Recently one of my largest clients had a major website emergency. Out of nowhere, they were unable to accept credit card payments properly on their website, and the complaints were starting to mount. We deal with issues like this all the time, but this time was a bit tricky. The issue was that their plugin they used to accept these credit card payments was very out of date. Not only that, but the developer stopped supporting it, and we had no way of getting access to the newest version.
Knowing that the newest version would likely solve all the problems, we did what we had to do to find the newest version. We searched the web far-and-wide, looking for perhaps a third-party who could help us out. After extensive searching, we still hadn’t had any luck.
Then, I had an idea! As a last-ditch effort, I decided to look for reviews of this particular plugin online, hoping that we could maybe track down another user of this plugin, who hopefully has the most recent version. The reviews were out there, and we began contacting people one-by-one to see if anyone could help out.
Sadly, nobody was responding. The websites of many of the reviewers were no longer online, and we kept running into dead ends.
And then finally… A response! The owner of a web development company near Phoenix, Arizona actually gave me a call directly and asked how he could help. He hadn’t really used the plugin in a while, but after explaining the situation to him, he offered to take a look around and see if he had the newest version.
Then it was time to wait. About ten minutes went by, and then… Success! He emailed me back with the exact files we needed. I quickly uploaded them to the client’s website, and everything started working again. Crisis averted!
It’s just one of those times where you see the good in the community and it just makes you happy to be a part of it. We’re competitors in one sense, but in another sense we’re all working together, and I was very grateful for the attention he paid to me, knowing he didn’t expect anything in return.
Thanks, Clifford!
