Dear Valued Customer

Rarely do I get a letter from a company that starts that way and ends well, but this one did. I have used the freebie from SiteMeter since I started blogging 5 years ago, and so do most of the bloggers I visit, because yesterday I was frantically looking at them. SiteMeter had "upgraded" and I'd lost every reason I'd used them, including my total count, which I figured was about 245,500. What was available to me was totally worthless, so I fired off an e-mail of complaint. Apparently several thousand others must have too.

Dear Valued SiteMeter Customers,

As you’re no doubt aware by now, we’ve chosen to roll back our website to the previous “classic” version.

Based on some performance issues we were experiencing along with feedback from the community it appears we have pushed our new site live prematurely."

Ya think? Today, my old version with the features I like was back, but if I'd had more time to pursue it yesterday, I would have already replaced the code and would never have known I'd been switched back.

There's a very basic marketing principal in business and in relationships. You can't give away something and then later change your plan and expect people to value your product and pay for money what used to be given away.