I have been a user of AvantGo for several years, and until recently I was a paid user. Meaning I had paid ~$20.00 a year to extend the free subscription channel size of 2000K to 8000K.

For those of you that have not heard of AvantGo it is a web based service that allows you to subscribe to "channels" that it provides of web based content. This content is specially rendered to be easily readable on mobile devices like Palm hand held's, Windows Mobile devices and some cell phones. You download a special client onto your mobile device, select the channels you want from a list of many hundred, sync your device and Bob's your Uncle, there you go, content to go!

The custom browser they provide allows for on or off line use. So you can read content offline (my favorite time to use it was in the bathroom for those extended sit down appointments), or online if you have connectivity for your device.

At the time I first subscribed to AvantGo it was about the only game in town. RSS had not really hit the mainstream yet, and offline content browsers were in their infancy. But now with RSS readers available for just about every device made, and with content now available via RSS for everything under the sun, AvantGo is decidedly not the only game in town anymore.

And it is showing it's age. 3 of 4 sync attempts lately ended with errors requiring me to re-sync and sometimes re-enter my credentials. And they removed the ability for Windows Mobile devices using ActiveSync from syncing automatically.

Their lame reason was that ActiveSync syncs almost non-stop, (it does), and the devices were swamping their bandwidth. So rather than figure out a way to have the client software account for this behavior they decided to make all Windows Mobile users manually sync.

This time around when it came time to renew I elected not to. I let my membership revert back to the standard 2000K channel limitation. Interestingly enough the email I received from them informing me my subscription was about to expire required me to visit their web page and make the choice there. Otherwise I would not be able to sync with the service.

I thought hey, this is a great way for them to collect feedback from users that are either renewing their subscription or not! But instead all I could do was select renew, or push a button that said I was acknowledging that I was no longer a "Power User".

So rather than even attempt to ask why I had not elected to renew they just let me not renew. Fairly short sighted customer retention policy if you ask me. It would have been nice to have at least had the option to explain why I was not renewing and if I had any suggestions for improvement etc.

I did take the extra step of going to their Contact Us page on their web site. That is pretty much useless as well. I saw no contact option for customer service or feedback. Just a fairly terse couple of sales contacts and support contact options.

Ah well, if that's how they take care of their customer base then they deserve to die a slow death of attrition.

Cheers,

Robert Porter