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Feedback & Site blogWhat's good? What's bad? What can be better? If it's a glitch, tell is via the support page. Andrew Feedback messagePlease enter a description of your feedback in the fields below. When you are finished, please click the Send button to notify us. The Feedback blogMon August 2Thanks to Yelcin who persisted with a problem getting his verification email. We all sat round a computer in our office and finally found a fix. It seems gmail and hotmail have changed their spam algorithm and are blocking emails to some bit not all gmail/hotmail accounts from flatmates.com.au Here's the fix: Add "notifications@flatmates.com.au" to your hotmail or gmail account. All notifications emails - including the verification email will get through! Wed July 7 2010 OK - apologies - customer service has been very patchy (ok not existent) in the last few months. Ive been travelling and have to spend some time on my work that actually pays money... Good news... We are going to start a new round of site upgrades in the next couple of months. Here's the list so far; 1. Fix the auto-alert email system. Nobody understands how the current system works (cause it's badly done). 2. Allow all properties to appear on a single map -no more pages for maps. 3. Introduce better search options. eg by city. 4. Introduce more anti-spammer measures. Bastards waste everyone's time. We'll try to waste there's. Bad news... we think it we will introduce a small fee to contact people. But still free to list. And still free to search. But maybe pay $10, $15, $20 (???) to "unlock" the messaging system for 12 months? Even $5 for one week?? Why? 1. When we relaunched the site three years ago, banner ad rates were $20 per thousand pages. Ads could pay for the site. Now ads sell for $1 per thousand pages... Now the site loses money. 2. If we have some revenue, we can improving the site and provide better customer service. Often now -there's none. 3. A small fee paid for by a credit card also acts as an ID check. It decreases scammer activity. 4. We could afford to advertise -which means more properties and people = better faster matches. Right now we don't advertise at all. But... We'll listen to our site users think first. Well do a user survey before we trial a fee and we'll see what everyone thinks. Timing is months away - maybe Sept?? Lastly -we have some great plans for a FLATMATES.COM.AU TEAM in the Sydney City to Surf. Right now all i can say is the tshirts say "Sleep at my place". You'll have to wait for the real surprise. If you're running -you won't miss us. promise. Monday January 25 2010 Saw an interesting software product today - Housemates Companion. It helps you manage share houses. here's what they say; "It can get tricky when many bills come in all spanning different periods and some flat mates move in or out. Memories can fade about who paid for what and arguments over money can arise pretty quickly! Also, if there's not a chore roster, the flat/house can get filthy pretty quickly. These are the kinds of issues this software solves". Check it out; Housemates companion Oct 2009: Student Media Directory We launched a new website. It's a directory for Australian student advertising and media contacts. If you need to book oweek or student diaries on campus, check out studentmedia.com.au Saturday August 22 Scammers A lot of attention from scammers this week - three in one week. All banned now -but remain vigilant. Thanks to those that reported them. I should have visited nigeria while i was in africa and said hi to the scammers in person... We ban their ip addresses and keep records for the federal police for future action. New anti-scammer technology coming soon -but we cant protect you if you publish your phone number or email inside the text of your listing!! Scammers just email you direct then. Using the site's messaging system protects your privacy more. Scammer prefer not to use it. Share accommodation for students After 2 years of development, we have finally launched our sister share accommodation site for students -StudentFlatmates.com.au. It's shares listings and the messaging system with flatmates.com.au. It just has extra features if you are student looking for a flatmate in Australia. July 3 Back from Namibia and Botswana. Great adventure. Now back to good old flatmates.com.au in a state of jetlag. Monday June 1 Apologies - but I'm off the darkest africa for a month+ -so there won't be any support for the site until early July. Some days the joys of providing a free site to 4,000 visitors a day can be crushed with just one email. Here's a lovely support email from another user unable to spell "hotmail.com", "MrMastino" David Spiers; "whats the go cant use my own email u r so fucked up ill use paper stick this site up ya arse u fuck heads" I am just glad that our site's IQ requirement kept David from inflecting his special personality on one you as a new flatmate. Adios all! see you in july. Tuesday May 17 It's been two years in development, but very very soon our student accommodation site, StudentFlatmates will launch! It will run as a seperate site, but share with Flatmates.com.au; - a shared login, - shared messaging system - shared listings At studentflatmates; > student users will be able to search by campus. > student usres can see how far each place is form their campus > and see who is studying what (and where( inside places that already have student flatmates. It will be available only to students and of course will be 100% free. Friday April 17 - The Cup-of-Tea Rule. - Woke up to this charming support request this morning. My reply is underneath. - Thank me for not letting her loose among you! - And check out my Cup-of-Tea rule at the bottom. ------------------- FLATMATES.COM.AU SUPPORT REQUEST Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:19 First Name: M----- Email: XXXXXX@hotmail.com Browser: internet explorer. Operating System: xp MESSAGE: You have never sent me an e-mail to verifiy in the first place --------------------Ii've just wasted a whole night on your stupid waste of my fucking time website for nothing! Send me the verification e-mail so i can get started. Do i have to wait 24hrs for it or what? REPLY Good morning M-----, By starting my day reading your message, it can now only get better. We have 4,000 visitors every day. So yesterday's score was: 3,999 happy ones... and you. I have to say, you don't really sound like a very nice person to live with. So... 1. You didn't get your verification email because... you (not our stupid-waste-of-your-fucking-time website) didn't know your own email address. For future reference your email address ends in "@hotmail.com" and not "@hotmail.com.au". 2. I notice that since you sent me your message, you have fixed your problem and have successfully activated a second account anyway. I have now deleted that. On behalf of all the members of our community -please use another site. Andrew Flatmates.com.au Customer Service -------------------- Lesson of the story... The Cup-of-Tea rule - On my best days I remember the cup-of-tea rule: Have one before you send a vent-mail. And if you are wondering - ok -no, i didn't have one before i wrote the reply. Sometimes when it's not your best day, the best response to "fuck you" is, umm... "no, fuck you!" UPDATE: OK - now I feel really bad. Just got a wonderful email from M-----. Turns out she's lovely -but was having a bad day. So I have reactivated her account. Just goes to show - I should have applied the CUP-OF-TEA RULE! Here's just one line from her email; " Your website turn out to be great and i already have two people looking at the house tonight. So now you can make that 4,000 happy customers. Enjoy our lovely sunshine & i hope my grumpy e-mail late last night hasn't taken your smile away " oooh. the world is once again a happy place. I like happy endings. Welcome to our community M---- ! andrew Wednesday Apr 15 - Still working on studentflatmates.com.au... ive been saying it will launch in 2 weeks for 3 months... but it will be soon. Sunday Feb 14 - We should have StudentFlatmates.com.au up and running soon. It will be a separate site -but with same password and unified messages with Flatmates.com.au. It will have extra services for students, like search-by-campus. It will also be 100% free! Wednesday Jan 28 - new visitor record today! - decided we needed a policy on zero rent ads. Sometimes these are for housework for elderly, but sometimes its pretty clear its for sex. Yes - there is a rental crisis. We have had a few complaints about these ads. Our policy, in short, is to let them stay on the site on the basis it's better for these ads to be upfront with what they are offering then disguise the offer. Our full policy and reasoning is set on in FAQ item 13. Monday Nov 10 - Set another record for site visitors yesterday! Thursday Oct 30 - Found a really great way to save time when apply for rental accommodation. Instead of filling in a different form for every real estate agent, you can use www.1form.com.au. Complete a standard real estate rental application once, and use it multiple times. Great idea. Tuesday Oct 28 - Yesterday set a new record for visitors to the site in one day. Sunday Oct 12 - We set a record for traffic last wednesday and a listings record today! - New messaging system working very well. Friday Oct 3 On-site messaging system has gone live and appears to working smoothly. Let me know if you find any glitches. Wednesday Oct 1 Final work is being done for our terrific new messaging system. It works like facebook messages. [Ed: now done] Looks like a Friday launch. It means; 1. Your email is never disclosed. 2. You'll view all contact messages on-site. 3. You'll reply to messages on-site. 4. You won't get confused about which place bob22@hotmail is from. 5. It's scammer unfriendly -and that's good. 6. All your back-and-forth with each person is in one organised thread. Let me know what you think. Tuesday Sept 9 Working on bringing the whole messaging system on-site - like Facebook. Has a lot of advantages; 1. Clearer: With emails flying everywhere, people get confused "Is Bob the guy form Smith strete or Brown street.." etc. 2. More private: On-site means your email address is never disclosed. 3. Anti-scammer: We can spot scammers much faster if messages are all on site. Tuesday Sept 2 Jeez - we got confused who was our domain registrar. And on Monday forgot to renew our domain. Site went down for 24 hours. All fixed now. Very clear who our domain registrar is now! Wednesday August 13 Thanks to Daniel for a good idea we'll implement soon. [Ed: Now done] Daniel asked why we required a second "activation email" when you list a share house, when you already clicked on one when you join the site. The answer: we couldn't think of a good one so we are going to delete that step in the next week or so. See! Feedback really works. Tuesday July 27 Three good things today; 1. Scammers seem to have been frightened off by all the warnings we put up. But remain vigilant! 2. We changed the home page a little -more colour, rotating photos of properties updated today from around Australia, nicer buttons. Looks better. 3. Lastly, we added satellite view to all listings- and they look great! Monday July 21 - This week has been a pain in the arse with scammers. We've had a scammer sending dodgy emails in the last week. We are one share house site that takes this very serously. Scammers either ask for;
- We have made contact with the ACCC and Federal police. - Next week we are making some changes that we cant talk about publically, but will make life less comfortable for scammers. - In a few months we may move our messaging system (which is a weak spot for us anyway) to a "facebook" on-site style system. It's a lot more secure and scammer unfriendly. - We've created a special page about the issue: Share house scammer alert. -Please report suspicious emails immediately via the "Support" link at the bottom of any page. Monday July 14 - Wow - "Big Wednesday's" (see below) changes really worked. Allowing search-without-joining has improved the sites performance! Searches have more than doubled since we made that change. Big Wednesday July 2 Big day! After months of work, we have uploaded a lot of improvements today; - You can now search without joining! This should dramatically increase searches. - Search much faster - you can now search quickly by location only, or still add lots of criteria. No more long form... - New page designs for "Listing" and "Searching". - Snappy roll-over maps. Tuesday July 1 - Testing almost complete on some big changes. Biggest change - search-without-joining! This should go live tomorrow. - Just checked alexa.com - flatmates.com.au is growing in popularity very fast. We have improved our ranking by a huge 30% in two weeks! Saturday June 14 - Back working on new improvements! - Added a "relevance" indicator to search results this week. Also added nicer icons for "shortlisted" and "contacted" listings. - Search without joining is next on the list, which is a big change. On holidays (again)... Friday May 23 - First of the new round of enhancements is live. You can now click on sneak peak (soon to be renamed "Fast search") and not just see the summary results but the full listing without joining. - heading off on holiday #2 for the next two weeks. Dev team still working on new stuff while I'm away. No support while i'm away. Wednesday May 14 - Back from holidays - Just fixed a really annoying glitch in the alerts emails -some wrong states were getting through. Now fixed. - Very soon we'll allow searchers to see everything (except contact details) without joining. You'll only need to join if you want to list or contact someone. - Now planning a big batch of enhancements to launch over the next few weeks. On holidays... Saturday April 10 - New page numbers look good. - We've set a policy on zero rent ads - ie share for sex. See FAQ. - The "Surrounding suburbs" tick box now searches a more local area than before - much better. - I can't wait until we allow full searches without joining - may be live in a week or so. Thursday March 27 - Work progressing well. The first of the enhancements listed below will go live tomorrow. Expect the bigger changes in the next fortnight. - Special thanks to Steve for finding a big list of problems, which in the end he discovered had one common source: the Safari browser. [Ed: issue now fixed] Explorer and Firefox work fine. Thursday March 6 Just had a great meeting with the entire development team. The conclusion: we want to simplify and open up the site a lot more. - We're thinking of a more straight forward "Join", "Search" "List" as three separate activities without the inter connections. - Search 1: We're going to provide full search results and max details without joining. You'll only need to join if you want to contact someone. - Search 2: Instead of searching a local region when you tick "surrounding suburbs" - you'll get the surrounding postcode - which is a smaller area. The region gives too many results too far away. [Ed: Now completed] So search will have something for everyone; - Specific suburb (specific search), - Specific suburbs seperated by comma (narrow search), - Surrounding suburbs now defined as the local postcode (wider search), - Map search of local regions (widest search). - Search 3: The search page will become one page and much shorter (with an advanced option to use more fields). - Results: Some people don't understand that results are displayed by relevance - with the most relevant at the top. To explain that we will add an icon showing how well the specific listing matches your criteria. Eg" 80% search match" Thursday Feb 28 Veeery behind on replying to feedback and support emails - apologies all. Importantly - we read them all. Big thanks to Kerry who sent a feedback email asking why their listing wasn't showing up in search results. We have had a few of these and thought originally it was to do with not identifying the property on the "map" tab. But Kerry insisted they had done this step. Which was true... More investigation by the development team and we found a significant glitch in our geo-coding system. They are working on the fix now - should be complete soon (24 hours). Will make search results much better. We are planning a big development meeting next thursday March 6 to set priorities for site development - so feedback ideas before then. Monday Feb 21 More good news! We uploaded a new version of the search results page today. It now includes the following much requested info; - type of place. (Flat /house /semi) - number of bedrooms in the place - number of bathrooms in the place However, this information won't appear until people add new listings to the site, or existing listings get updated. Plus we have solved a weird glitch with the map-search - it was finding a very wide area. It now searchs closer to what you would expect! Friday Feb 8 Good news today: 1. We now have a "return to search result" link 2. We now have the "search surrounding suburbs" feature (i am so glad this is back - based on the number of feedbacks... Coming soon: > Thanks to Peer's mum who pointed out a major inconvenience - you can't contact a listing for a place without first having an active listing yourself. This isn't meant to be the way things work. We are now going to include a verification of your email address in the "Welcome" email. From that point, you can contact anyone. We will still have a seperate "activation email for listings. This change should happen by mid next week. [Ed: Now completed] > Currently the sneak peek lists video listings first, followed by photo listing and lastly non-photo listings. However within these categories there is no order. By mid next week we'll display the most recent listing within each category first. So when you list you can do a "sneak peek" and see your listing without searching. [Ed: Now completed] Tuesday Feb 5 DAY 5 GOOD NEWS: - The back-to-search-results will be in place by the end of today. - Search surrounding suburbs will be live later today too. [Ed: Now completed] Apologies to all feedback emails sent in the last 2 days - ive got behind on my replies - but the issues have gone to the development team. Monday Feb 4, 2008 DAY 4 Congrats to the guys at 393 Pitt Street Sydney who have uploaded our FIRST video. And its great. Sunday Feb 3, 2008 DAY 3 1. Navigation issues reported today - many find the site difficult. The no "back to search results" is prob the worst of this [Ed: Now completed]. Once we fix the obvious nav glitches we''ll re-evaulate the site structure and may simplify it. 2. A few more people reported the (no) surrounding suburbs issue - top of the list for this week - promise. And I couple of positives about the look and new feature (although we need more and smaller regions for Perth) Development team will be working hard this week. The priorities; 1. Solving the past messages problem. 2. Enabling a "back to search results" [Ed: Now completed] 3. Adding "search surrounding suburbs" [Ed: Now completed] 11.50pm: An email to all users goes out tonight/tomorrow morning -so we are expecting a lot of updating and feedback tomorrow. G'nite all - I'll need some sleep. its going to be a busy week getting this new design working like it should. - andrew Sat Feb 2, 2008 DAY 2 1. Portrait photos crop too much. We'll display portrait photos uncropped in the "detailed list view" in the next week. Thanks Stephen. 2. Chippendale is missing! Apologies to the inner Sydney Chippendale residents like Rowan - we'll find your suburb on Monday. 3. Going back to search results More people noticing this key feature is missing. It's a glitch. working on this monday. [Ed: Now completed] Friday Feb 1, 2008 DAY I New site Ok -we didn't get everything right on day one of the new design!!! But we WANT to make this site great so keep feeding back. We really are keen to hear from users (esp users who have been fans for years. you guys built the site's reputation) Give us a a wee bit of time to get things right. Day one of "new site" has been a little crazy... But we're listening... promise! Early feedback: 1. search "surrounding suburbs" Gone... but definitley coming back (thanks to Tamy, Aki & Lisa & Kerrie-Anne and many more). This is a high high priority. [Ed: Now completed] Alternative right now: we did a lot of work on making searchs by maps much better. We are the only real estate site that gives you map searching all the way down to local regions of cities. see if that helps you short term. [Ed: Now completed] 2. Lost past messages Have to get back to you bafter a chat with dev team. Mightb be foreever (maybe not...) 3. Poor content -no detail 100% agree with these comments -but its short term issue. We couldnt match up the old and new site's fields easily. We had a lot of deletions / additions / restructuring going on. As a result - what you see tonight and the next few days is pretty cut down. As people update their listing and new users start afresh, you'll see a lot MORE detail than before. A big email goes out to all user sunday night, encouraging all to update. Monday shoudl be better.. or a train wreck... 4. Going back to search results The site doesn't give you the option. Hmmm. Not good. (Thanks edgar). It's a glitch. working on this. [Ed: Now completed] 11.25pm Going to bed now... i'll check feedback tomorrow. Thanks for the positives too "love the new design" (Kerrie-anne), "Map search is brilliant" (Peter -thanks for the detailed feedback - seriously appreciated) andrew |
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Scam Alert!Being web-smart is simple:NEVER EVER pay money or give ID details to anyone without meeting them first. Scammers can be girls or boys, have pretty photos. They... 1. Want you to send them money upfront. Don't. 2. Offer to send you money - but need your ID details; bank details, passport, DOB, current address. Don't. For more info see the Scammer Alert page. We cooperate with the AFP and ACCC and through them international agencies to prosecute scammers here and overseas. Please report potential scammers using the feedback form at the bottom of each page. |