customer service department, apologizing for the bill, and taking care of the issue. Chris explained that they had a server issue yesterday, which lead to the problem, and told me the bill had been taken care of.... and not on my dime.

Outstanding service in my mind. I can't recommend this company enough, assuming you're trying to build a database via the web.

Thanks again Chris and the WuFoo team. You've made a big fan out of me, and will totally have my business the next time I come up with some silly idea like pitchablogger.