trust and the internet business relationship

Dear client, prospect, vendor, partner, team-member, or casual web surfer:

At CDLLC, we constantly strive to keep everyone in the family satisfied, and in the process, each client places a lot of trust in CDLLC, for which we are very grateful.

We also understand that it can be quite nerve-wracking to be that new client, putting your trust in us to take care of you and your business. And we appreciate the pain of the adjustment process you (new customer) have been brave enough to undertake.

During this adjustment, communications struggles and trust issues inevitably pop up. "Did I get short-changed?" "Have I received what what I paid for?" This is perfectly understandable, as the same thing occurs with any new partnership involving the purchase of extremely complex systems, where there is conceivably lots of room for "smoke-and-mirrors" type price gouging.

This 'internet anxiety,' can reach a point where a you (new client) might even begin to doubt the honesty and ethics of CDLLC. We COMPLETELY understand this, and have in fact been in the same position ourselves, with our first vendors way back when the commercial internet took off about a decade ago.

Why is this so anxiety provoking?

Well, one explanation is because the INTERNET, e-commerce, e-transactions, this whole hyper-speed information revolution: it's a new frontier: WEIRD NEW STUFF!

In the words of a wise associate, "it's still the wild west out there."

Even the powerhouses of cyberspace stumble at times with the loosey-goosey, constantly hyper-speed-evolving nature of business on the internet.

Below is listed a handful of examples, for the purpose of hopefully reassuring you (precious new customer), that we play by the same rules as the Microsofts, Amazons, and Yahoos of the internet...

1. http://valleywag.com/5037267/netflix-crash-caused-by-botched-oracle-upgrade: systems crash, and rollback procedures are not always simple. Ask NetFlix.
2. http://www.out-law.com/page-4049: things expire, the show-no-weakness corporation gets a little egg on the face (oops! Microsoft lost their domain name ownership)
3. http://news.cnet.com/Good-Samaritan-squashes-Hotmail-lapse/2100-1023_3-234907.html: oops take 2, Microsoft lost their domain ownership again
4. http://www.sslshopper.com/article-ssl-certificate-renewal-even-google-forgets.html:
   oops take 3, Google's secure certificate expired!

The take-away from this mini-dissertation is as follows:

Business will always be business: people trading with people. The medium through which transactions occur may change (pony express, telegraph, telephone, email, web forms, instant e-stock trades), and this is always unfamiliar and intimidating.

However, these new transaction media all have one thing in common: they are engineered, created, and used by people. And with these people, the same rules of business still apply.

At the end of the day, it's all about the age-old mutually-beneficial trust relationships between two parties- perhaps corporate entities. Let us not forget: those big corporations are owned by people, too, just like you and me.

A special thank you to all of our clients who entrust us to protect their business in the wild west of the internet.