Sometimes, it doesn't pay to try to be better, but if you're lucky, you might figure out a way to eventually get to where you want to be.

I was missing in action because I had to try to upgrade this blog. I run it on WordPress software, and I couldn't upgrade the blog anymore because it was on a different... well, I don't want to get too technical. Let me just say it was on an old and outdated database because it was created in 2005, and the newer database had to be created and the blog moved so I could update.

One would hope that the host would have just updated the databases for everyone, but nope. I had to do it myself. Luckily, I'm sort of tech savvy, and so I did my part. Then it turned out I couldn't go any further because my files were bigger than my host allowed me to work with.

Over the course of a couple of days, we went back and forth on a few things. They eventually got one thing working, then something else failed, and I was without my blog for a few days. Eventually they gave up and said that maybe I could find someone who could fix things for me. But that's not my style.

After thinking about it and going through some selected moves, I figured out what the problem was in about 15 minutes, and all was right with the world. That was on Christmas Eve morning; not quite the day I was ready to write a quick blog post here.

Right now it's just past midnight, which means it's the day after Christmas. The blog is back, actually better than ever because the new database is working wonderfully, and all is right with the world again.

Having said that, I have to talk about the customer service aspect of what happened. My first contact went well. The second contact didn't go so well. The third contact went even worse. Then the email contacts were less than satisfactory.

Why did things keep going down? Because the first person, whom I've talked to in the past, told me things that were what I wanted to hear, but she needed some information I didn't have at the time. The second guy didn't fully read what the first person told me. The third person didn't fully read what the first person wrote either, because the second person decided not to full update his notes, and didn't reference the first person at all. Luckily, I had the case numbers. And, the second person, third person, then whomever took over through email, kept writing and talking to me as though I had no technical knowledge whatsoever, even though I told them a few things that I knew was going on, and kept a few things to myself about their own software that, apparently, the first line technical support people didn't know.

There are some rules of customer service that many companies fail out. Here are some of them.

1. Assuming the customer is an idiot is a bad idea.

2. Reading directly from the manual and having the customer do things from the beginning that they've told you they've already done.

3. Promising things to the customer, only to have someone else change it up because not everyone either knows the rules or the processes.

4. Allowing the customer to let you know they know more than you do.

5. Not knowing enough about the processes you're telling someone to follow through on so that you're not wasting people's time.

At least at this point I do have my blog back, and all is right with the world again.