Re: [cobalt-users] POP3/IMAP Mailboxes

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just replied to David Harris about this, but here's a summary:

At 10:19 PM 1/15/00  Julian Carter wrote:

> If anyone can tell me why they would not let customers access these
> functions, let me know.. I have had assurances from Cobalt that there is no
> real concern ! Or is There something people arn't telling me ?

1. It doesn't fit our business model.  We can't offer unlimited forwards 
(as most of our competitors do) without offering unlimited mailboxes).

2. Some customers will be able to get <firstname@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; others 
won't, and will have to alias.  We really don't want that level of customer 
support.

3. At any given time we want to know who's using what mailbox on our system.

4. We want to avoid this scenario:

  Customer:  my site no longer works.

  Tech Support: did you use our RaQ GUI interface to change things.

  Customer:  Yes, but I followed instructions.

  Tech Support:  Well, after looking through your site, I can tell
  you that you caused the problem.  So we'll go in and fix it for
  you, but it'll cost you $20.

  Customer:  Forget it; I'll just go to yourcompetitor.com, they
  don't charge for a new setup and they'll give me a first month
  free.

  (of course at this point you can offer to fix it at no charge; at
  that point you've gained a customer who knows he can bargain
  away any legitimate charge because you want to keep him
  so bad.

This is my opinion only, and in fact, if the RaQ interface was set up so 
that we could control the system mailbox names, and everyone just got 
aliases, I'd probably be willing to live with the rest of the problems.

Your mileage may vary.

Jeff

--
Jeff Lasman, nobaloney.net
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