I’ve known I’ve wanted to teach for over 20 years, ever since the beginning of my undergrad days. While I used to think of teaching as my “fall back” job, I know now that teaching is something that I must do to be happy. When I teach, one of my core beliefs is that tech is not scary and anyone can learn it, which is why when I see first hand techies taking advantage of non-techies I get really pissed.
Yesterday I was teaching a second day at the Venture Program at BCIT. I was talking about Web 2.0 and showing the class how to set up their domains that they bought last week (if they didn’t have them) to use Gmail for Domains. This is a pretty simple process. Yes, you have to learn how to add MX records and maybe add a CNAME, but that isn’t rocket science. While helping my students through the process I got a refresher course in how terrible many host and registrar control panels are. I had a terribly unfun time trying to maneuver through all these panels and I know what I’m looking for! What really, really pissed me off those is when one of my students needed to email their host (because her domain, a .ca btw, uses their DNS) to add the Google testing CNAME for Google Apps and the needed MX records. This is a simple request. It takes about 1-2 minutes (or less) to make all these changes. She emailed the host, and had copied and pasted the instructions from Google (my suggestion so it would be 100% clear) into her email to them. They responded (quickly I must add) and said sure, that will be $15. What!?! You’ve got to be kidding me.
Since I was there when she got the response I told her to push back. That’s honestly highway robbery. She pushed back and got this response:
Hi,
Sorry there’s no way hat you can modify it, it needs to be manually modified in the backend as it’s a .ca domain.
So you’re always still looking at $15 setup charge, do let us know if you’d like us to got ahead.
Excuse me, but talk about hooey. A domain is a domain. If it’s in your DNS, you can manage it just the same regardless of TLD (the ending part). That’s the way the system works! I replied to my student that it was bullshit and the result: she emailed me this morning that she’s switched away from the host.
Here’s the lesson. Techies, we’re lucky. We get this stuff or have spent long hours learning it (and usually a combination of both). We know that lots of people don’t understand tech and really they shouldn’t have to. I don’t know how to fix cars, so I take it to people who do. Yes, it’s fair to charge money for tasks, but it’s not fair to (over)charge people to do simple things they could do themselves if you gave them the tools. If you do have to charge, don’t snow them with a story about why. A simple: “That will take us some time to do, so we have to charge for that work…” will suffice. I had to call upon Dreamhost tech support this week (If you follow this link to sign up with Dreamhost and/or use the coupon code TCHGRNHOSTING you get a discount on hosting, btw) for a semi-techie problem I created myself. They replied, fixed my mistake, and all was good. No service charge for deleting the dir I needed deleting. No song and dance. They just did it.
So really, just be cool. Share your knowledge. Be respectful. I bet you’ll learn something from that other person in the process (I learned about neural feedback yesterday from another student…very cool stuff).
