Creative Compulsion

I’m wondering if tonight may mark the beginning of the end for Wagglepop (or WP2 as it’s been coined by some). I commented several months ago about my feelings regarding the site and things have only gotten worse since then. To recap some of the things that have happened (or not happened) up to this point:

1. InventoryDirect: What a flippin joke! Touted as a “powerful” tool by Karen of Wagglepop’s Customer Service, this great invention was nothing more than an Excel Spreadsheet. An unusable spreadsheet for most that have attempted to use it.
2. The Wagglepop Grand Opening Debacle: Again, whaaaat??? Karen said that staff estimated that traffic would triple. Sellers and buyers would be pouring in. She said “Fasten your seatbelts”. The only reason the poor sellers there needed a seatbelt was to prevent them from hitting the windshield when the Wagglepop Traffic Train came to a deadstop almost overnight. Rather than tripling, or even doubling, traffic, WP has been almost non-existent per the Alexa charts. Way to go, Karen and Ray!
3. Downtime: Recently, some significant downtime has been noted. People attempting to access the site were greeted with database errors. Karen suggested that it was Hop Interference. She even deleted a post that mentioned the database errors. Why? The SQL database crashed and there is NO engineering team on call to fix it. We wouldn’t want the Poppers to find out that WP “staff” consists of only one person now would we? At no time does Wagglepop ever take responsibility for problems. It’s always the user’s fault, their ISP’s fault, the user’s router’s fault. Never WP - ummm, yeah right.
4. Board Censorship: This has always been an issue but in recent weeks has become ridiculous. Honest questions and constructive criticism are obviously not allowed at WP. Cross that line and risk your account being suspended. Oh, and if they don’t like you, here is the kind of email you can expect to receive from WP staff:
   

   XXXXX,

   It’s not your specific post we find rude, it’s you.

   You’ll find I am quite a bit less tolerant than Karen as we move forward and
   any further emails on this issue will mark the start of a complete account
   review.

   Andrew P.
   WP Customer Care

   Great way to treat YOUR paying customers!

Tonight has been interesting over in Poopland as many of us (infiltrating, naysaying, morally bankrupt) miscreants have termed it.

Long standing members that at one time were huge WP cheerleaders are being terminated and banned for speaking out against the almighty Ray. Posts have been deleted right and left. Whole boards on the forums are being deleted. As BBH at Tulip Tools pointed out on the WP thread, this looks very similar to the beginning of the end of WP1.

So, grab some popcorn and a cold beverage. The next couple of days could prove to be very interesting over at Waggleflop.