bluemountain.com

I joined Bluemountain.com a couple of years ago, and it was a site that offered more than the usual in the way of ecards. They had a section where people could write poetry, and the winning entries into the poetry competitions were used for ecards. What I liked about this site was that you could always find a poem to suit every occasion, and just browse through so many poems with wonderful backgrounds, add music that you liked, and send them to people that mattered to you.

It was an extraordinary experience, and many of the poets that contributed to the site were extremely skilled in wordsmanship, and I admired this section of the site very much.

WHAT IS BLUE MOUNTAIN.COM

The site is primarily a site where you can send greetings in the way of e-cards and postcards. When you arrive on the site, you are greeted by different categories, i.e. Birthdays, Expressions, Encouragement, Support, in fact every variety of card that you could wish to send. The site offers one month free trial so that you can give the site a try and see if you want to become a paying member.

Unfortunately, here is where they made their big mistake because in the old days of the site, membership was free, and they offered more to the public than they do now.

In order to become a member, you have to fill out a form and give your credit card details. I believe that this is wrong, and that they are not in fact giving you that one month free. What they are offering you is a subscription and at the end of that month, your card will be debited.

HOW THE SITE COMPARES WITH OTHERS.

If you take a look at all the ecard sites on the net, then there are better ones than Bluemountain.com. They used to be the best. I saved them to favourites because of the wonderful choice of poetry that they had, and then one day, they got too big, too uncaring, and developed a site that offers limited cards compared with other sites, less choice than free sites, and asked for a fee.

I now use greetings.com as an alternative because Bluemountain forgot about the individuality of their site and opted to give customers less for their money. I have cancelled my account with them because I do not believe that what I pay for now is as good as the free service I enjoyed and which tempted me in the first place.

I do like the fact that you can personalise greetings. I like that you can add music to greetings and that some of them are animated, although it is disappointing to note that the quality of what they offer has diminished.

It will be interesting to see where ecards go from now on, and certainly as far as BlueMountain goes, they have had one subscription from me and will not get another.

LAYOUT AND DESIGN

The layout of the site is a little higgledy piggledy and it takes a little while to find what you are looking for. When you do find it, you are reminded that you cannot send greetings before becoming a member.

CONTENT OF THE SITE

There are a fair proportion of good messages that you can send, but this site was outstanding in the past, and now comes under the description of mundane compared with other sites.

COST £19 for a years membership which I feel is excessive considering that what they offer you is not as good as the service they offered when they were a free site.

SEARCHING THE SITE

I have no complaints about searching the site, but after my initial shock at losing the poetry section, I have not really found a great deal of use for the site.

OVERALL IMPRESSION

I am disappointed with the site, in that people are not offered a no obligation one month free trial. The moment you give your credit card details, you are obliged to pay, and the only way out of it is to send endless emails to the site. I wrote and told them how disappointed I was with the site in general and it took about three weeks for me to get a reply. When I did, it had not cancelled my membership, but expressed that they were disappointed that I had decided to cancel and asked if I could be pursuaded to stay with the site.

The problem here is that time is of the essence when you have given your credit card details, and in the time it took to reply, your money is paid for membership and instead of a refund, they just tell you that your account is valid up until such and such a date.

I shall seek out another site which offers what Bluemountain used to offer. It is a shame when websites get so big that they forget their own uniqueness and sink into oblivion with sites of a mediocre level.

Thumbs down, Bluemountain.

A disatisfied customer.