The owner of the site I've been working on for the past quarter while we've decided on features, look and so on reached a point where the former hosting company was no longer able to meet our needs.

And this before we even went live with it!

We checked around and, while I can't remember exactly why, right now I send an inquiry to the hosting site in the middle of the night for Europe and within a quarter hour got a detailed and honest repsonse without even trying to sell me on the host as the solution.

In this day and age of constant marketing and poor to foul customer relationships on the strength of this response I recommended to the site owner that she investigate this as the solution based on the one highly professional interaction I had.

To make a long story short we have even though it was out of our original price range for the simple reason that we were treated professionally, our questions and issued were promptly and openly dealt with. Often within minutes. If the answer wasn't there we were advised and the answer communicated the moment the rep had it, well before the guesstimated ETR.

In short, we were made to feel as if our little start up was the most important and valuable client they had, even though we hadn't signed up yet.

We are confident that we have made the right decision and confident that the price difference will be returned over time with fewer site failures, professional and respectful interactions and, most of all, honesty.

As someone who has spent my working life in the installation and support of customers for high end telecom and often prevented from "officially" being that respectful and honest I've found that the best way to get and retain customers is to avoid corporate speak and just be direct, honest and respectful.

In a word, we're amazed.

In return, other than our money, you can be assured that you now have two people who don't normally do this sort of thing providing you with that rarest, least expensive and most valuable sales channel known as word-of-mouth.

We look forward to a long association with you as we build out site for artists of rural and small town Vancouver Island, Gulf Islands and Central Coast of British Columbia and the San Juan Islands and Port Angeles areas of Washington State in the U.S.

Thank you.

John Wilson