“Lip Service” like my friend “Anon” said?

That’s what it looks like to me!

What I don’t get is why would he string everyone along if ultimately it’s going to tank. Maybe he wants it to succeed but knows it won’t?

I still hope it does.

Hey, When is the next techie conference…if he twits from there then the jig is up!!

Jason Hatfields last blog post..Autumn in Coloroado

I’m sure it’s hard enough to keep the servers afloat both with time and $$. BUT like you said, just as important would be the customer service; that’s nearly the ‘whole point’ of the site.

Thanks for taking the time to make such an in-depth comment!

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Meanwhile check this out!…is Mr. CEO earnestly looking for additional investors for the site or burning the last few PHOdimes trying to rub elbows & or network?
http://twitter.com/andrewparadies

new post on adtechblog.com http://tinyurl.com/5cba9k

12:14 PM Nov 6th from web
in the press room… typing up some notes… last day of ad:tech… tired

8:54 AM Nov 6th from web
at ad:tech NYC – about to put up a blog post on luxury brands 11:19 AM Nov 5th from web

What does being @ Adtech in NYC have to do with anything remotely related to PHotrade??? But maybe we should speculate that on another blog post

But the downsides are obvious – service businesses require multiple people to take care of all the little things that constantly pop up. If those people are gone, then a multitude of little problems that is normally handled w/o a hitch quickly becomes a mountainous task for one person.

It seems like, for whatever reason, their ordering process isn’t automated. You’d think their software would be designed to place the order with their fulfillment service when the product is ordered from Photrade. But apparently that isn’t the case, which I don’t understand since that’s the bread and butter of the site and you’d expect there to be hundreds or maybe thousands of orders.

Anyway, every business has a lot going on behind the doors, for sure. But with Photrade, if their photographers are making sales, they’re making money. So letting customer service slide, in terms of sales support, is simply shooting themselves in the foot b/c that’s simply lost revenue. I’m sure it’s much too early in the game for the site to be self-supported by sales, but you need every revenue stream you can get and having a bad reputation certainly won’t build it.

In terms of the site’s survivability, who knows. I think it’s safe to assume there are no guarantees here. If the last month is any indication, it appears as though Photrade is so short on staff that they can’t even keep the basic functions running. If that’s true, then this thing’s just on life support until it devolves to non-sustainability and it all crashes in. There’s no way around that; if there’s more work than (say) 3 people can do, then it just piles up and up.

It sounds like they have a fairly substantial backer in Charles Stack, et al, but the thing with venture capitalists is that the money may be here today, but if they’re spooked, gone tomorrow. Who knows.
http://crainscleveland.com/article/20080804/FREE/319748882/1022/www.invacare.com

Personally, I will continue to use Photrade, but I’m not going to make it the central part of my business as I had once planned to do.