Next of Search

Update: Hoover’s DB gave me a full refund.

Update: Customer support at Hoover’s DB contacted me and promised a full refund for this matter.

We are sorry that you were unhappy with the report you purchased from Hoover’s Inc. While we strive to maintain up to date and complete records, we occasionally find a company with fewer data points than others. Please know that I will be sending this for a full refund to our accounting office. Once they notify me, I will let you know via email. If any questions, please let me know.

Original post as below.

///////////////////////////////////

Just don’t buy anything from Hoover’s DB.

I needed to know about IDEO’s financial information and found Hoover’s website and they provide paid financial report service. So I paid US$29 for it. After downloading the report, I found out it has all the necessary chapters and titles for the general financial report that we expect, but not *the data*. All the fields are blanks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. But it is true and see it for yourself.

Duh?

There is no new information on this page. I will explain why. Those revenues (2003~2005) are already on their web page. You can find it here. So you can easily calculate - if you really want to call this *calculate*-, the 1-year-sales-growth 18.8% by (82-69)/69.

I thought those blanks are filled in the paid report, since Hoover’s DB says the following:

The IDEO financial reports offered by Hoover’s provide more detail about IDEO’s financial performance than most information services. Financial reports are supplemented by business information that includes company executives, competitors, and operational insight into a potential customer, investment or competitor. Get access to business information for over 19 million companies, including research similar to IDEO financial reports.

Where is *more detail* about IDEO’s financial performance?

“than most information services”? << What does this mean?

Am I blind?

Agian, all the fields are blanks.

Here we go again.

The last page in the report, that I can’t reveal here, has two new numbers which I couldn’t find in 2 web pages for IDEO on Hoover’s DB. They are numbers of employee for 2003 and 2004. (the number for 2005 is on the main IDEO page, here) These two numbers may be worth US$29 for someone, but not for me and I don’t think it is for most of you.

So I decided to respond to their pretty-much-blank service.

Here’s the email that I sent to Hoover’s DB claiming a full refund.

I just downloaded the Hoover’s financial report on IDEO and found out that it has no financial information at all. All the field are just blanks.

 

I can’t understand how you charge me US$29 for this garbage? What is any new information provided on this paid report other than your web page for IDEO?

 

Unless you give me a full refund, I will write a blog about this to make other people realize the value of your report.

 

I hope this is just a mistake , where your quality assurance failed.

 

Please fix this to make your customer happy.

Buying digital contents should not be a gamble. Please someone at Hoover’s DB tells me what the value you provide for your custsomer and what I paid for.

People often tells me that my ideas are too idealistic and I told them that they are worth a try. Sometimes I get to feel quilty without obvious reason.

In the recent post of Scobleizer,

Something about the sunset got me to pull off of Sand Hill Road and think about the entrepreneurs that have passed by this tree. The Hewletts. The Packards. The Jobs. The Wozniaks. The Ellisons. The Gates’. And hundreds of thousands of others. It’s the tree at the top of Sand Hill Road overloading FWY 280 and Sand Hill Road. Off in the distance is the Stanford Linear Accelerator, the longest straight building in the world and home of the first Web site in the United States.

Sand Hill Road is where entrepreneurs come and pitch VCs in fancy offices and try to talk them out of funding. It’s a place for idealists. For dreamers.

Now I don’t feel quilty any more because I get to know, there are more people like me out there.

I can happily say, I am an Entrepreneur. I am an Innovator.

Update : My team got new name, DES group (Digital Experience Service group) and I changed the category, User Experience to Customer Experience in order to change perspectives.

I added two new categories to my blogs. They are User Experience (UX) and Bookshelf.

User Experience: I added this category since I joined D’strict and will lead UX Consulting group there. D’strict is a professional service firm speciallized in creating digital experience, in the field of Digital Display. I will write about how I define ‘user experience’ and ‘innovation through user experience’ concept.

Bookshelf: I will show my bookshelf and talk about books I read.

Stay tuned!!