Entries from October 2009 ↓

Much time has passed since we first met, online as it were.

It was as “ON” I first met her. She wanted the background removed from an image. I felt sorry for her, as she described her health issues. We had a couple of long calls. She described to me how a designer had taken $2K and failed to deliver the website she was supposed to get, leaving her with purchased software (photoshop, dreamweaver, paintshop pro) that she found unusable.

She felt designers deliberately talked down to her by speaking in incomprehensible jargon rather than everyday language she could understand. She did not see any value in trying to learn what the terms they were using meant.

I charged her a few dollars and gave her the image in several sizes. She came back and wanted support to install it on her listings in a payment mail button. I gave her the code to do that, but it was not what she wanted. She wanted me to take a piece of javascript she said some friend had given her and make it work using her image. She wanted me to do it for her. She did not want to know how it was done so she could do it for herself. I explained that I didn’t know any javascript and had no idea how to make it work, that all I knew is that I had never seen it done that way.

She emailed me back with a snarky, “A friend of mine did it for me for free.” And she posted on the forum outing me for ripping her off by giving her the image in a format she could not use (.gif!) and failing to give her what she needed. That a designer could not do what some friend of hers was able to do for free.

I blocked her on all her accounts I was aware of and put a notice on my help site that I did not work with javascript at any price.

Time passed and she contacted me on a new account of hers, “FA”. Or was it “F A”? It turns out she was still blocked on the old account she had renamed. The account she contacted me on was a spacing variation of the real account she needed the work done for.

She had a story about how an inexperienced designer had given her something she was unable to work with after charging her several times the initially-agree-upon amount. Silly me, I guessed who it was and should have contacted the girl to get the scoop.

We did not speak on the phone this time. I don’t recall if we did IM’s. But I know we did emails, hot damn! I got at least 2 emails every waking hour, and she wanted them all responded to promptly.

I ended up reworking a sliced-image photoshop template to make it easier for her to work with, to match up something that wasn’t quite right and fulfill her stated needs. I did not ask for money, but she paid me generously. I spent a great deal of time on the project.

Finally it was finished, and she now pointed out that she was not able to do something she needed to do – she needed an expanding text box in a certain location, which you don’t get in a photoshop template. without. asking. in. advance. Which she had not done, and which I would now have to start all over again to do.

I was finished. I wanted nothing more to do with this, as I now realized who she was.

She told me a friend had fixed it for free. She posted outing me on the forum for cheating her by giving her back a sliced image template – a table coded up for the images. Apparently she later sucked some other designer into trying to fix it, too, and it became the epic of “The $200 Template”, where yet another helpless, naive newbie was portrayed as victimized by flirt designers who cheat them and veteran flirts who won’t give a newbie a break.

The pattern: Complaints that veteran flirts and designers cheat newbies, and she is here to help by warning them, sometimes trying to “help” with “tutorials” trying to convince them to use low-grade html editors that apparently she can’t even use herself. Or warning them to be prepared to get the designer to agree to demands for unlimited communication in advance, and to be prepared to sue her.

I see posts like that and I get flashbacks.

I still get emails from her various personae trying to get me to work for her, unaware that she is well-known.

She pretends she is someone the designer does not know in order to get them to work for her.

Radioactive is the word.

I really feel sorry for someone who cannot permit herself to learn to do things for herself, who is incapable of communicating her needs. Or I would if she was not so resolutely malevolent and vindictive. How can someone lead their whole life blaming everyone else for the same things that go wrong, over and over again?

Q: Where is my callbutton? I can’t see my callbutton in my listing, I can’t see it in the category indexes! Nobody can call me, I won’t get any calls!

We have never been able to see our own callbuttons in our listings while logged in except in the ‘edit preview’ mode. Now we are also unable to see them in the category indexes. Everyone can see them but you. To see them, log off and look again. If you have another account, log into it and you will see it, too.

 

You can’t call yourself, so you don’t need a callbutton to click. That callbutton being missing from the category index makes it easier for you to find your listing’s position, too.

Q:I keep getting calls and missing them even though I’m on a call already!

The old call status used to go into ‘busy’ well in advance and stay that way. This one goes in at the last minute and comes out when the customer is adding money. Sometimes it doesn’t go into busy at all, or resets itself to available even if you are still on the call (and ultimately correctly credited).

 

The solution is simpler than the explanation. Shut off your account when you start a call, and it will stay off until the call has ended and you turn it back on.

Q: The new callbuttons don’t change from available when you take a call!

Nope, they don’t. This is a major issue, because the callbutton is static. The code they give you permanently reflects the status you were in when you took it. The system will put through calls to you if someone clicks a button that says you are “available” even if you actually are not, and you will miss them. Somebody messed up when they were designing the code. It is going to be a big deal for them to fix it.

 

The only thing you can do is to not use the callbuttons. Instead link to your homepage or to a listing you would want them to call. The callbuttons Niteflirt displays on your account will correctly show your account status. See that button in my sidebar? It is always live. I am on 24/7 and only flirts see this button, so it’s not a big deal for me.

Whatever you do, don’t put callbuttons into your listing! They will see buttons that say you are both unavailable and available and click the available one.

Q: I can’t tell what account or listing the call is coming in on!

Pick an account (I used a slow one) and add a listing from each of your accounts to your favorites. Keep that page open. When a call comes in, after you click ’1′, refresh the page until it shows one as ‘busy’.