YIKES! Right Out of Left Field – Update Oct 24, 2020

This week we had a customer call to complain that the reading software was running slowly. It was slow to load and had gaps between the tasks.  Andrew checked it and found that the complaint was valid for slow internet connections. 

We had not run into that in our alpha testing. Our group of beta testers had had no issues either, but there were some concerns about internet lag. Who doesn’t complain that their internet is slow? Everyone wants it faster! But neither the Nesda team nor the Maloney Method team had encountered any slowness.

We hoped that this was a unique situation with some client who owned an old computer, had thin Internet bandwidth, a firewall or other barrier keeping the signal reduced to a trickle. 

We checked several other clients and soon realized that it was a more serious problem.  The issue was more widespread than we had hoped. But, the issue really came down to video size and video quality. And there’s a solution to that!

We had just sent out over 100,000 emails to homeschool and therapist prospects. The downloads of our Free 5 lesson TRY IT program would be upon us soon. We decided to send an email to those clients who had already downloaded the program indicating that we would be following up with them.

Today, I spent the day calling clients personally. Some had not started. Some had had problems. Two had stopped using the program because it was too slow, but they had not complained to give us a heads-up. 6 of the 10 clients that I reached had no problem. But 4 others reported problems. Most of the calls went to voicemail. I will call them back. So the problem was not universal, but a 40% failure rate is enough to get us worried… and looking for a new solution.

On each call, I am getting information on specific clients that might help Nesda find a solution.

In the meantime we have halted all further marketing, so as not to exacerbate the situation. We will follow up with every client who downloads the system as we look for a permanent solution. The New Orleans Charter School Project has been postponed again. This time because of a glitch, not a hurricane. 

In my career, in creating eight other software programs with Michael Summers, both before and after the formation of Nesda, I have never seen a problem like this.  But then again, our previous projects were not based on the internet or made for web browsers.

I am sure that we will find out what is happening and we will deal with it with integrity. Our teams are strong, resilient and smart. We will come out the other side. Our customers are very forgiving and have the faith in us that we have developed over several decades. That is a huge comfort to me.  This could get messy or it could get solved in no time. Hang in there.

Regards,

 Michael