Strat-O-Matic.com transition info/FAQ

[voovits]

[quote:7bea9724c9="bernieh"]There's more reasons that are not my place or pay-grade to give, but that's all you need to know. [/quote:7bea9724c9]

I think that sums things up pretty well.

What is claimed to be all we [i:7bea9724c9]need[/i:7bea9724c9] to know is one thing.

What us paying customers [i:7bea9724c9]want[/i:7bea9724c9] to know is another.

if you don't have the authority to tell what we want to know, someone else should.

We as customers want to know all relevant info. Not just what the upper brass thinks is all we need to know.

[doug_tucker10]

Thank you Bernie.

[BergRad]

Keep in mind that SOM is not a Fortune 500 company ripping you off.

It has been and remains a very small company in a small town on LI giving a very small niche of the game market an excellent product which makes you happy most of the time.

To those Negatrons out there, time to keep to yourselfs please. Not for the sake of the rest of us but for guys at SOM like Bernie who should not have to make any excuses.

[BergRad]

[quote:ae4634181b="ehlekev"]I agree about the complaining. However, Nevdully gets a "complain" pass as he is towards the top in Total Teams over the years. He has had hundreds upon hundreds of teams and poured in perhaps thousands of dollars for this game.

Nevdully can say what he wants. You guys with one, two, or three stars......shhhhhhhh

Kev[/quote:ae4634181b]

Kev.

Wasn't aware that there is a class society on this forum.

[nevdully's]

Ya know one of my Managers really, really, really cares about our customers, and our customer service...and of course I pretty much love that, but she's constantly telling me how she makes these "miracle sales"....tough, tough "miracle sales"...ya know they wanted brown shoes and I only had navy type stuff, and she sold it but how she hated to disappoint the customer...now here's the thing...She doesn't understand you just won't have exactly what they want in the size they need, all of the time...And "for me" saying "I didn't have the brown shoe you wanted but I have this nice navy shoe if you'd like to try it" ..and then wait for a yes or no, while making polite small talk while pointing out the benefits of this particular navy shoe, while giving a perfect fit for their child is Very Easy "For Me"...I hardly think it takes great effort or tremendous know how...but to her it's called "Making Miracle sales"

Maybe this job for Bernie and especially being a one man show is very very very hard "for him" the equivalent to making "miracle sales" ....but maybe it's made much harder than it needs to be....Maybe.


I'm not apologizing for saying Bernie "might not" be the man for the job....."Might Not" which also means he Might be" the man for the job..."might be"...

Now as far as new product rollouts and IT stuff this could have been a huge undertaking with a billion moving parts and the few kinks, bugs etc are just a drop in the bucket....Others that have experience "with this type of thing" might think this has been as smooth as silk....flawless relatively speaking etc
But
From where I sit as just a customer layman if you will, it seems some pretty basic stuff fell through the cracks leading one to ask how much testing was done ...it seemed to be like building the new twin towers able to withstand earthquakes, tsunamis etc...genius, rock solid, one of kind foundation, a never thought of before mix of materials, superman type work, checked and tested time and time again...looks great but where's the front door? Oh I forgot it.

This could be a job only a super man can do and Bernie here is Superman...or maybe for another it could be much easier.....So Shoot me for even asking the damn question.

[Ninersphan]

No complaints from me Bernie, I know you are dedicated to making thinks run as smoothly as you possibly can and I know IT stuff ALWAYS has bugs to work out. Any of you that have worked in a company that has made software/hardware upgrades should all be aware of this and have a little patience. People complaining they are going to bail when all that's happening is Strat stepping in and making the game/site better overall I just don't understand.
Bernie, I'm sure sure for every complainer there are 5-10 of us that haven't said anything. I hadn't until i saw your response to the ******** in your most recent post which promoted me to type this. Thanks for your hard work and for putting up the the masses.

[Munich_Man]

[quote:79cb70d2f8="dharmabums"]Wasn't there a "Bernie Does Vegas" movie somewhere? Must be something about that in these message boards somewhere. That ought to be worth a flame! :P[/quote:79cb70d2f8]

Believe me, you want to see that video!

Ask Bernie about glass doors sometime...

[Valen]

I cut Bernie a lot of slack and understand what being a one man show in IT is like. Done that for a little over 5 years. Now 1 of a bajillion in an international company. Think I actually liked the control of the one man shop even though it was a lot more pressure.

I do not cut Strato a lot of slack because of my past experience with their computer support and practices. I do think they could spare one person to help Bernie out with say monitoring these boards some during this very busy time and critical time. I understand financially committing more than one full time salary to this may not be feasible on an ongoing basis. But considering this will be a recurring income stream for them giving Bernie some help the last few weeks and especially the last week would not have been asking too much.

You do not have to be a fortune 500 company to do a quality job. And it is a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Are you limited because you are small or small because you do not do a sufficient job to attract new customers. Do you server a niche market because there is a truly limited number of potential cuatomers? Or do you have a limited number of customers and thus a niche market because of how you do business?

One example: For years there was no mention of online strat on the strat-o-matic website.

There is no way Bernie can tell us all that has gone on behind the scenes. Anyone who understands business understands there are internal discussions that you do not go public with. So we can only speculate and it is the nature of online boards for people to do so. One suspicion I have is that TSN made a decision to discontinue the game and forced deadlines for shutting down that site. That would mean our choice may have been between an imperfect launch or no site at all. And if that occurred how much Bernie could share with us would have been determined by lawyers.

To be clear: Not at all unhappy with Bernie, but not real happy with the people running the strat-o-matic company.

[Hack Wilson]

Agreed. It's absolutely not Bernie's fault -- but like you say, SOM is doing it the wrong way. They need to give him more support. There's no way ONE guy should have to be responsible for the entire thing.

[Valen]

I also think some of the complaining this week can be attributed to the boredom principle. If kids do not have something to do they will cause trouble and complain more. :lol:

With the site down and games not being played ... just saying.

Once games are being played again and everyone has something to do everyone will go back to complaining about trade offers and HAL's mistakes. :lol: