Quote:
Originally Posted by hcoles
Turns out it costs more to have better response to issues. Lower cost = slower response, faster response = faster response. The site owners decide where to spend for the best return. Lately it looks like the parts sales UI has been and is changing. That's where they make money.
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I'm glad you made the point that these forums are still a small part of the big picture. The parts catalog in ginormous and took Wayne more than a decade to get it as good as it is (was? IDK, I don't have need to buy parts). And at that, the site takes a lot of attention. — all aspects of it.
They do have internal IT to update the parts side. If not on site anymore, then at corporate, which as we know is ECS. ECS may not see the value of the forums as they built their business up from a VW service facility to an Internet parts retailer from 1962. And to my knowledge, never supported a forum. So, with the purchase of PP, they got forums, something new to them.
Again, to the best of my knowledge. many of Pelican's employees at the time of purchase remain employed there. So they get it. But they are not Wayne whose lifestyle was that he worked practically all night every night, so he was constantly aware of the condition of the overall site.
You have to consider that if the
catalog went down for 2 days, that would amount to 10's of thous$and$ in sales and frustration sending customers elsewhere. You can bet your last dollar that would not have been the case under Wayne's watch.
So, the question that has come up time and time again, is do the new owners care? And at that, do they care about the OT and PARF in particular? I have a partial answer for you: OT and PARF are the elephants in the room AFA ECS is concerned. They are afraid of backlash if they shut it down.
This is real as demonstrated by this thread alone. The members here are the ones that want OT and PARF badly enough to talk about 'recovery'. And that doesn't begin to address the archives that contain vast amounts of information by the likes of the Grady Clay's and Early_S_Man's contribution as well as thousands of other very capable authors of information.
ECS must realize the value in maintaining those archives as well as the active car forums. OT and PARF are mere appendixes. At least we hope.
BTW, I wrote to the local Pelican management early last week and have yet to have heard a word. I just figure that is the same attention factor that I get from the local politicians in that I have never given any one dime of support. My PP purchases are pretty much in the same plane. So it may be that if you're not a paying customer, STFU.