Update: Echospin

 I posted about my frustrating experience with Echospin a couple of months ago when trying to download some music I had purchased (Echospin: The WORST Download Experience I’ve Had To Date). I thought I’d follow up on what happened as a result of that post.

Earlier last month, I was contacted by Damian Manning, one of the founders of the company and the current CEO. It’s always nice to hear from an executive when you have a bad experience. Makes you feel like they really care what’s going on with their company and aren’t afraid to jump into the trenches and spend some time creating goodwill with frustrated customers.

The power of this action shouldn’t be discounted. You might remember my frustrating experience with Toktumi that has since turned me into a loyal customer (I have 4 lines of service with them now). Can you imagine if other CEO’s followed suit? How would a personal email from Michael Dell help your perception of Dell as a company, for instance?

Here’s what Damian had to say:

Hi Ryan, apologies for the ambush. I stumbled upon your blog post about your difficulties with the Sugarland download, and felt compelled to reach out.

Firstly, I’m very sorry that you had so much trouble redeeming the Sugarland album. While I am sure it is of little consolation, your experience is very atypical. Echospin services thousands of transactions and upwards of hundreds of thousands of downloads each day for major label artists. That Tuesday in question, we successfully delivered nearly 2,000 Sugarland albums. Regretfully, yours clearly was not among this group.

 

Echospin does indeed employ a global CDN – Amazon in fact. While I’m uncertain what the exact issue was that led to your timeouts, it wasn’t an issue reported elsewhere and very well could have been peering or last mile related. Did you reach out to our support team? We don’t have any record of an inquiry from this email address or re: your order number.

Contrary to what you have concluded, Echospin is not some bloated corporate/VC-sponsored/label-owned organization. We are a bootstrapped, self-funded startup out of New York that has been hammering away at this for close to 8 years. We battled the odds and built this business with blood, sweat and tears, brick by brick with our bare hands. Echospin is our baby, and because of that, our customer perception and satisfaction is by far our topmost priority. I can’t take away your frustrating experience, but I do hope that you will consider giving Echospin another chance if presented the opportunity.

Best,

Damian

While an offer to try the service out again or coupon code would have been nice, not every company takes that liberty or sees value in that. Regardless, I appreciate Damian reaching out to me and apologizing for my frustrating experience without attempting to turn it into my fault.

I don’t know when the opportunity to use Echospin will arise again, but I’ll definitely give them a try. If for no other reason than they have a CEO that takes the time to reach out to customers. That’s worth a second chance in my book.