Hi All,

I try not to post anything which smacks of self-pity or whining, but I’ve had a few emails in the last few months which have been really rudely worded and I’d like to ask people to please have a little consideration.

There is a perception that websites are out to rip you off, steal your money, not give you what you paid for. I have never met a webmaster who has that attitude to their customers. We’re all very grateful and appreciative that you like our work enough to be willing to pay for it. That’s sounds corny but it is absolutely true.

The last thing on any of our minds is getting you to pay money and then not deliver what was promised.

There’s also a perception that we are all fat cats, raking in millions and sitting in our mansion houses cackling away spending your money on champagne and caviar. The truth is that apart from one or two big players, niche websites barely make enough to get by.

Most started out as we did- run by enthusiasts who open a website to try to help fund more shoots and allow them to buy a bit more photo or bondage gear to make the next shoot a little bigger, a little better. And most still are run that way. We’re unusual in being big enough that Restrained Elegance has one person full time (Hywel) and one person half time (Ariel); many websites are still run by their creators in their spare time. We have a couple of other people to call on for specific tasks from time to time, like my friend Ian who helps with the web programming and our web hosts who make sure the site hardware runs.

But even we are spread pretty thin. We have to:
1) Be photographers.
2) Be a video camera person.
3) Be script writers.
4) Be cinematographers and photographic lighting technicians.
5) Be photoshoppers.
6) Be video editors.
7) Write website code.
8) Do technical support for the website if something isn’t working.
9) Answer all customer emails.
10) Arrange shoots.
11) Book models.
12) Organise locations.
13) Produce shoots- source the props, costumes, etc.
14) Be safe bondage riggers.
15) Manage terabytes of data generated by shoots, as our own sys admins.
16) Try to figure out what’s the problem if your computer settings aren’t letting you do something.
17) Make sure the site is updated without fail (we have never missed an update).
18) Schedule the archives.
19) Publicise the sites.
20) Compile user requests for shoot plans.
21) Keep abreast of technical developments for the future.
22) Post on the forum and try to stimulate a community.
23) Do the accounts to keep the accountant and tax man happy.
24) Run everything as a responsible business, with good business practices.
25) Be responsible for the health and safety of all on set, risk assessments etc.
26) Do the data entry to add updates to the site.
27) Do the data entry to add old sets to the shopping cart.
28) Do the data entry to add sets to Clips4Sale.
29) Make sure all insurance and other legal requirements are up to date.
30) Improve our skills to keep improving the quality of the website.
31) Make sure the website works in as many browser/phone/operating system/computer combos as possible.
32) Write all the stories for the updates, 5 a week.
33) Maintain the FAQ
34) Keep improving security and scripts so we don’t get shut down by password swappers.
35) Try to get theft from torrents/site rip sites taken down to prevent people stealing our stuff.
36) Answer all emails (this is worth saying twice- we get a LOT of emails).
37) Maintain stuff like blogs, forum software, apply patches and updates etc.
38) Blog.
39) Tweet.
40) Make the occasional spectacular Elegance Studios film.
41) Make sure new versions of browsers haven’t broken anything with HTML/PHP/CSS since last time we looked.
42) Do link exchanges.
43) Organise banner swaps and guest galleries.
44) Figure out new features and implement them.
45) Fix anything that breaks.
46) Go food shopping and cook so people at shoots can eat. Wash up and tidy up afterwards.
47) Redecorate the house so rooms don’t get too visually stale for shooting.
48) Figure out the budget so we can pay for everything out of the money you kindly pay us.
49) Try to make the site interesting and compelling.
50) Monitor the site uptime, and do something if it goes down (auto monitoring and tech support help, of course, but the bottom line is that it is our business and we need to fix it).

And that’s just a sampling of the jobs. It requires a fair bit of work, and I think most people understand that it is just us who are around to do it.

With all that to keep track of, mistakes do happen. A new version of a browser can mess up the downloads, or there might be a typo in a filename which the auto systems didn’t catch because the filename is for a different set- the system is clever enough to spot a typo, but not a brain fade of exchanging two things in a list of a hundred.

A polite email saying you have experienced a problem would be appreciated. Give us chance to rectify the mistake. I will do so as soon as the job allows; if I’m at a shoot in Spain with no internet access, it might take me a while. (I’ll still try to get at least a “sorry, I’ll get to it as soon as I can” email out if possible). Accusing me of being a cheat, a liar, a thief, a fraudster, threatening to call the cops or the FBI or customs or interpol (I’ve actually had that) because there’s a mistake in the data entry for one of over three thousand photo sets is frankly hurtful and unnecessarily upsetting.

I hope you wouldn’t do that if someone in a very busy cafe accidentally brought you the wrong sort of coffee. I hope you’d probably politely complain and ask for it to be changed. There wouldn’t be any screaming abuse. It should be just the same if a website has made a mistake, because the chances are it’s a simple mistake made by people doing too many jobs at once with not enough people to do it.

It isn’t OK to be rude and abusive to people on the internet just because they aren’t standing in front of you. Thank you very much to everyone who appreciates that and sends us a nice email to let us know there’s a problem.

By all means, get angry if I fail to rectify the problem in a prompt and responsible manner. Out of respect for the person on the other end of that abusive email, please consider a polite request first and give me the chance to make good.

We do our best. We have thousands of customers, and only a few problems crop up each month. Most of them I can fix fairly quickly, or investigate with the customer and tech support at the webhosts and anyone else who I think might be able to help (e.g. their ISP). If I don’t think I can remedy the problem promptly I’ll always offer a full refund, same as any company with a decent customer service ethos would do. Each time I try to improve the systems to reduce the chance of it happening again, but some things (e.g. data entry) are inherently prone to the occasional slip which no auto checking system can always catch.

We’ve been online for over 12 years, and we’re still here because we do our best. Please give us the benefit of the doubt and at least allow us to attempt to fix problems before emailing abuse. Thank you.

Cheers, Hywel.