Outback Ozzy / cashman / ukcowboy / Kiwi John / yonmon / Wynonie Harris - thank you for the welcome; it's much appreciated!
I will post as often as possible over the next few weeks as the club (hopefully) gets back on it's feet. I (unfortunately!) tend to have to work 60/70 hours per week and have a young family so my post times will probably be either very early or very late. I'm sure there are plenty more "twists and turns" to come but hopefully (and following on from the interventions from Ilyas and Peter) we can start to move in the right direction.
Stanleymad - thank you for moving my original post into this one (I should have done this in the first place - apologies).
To continue the theme of this thread I simply can't believe how poor the customer service has been from the club for very basic things like selling shirts. Add this to the Google Page Ranking gaffs of recent times and it does give me real hope that when we have a change at the top (i.e. Mr O'Neill leaves) that whoever replaces him will have full scope to improve the club as a business and a commercial entity. The club is never going to make huge amounts of profit (probably none at all) but as others have said before, ran prudently and transparently, there would be real hope for the future.
I wish I had the money to take charge of the club (and play a part in running it) myself. My background is in developing and working with small and medium businesses and in doing so making sure great customer service is achieved (globally). Our ASFC brand has been somewhat tarnished over recent events but it is still great and IMHO has not been used to it's full potential (not necessarily in the UK - but globally). Getting the basics right first is obviously fundamental (replying promptly to all emails, shipping orders quickly, ensuring the website is kept up to date etc would be a start!) but once you are in a cycle of doing this (and getting good press and feedback from the general public for doing so) then it is time to look further afield and be more innovative and creative with your ideas.
Anyway, I don't want to get to far ahead of myself - let's get this week out of the way and then focus on applying the necessary pressure for the badly needed regime change (I know this is much easier said than done). But as I say above, with transparency, we can look to a brighter future. Even if the "books" revealed more debts that even the court isn't aware of, I would still see this as a positive outcome as at least then it would be in the public domain so we would all then be in a clear position to help. If the accounts were then to indefinitely stay in the public domain that would be fantastic. If we could get to this stage then you will not be able to shut me up with my ideas over how we could progress Stanley as a business to generate as much cash as possible to keep us solvent.
deeayess / teach - your poor commercial experiences of the club are all the more incredulous as they have happened whilst the hierarchy at the club have known we are in massive debt. Great customer service costs nothing and to not reply to emails about potential season ticket sales is absolute madness and makes me really angry given the situation we are now in. How many more people out there have received no replies to ticketing or mechandise queries? Reading the experiences on this thread and on others I bet it is a fair few.
