OO Works web site down

Fine this morning! Just a note, if I may. When someones web site has problems, *please* don't start wondering publicly if that means the company has problems - that's how nasty rumours start. It's far, far more likely someones unplugged the server or an update has failed or there has been a power cut etc.

Cheers Richard

Point taken re just a web site being down, but, in this case as I haven't heard anything since I put my order in for the 700 and it's supposed to have been available for a while, plus the web site seeming to disappear completely, I was genuinely concerned that they might be having trouble. But glad to see it's back up and running again.

Lot's of broken image links, though. Doesn't inspire confidence if they can't even be arsed to check their own website.

I'd say please don't post about it all. After all, what can we do about it?

MBQ

In message , Ian J. writes

Why not give him a call on that most ancient of technologies, the telephone?

You know that for a fact?

Had it not occurred to you a third party may look after their site?

I agree with an earlier poster, just because the site is down, don't automatically suspect they are out of business, there is always the telephone.

I'm soooo used to email ;-)

I've had a reply to an email I sent this morning, and my order is due to be finished early in the New Year, so they are quite happily thriving.

No, but does it matter? Someone put up a website that's very obviously broken.

In that case I would expect the 3rd party top check their own work and OO works to inspect the work of the third party before the website goes live.

MBQ

Yes it does matter.

Maybe they did and the ISP at the time the OP logged on, had problems, it does happen. Give them a chance, so far they have possibly gone bust and can't be arsed.

But it all works this morning, so maybe someone was checking.

As an aside, I think you meant't "to check" not "top check" or couldn't you be arsed :)

I suggest you try again, and make sure your not looking at a copy in your browsers cache. The broken links are still there.

MBQ

I took a look at their site as I was merely curious what a 'black motor' was, and at the same time looked at the site details. You're right they do have broken links, but they are also updating the site, the home page was modified as recently as the 22nd. There are lots of small scale operators of web sites or businesses out there that can't afford or do not want to understand how the professional web sites operate with there high service levels. For the small scale operator professional site development and maintenance can be very expensive, so if we want to enjoy competitive prices perhaps we should cut them a little slack, and as another suggested if we are really worried I'm sure they would love to take a phone call. After all if you had to choose what would you prefer, a flashy web site and poor running black motor, or the reverse?

So what? Even a one man band using raw HTML can VERY easily check that what they have uploaded actually works, even before it's actually uploaded. Basic functionality like broken links has absolutely nothing to do with professional v amateur or low v high cost development.

I suppose it has got us all talking about their website. It is sometimes said that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Would you also cut them some slack if their products were not up to scratch? "It's OK they're only a small scale operator, we can't expect them to get it right."

MBQ

It would really help some site owners who are not site devolpers to refuse a site demo but pretend to be a first time visitor who wants to get info and/or buy something. Not a bad idea for some developers to try and use a site.

Cheers, Simon

A pet hate of mine is retailers who had a perfectly good site, then decided to revamp its overall look and of course the new look site seldom works properly.

(kim)