About Lou_Sander

Lou_Sander · ‎10-07-2013

IMHO, Constant Contact doesn't care about their customers. Why else would they make it so hard for us to perform routine tasks?

Lou_Sander · ‎10-02-2013

I think the high level management is responsible for the abomination they have released on us. There is not a shred of concern for the customer in the design of this irrational, hard to use, time-consuming set of near-useless tools. There is little evidence of competent, let alone professional, software design in this piece of garbage. I have had two-year college students who could do better than this after a one-semester course in Microsoft Access. It is SO hard to switch companies, but things take so long to accomplish in this "system", and the export/import scheme is so bad, that it's looking more attractive to just find another provider and switch.

Lou_Sander · ‎10-01-2013

LuciaG0 wrote: <snip> I know that you are trying your best to fix all the problems, but it seems that I find new ones everyday - and it is impossible for you to catch up with all these issues. <snip> I do not at all agree that Constant Contact is "trying their best to fix all the problems". They don't even acknowledge that there ARE problems. To me, the underlying problem is that they released a VERY badly-designed system without sufficiently testing it. A further problem is that they can't or won't undo the damage they have done. They don't seem to care at all about the huge amount of unnecessary work that their customers have to do in A) learning the new system, and doing all the repetitive work it now takes to perform even simple tasks. And of course, they don't know, or don't acknowledge, that their new product is unfit for people to use.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-30-2013

I've figured out how to add contacts from a file. It's pretty clunky, but at least it can be done. Almost. My new contacts have business postal addresses, but no home or other postal addresses. The only option I have when adding from a file seems to be the various elements of the postal address (Line 1, City, State, ZIP). The "system" puts them all into the "Address - Other" fields. Not healthy. Not useful. How can I move these fields to their "business address" counterparts? (I don't have all day to work on doing it, you know.)

Lou_Sander · ‎09-28-2013

I just used the search box method to add 13 new contacts to a mailing list. This task formerly was trivially easy. With the new "system", it took me 22 minutes. I posted a detailed analysis in the Feedback part of the forum. If simple tasks are this time consuming to do, I don't see much future for the CTCT system. We just don't have the time to mess with you.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-28-2013

Good suggestion. Find the ones you want to change by using the search box. It sure beats using the impossible-to-work-with lists of contacts. The searching function is actually pretty cool in the new system, at least as far as it goes. You only seem to be able to search in the four fields that are displayed on the screen. Can't search address, for example. Or phone number. But if you know the person's name or email address, you have a decent chance of finding them, at least on a small list. It's hard to see how paying customers will tolerate this lack of important functionality. Compare searching in CTCT with searching in Excel. No contest. IMHO CTCT will only be able to recover from this unworkable Contacts system by making it possible for people to download their contacts, make changes and additions to the downloaded list, then upload them in a way that reliably identifies new/changed information, then updates it in your database. When I saw the new non-friendly system that's what I thought I'd do; but neither exporting or importing works with any reliability or functionality, so I'm stuck.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-27-2013

As near as I can tell, the sorting is alphanumeric. That means you need to number things 01, 02, 03, ... 09, 10, 11, etc.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-26-2013

That works well. Thanks. Now try it on ten contacts from a list that contains a couple hundred entries. Takes a long time, doesn't it? Is there some way to speed this up?

Lou_Sander · ‎09-24-2013

I just went through something like nine pages of Feedback, taking in all the information and "voting" for the ideas I thought were good ones. I noted the huge majority of negative comments on the new Contacts system (how can you miss it?). I found one comment that was unnecessarily negative, so I posted a helpful reply to it. When I was finished, this wonderful Feedback system returned me to the top of page 1. How long will it take me to get back to the place where I left the helpful comment? I'll never know, as I've decided not to bother. Good bye, Constant Contact.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-23-2013

IMHO, the reason they have made things so hard is that deep down inside they hate us. Or maybe their developers are just clueless.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-23-2013

I have had the same problem. More clueless design by Constant Contact, followed by sweet murmurings of "we love you and we listen to your feedback".

Lou_Sander · ‎09-23-2013

Good work, Eric. Based on a few things I've seen from you, you have a talent for explaining how the Constant Contact system works. The people in charge of the system are, IMHO, notably clueless in explaining it. We shouldn't have to come to this not-so-smoothly-working forum to find how to work the stuff we are paying for. Maybe you should apply for a transfer to whatever department is in charge of documenting your product's features. They need your talent. PS - Please replace your picture with one without the hoodie. It give a bad impression. PPS - How do we give you a kudo? (Like most CC things, it isn't intuitively obvious, and it doesn't seem to be explained anywhere.)

Lou_Sander · ‎09-22-2013

Constant Contact has runined their system. I have wasted SO much time from yesterday morning to early this evening, trying to understand it. At least I now have an informed view on how truly awful, how poorly designed, and how hateful to the customer it really is. There may have been some saboteurs or disgruntled employees involved in the programming and decision making for the new system. It is hard to imagine that well-motivated and competent people actually put this thing together. I wonder why they hate us so much.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-22-2013

The inability to change an email name after it is sent is an obvious shortcoming of your system. Any IT professional or experienced user should be able to see that. One wonders why you need customer feedback to be aware of it. One further wonders why, after so much input on this thread, the deficiency continues. As one of the previous comments said, "[Constant Contact] sure make the simplest things difficult."

Lou_Sander · ‎09-22-2013

I'd also like this feature, due to privacy concerns. I am uncomfortable with having my complete email history available to any whacko at Constant Contact who thinks she would like to do me harm. On the other hand, Constant Contact has deep pockets, and if anybody is harmed by the actions of one of your rogue employees, they could go after you for a financial recovery. I'd never do it myself, of course, but some sort of whacko customer might be tempted. Keeping complete historical files has lots of downside for everyone.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-21-2013

How wonderful it is that when we click "Back to Idea Exchange", we go back to the very first post on the very first page, even if we started from Page 34!. That cool feature is present in SO much of your new system. Does your development team have ANY idea of how 21st century software is supposed to work? I see almost no evidence of it anywhere in the new Contacts system. People need to lose their jobs over this. And it is NOT helpful for you guys to express your sorrow, and to tell us how closely you listen to us, and on and on and on. Please just give us working software that was put togehter by people who have an elementary understanding of user-friendliness. (This means there will be a LOT of new hiring in your development department).

Lou_Sander · ‎09-21-2013

"We are always trying to make the system better for our customers." You don't seem to know what you are doing. It is like a bunch of high school kids worked on "improving" something. Pathetic.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-21-2013

I am still trying to decide which one you are. 😞

Lou_Sander · ‎09-21-2013

Well, I tried twice to do this for some contacts on the second page of my two-page contact list. It didn't work either time. It's time to give up on your "new, improved, easier, way cool", POS contact management system. BTW, maybe it would be a good idea to let us edit these comments once we post them, as every other similar service does. After all, if in a fit of frustration, I call you "complete a-holes", I may think better of it and want to call you merely "incompetents".

Lou_Sander · ‎09-21-2013

file management = list management. Sorry. Oh, BTW, I posted the original comment directly from the contact list screen. There doesn't seem to be a way to edit it. If true, this is another example of inept design.

Lou_Sander · ‎09-21-2013

I'm looking at a 60-member contact list. As I go through it, quite a few members don't have a "company" associated with their names. It is incredibly labor-intensive to go through and correct these. Each one requires me to go through several screens, often scrolling through many entries before I find the right one. The contact list itself is incredibly badly designed. The whole thing is too narrow (no, professional people do NOT manage their databases from their phones or their tablets). I can't change the width of any of the four arbitrarily-chosen columns. (How bad is this... many of the contacts in this list have company names that take up four or five lines on the screen, making it all that much more tedious to scroll through them to find the one I want.) You need to find the manager in charge of designing this total POS and terminate him immediately. Before the end of the week, you need to find the dullards who designed your forms, and give them their two weeks notice. This is truly, truly, childish and incompetent file management work.

About Lou_Sander

Re: Hate new interface

Re: Reasonable question / reasonable answer

Re: Problem with the custom questions and more

Add Contacts from File - Huh???

Re: Status changed to: Vote for this idea if you a...

Re: Status changed to: Vote for this idea if you a...

Re: Email list order UNACCEPTABLE

Re: Status changed to: Vote for this idea if you a...

How stupid is THIS?...

Re: Dislike new contacts interface

Re: Problems with list and contact selection when ...

Re: Adding Multiple Users To Your Account

Re: I do not like the changes to contact managemen...

Re: Change Email Name

Re: Permanently remove (delete) an email

Re: I had many lists of contacts, and they were al...

Re: Frustrated with 'improved' features.

Re: More problems exporting, editing, and importin...

More problems exporting, editing, and importing

Re: Incredibly Stupid Design

Incredibly Stupid Design

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