Posted by David Speiser
on April 29, 2008
My Review: 2
twhirl’s website is down. I can’t download the app from them. download.com will let you download it successfully, though of course you need Adobe Air installed in order to open and run the app. I’ve done a bunch of news and blog searches, but I can’t seem to find any information. The twhirl blog is still up, and even has links to the home page to download the latest ( 0.8 ) version. But that link is dead too.
I don’t know if I’m on crack and this is old news, or if I’ve happened on something new and troubling. But I don’t like it. So twhirl being down gets a 2 out of 10. Boo.
UPDATE: The site appears to be back up and working fine now. Everyone relax.
Posted by David Speiser
on February 17, 2008
My Review: 3
I tagged this under Web 2.0, but really this a very Web 1.0 site and issue. I just tried logging into my online account for my credit card, provided by U.S. Bank. I got a message that said: “Internet Banking is experiencing high traffic volumes at this time. Please try again later.”
That is not acceptable. U.S. Bank is a major financial institution with millions of customers. They ought to be able to scale their servers well enough to deal with my traffic. It is not acceptable that I can’t check my credit card balance anytime I want, not in the year 2008. These are the kinds of FUBAR’s that cost companies their customers.
U.S. Bank’s website gets a 3 today, and they barely deserve that.
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UPDATE:
I have to say that as annoyed as I was with US Bank, I was not expecting much in the way of a response. But I was pleasantly surprised and impressed. I sent the tech support an email with my post, and I heard a prompt response:
“I apologize for any misunderstanding or inconvenience regarding this issue. We are not aware
of high traffic issues on our website over this last weekend. Your browser may have stored an
incorrect shortcut in its temporary internet files (cache). Please clear your cache, delete any
bookmarks or favorites for www.usbank.com, close out of your computer and manually type in our
web address to log on with your current Personal ID and Password...”
The response goes on for literally 2 pages after that. Their answer did not at all satisfy my issue. I know that it was not a stored cookie issue, or anything of the sort. I still think it’s ridiculous to have the site be unavailable, and because that is inexcusable, I am not revising my rating.
Nevertheless, this lengthy and timely response was more and better than I expected to get, and I want to acknowledge it. It shouldn’t have happened at all, but they did try to respond to my issue.
