View From The Quad

To who it may concern.
Over the past year and a half, or there abouts, I have been a paying member of Switchpod. Basically, they have pretty much disappointed me at every hurdle, from the stats system, which I have been promised on numerous occasions will “Be updated tomorrow. We Promise!” The strange downtime, the errors with the log-in system and of course, the terribly designed website.

I have decided that I refuse to take any more of this, and want to switch to Libsyn. Imagine my surprise when it is hinted at that not only will I have to give up my feed when I stop paying because of the switch, but switchpod will start inserting advertising into my feed.

Continuing, Switchpod support staff have REPEATEDLY refused to answer two simple questions, related to the above thing which surprised me.

1. Is the redirect feed option available for non-paying members
2. will ads be inserted into the redirected feed.

I feel that if it is not available for non-paying members, or if advertisements are inserted, I deserve to keep my “paying” account without actually having to pay for it, for the sole use of redirecting my switchpod feed to a libsyn feed or maybe my own feed from my own web hosting service. I believe this for the following reasons

1. From the get go, switchpod lied about their service. When I signed up, they were promising “The most advanced stats” and, as we can all see, the stats system is an utter joke. The joke even goes as far as to STILL have the following message printed on the stats page. “Hi, We are experiencing some technical difficulties. We are working to make the new stats page better for the site. We will be moving the stats engine to a new server to improve server performance. We will email when every thing is up. Thanks. - Jan. 28, 2007″. Rob, over there at wizzard.tv personally promised me, in person, at the PNME that switchpod would have a nice stats system running withen a week of the PNME 2007. We shook hands, and he went on to say that if there was not a new stats system, The coder responsible would be fired.
I mean, january 2007, we were being promised new stats. Have they shown up? NO.
2. Check through your support files to see how many problems I have had with switchpod, from files deleting themselves to my account being inaccessible for large amounts of time, remembering that I actually have to give the support staff my username and password, something which I find really… silly. Not forgetting that they tend to dance around questions so that they don’t have to answer them.
3. I was promised by somebody at wizzard.tv that you were working on getting “Switchpod up there with the big boys of podcast hosting”. Has this happened? Clearly not. Switchpod is a system which by rights, should have a warning on the front page saying that any podcaster who takes themselves seriously should not sign up.

In conclusion, I am requesting a transfer to Libsyn, with however much “credit” I have left on switchpod going into the libsyn account. I would also like for switchpod to redirect my feed for free, without inserting advertising into it. I will remove all my files from switchpod, and host them on libsyn instead, because leaving them on switchpod would not only be useless, but unfair to them.

Yours Sincerely,

Cian Mac Mahon
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Cian Mac Mahon
Professional Podcaster
Available for voice work, consulting

www.viewfromthequad.com