Recently, I was reading on John's dated series on how he hates the world and thought it would be good to post something a little more positive. You caught me, I'm generally pretty optimistic. I'm outwardly cynical but generally have a positive outlook on things - I just don't take the world or people in it too seriously.
With that said, my friends would be happy to back up that I am the world's worst consumer. When I walk into a business, people should run the other way. Not that I'm going to cuss them out, yell, scream or throw things but I do have some basic expectations with regard to customer service, experience and the representation versus reality of products and services I subscribe to.
I am the guy that once called Dateline on my local Wal-mart and made the store manager personally deliver a new lawnmower to my house.
I am the guy that had the owner of Daphne Honda personally sell me a car and negotiate the price because of snide tones about my age.
I am the guy that, when working with Blackboard's CMS, could get no satisfaction, googled the profiles of and emailed the Board of Directors for that company telling them we were firing them as a provider.
But I'm also the guy that doesn't mind giving out credit where credit is due and these guys definitely deserve it -- Southern Light Fiber -http://www.southernlightfiber.com/
I work for an online school in Orange Beach and I sometimes where the hat of Systems Guy and get involved in IT-related tasks. We use 2 Gulftel DSL's, Fiber from SmartResort/SmartTel/DSSI/WhateverTheyAreCalled and Fiber from Southern Light linked to a Customer Co/Location in Mobile. We do this to provide redundancy for hardware on the island in the case of hurricane, tsunami or ill-tempered contruction workers hellbent on bashing in servers.
SmartResort and GulfTel? -- Not bad.. I have contacts or special arrangements with both so when I need something, they are both accomodating within reason. My previous well-documented all-hate relationship with Gulftel has softened because I haven't had to deal (much) with the 1st level tech support guys on the east coast in quite some time. Aside from a few small ups and downs that are to be expected -- service has been good and Jimmy @ Gulftel is a great asset to their credit.
Southern Light -- I have no special arrangements, no inside contacts. I have no friends doing the network design like at the other companies, yet when I call them with an issue I always -- ALWAYS -- leave with a solution. This company has gone out of their way to not only meet but consistantly exceed my expectations, every step of the way.
The Service -- it's always up.
When I call their numbers? - -I get people. Real, live, humans. It's crazy.
Those people? They are generally pretty friendly and always VERY helpful.
As our needs grow, Southern Light isn't just there for us. - They've been down the road we're headed.
Hardware fails -- they know before we do
Network Maintenance -- they call before it happens, instead of asking for forgiveness after the outage
Service Options -- A'Plenty
At a Gulf Coast Technology Council/Baldwin EDA meeting, Southern Light and Gulftel both presented to a room of interested business IT decision makers. The Gulftel guy was friendly, informative and did a good, canned, sales pitch.
Southern Light's founder told you what you wanted to know -- good or bad. Uptime, Redundancy, how the technology works, who's using it. No frills, no bad jokes, just good, straighforward "This is what we do and although we may never cross paths, this is how we do it, in case you were wondering" tech-jargon filled business geektalk.
So, that concludes my totally unsponsored, unauthorized Southern Light commercial. it's not everday I run into a provider that continually impresses me but this company -- does.
http://www.southernlightfiber.com/