Here is a quick update about the launch.

My new hawaii real estate search is up and seems to be working well. Most of the feed back has been great. The search is much faster than the old site. Users can do more detailed advanced searches. They can sign up to get email alerts of their saved searches and even choose the frequency of the alerts (daily, Weekly of Never). Plus they can save multiple searches and could not on the old site. They even can manage there account in their profile area.

Here are some features that are not yet live that will be coming soon:

Save favorites
Interactive Map
Map it function.
Much more!!

We would love to here more feed back so we can keep improving the user experience.

Here are top 5 reasons why:

1. Cybersunshine was not completely honest with us on several occasions.

2. Their customer service was horrible – Response time to problems was very slow and Cybersunshine very often would tell us there was not a problem when there was.

3. They deleted our property data with no back up and the site had no property search or properties to view for a week.

4. I requested 3 times by email and left several messages on the owners voice mail that I needed my user data from my data base and they didn’t get back to me for 10 days.

5. Paid for VIP search they never integrated on change Request #10173 plus paid extra for rushes they never delivered on.

Here is the main reason and the final straw:

Back at the beginning of 2006 Cybersunshine convinced me that I needed to upgrade to the VOW / Hi-Central MLS RETS solution because it would make my site more stable and reliable because they were having problems with the IDX files (other vendors were not). They also said it has more data than the IDX data which the Honolulu Board of Realtors confirmed. So I agreed, paid $1398 and signed change request form #10173. By doing this I also incurred a cost of 75 a month by the Honolulu Board of Realtors for this feed.

The second week of August the search on my site stopped working and there were no property results for the Honolulu Board of Realtors. I contacted Cybersunshine to let them know. They informed me that the boards server was not responding. I contacted the board and they informed me that their server was having problems and they were going to have to change servers. It was up and working later that day. I informed Cybersunshine that it was working and they said it was still not responding. This went on for a week with no data on my site because Cybersunshine did not have a back up of the data and deleted it. I was basically out of business for a week because Cybersunshine deleted the property data and had no back ups. This is not a good thing when you have over 10,000 users on the site trying to search for properties. I wonder how many went over to a competitor’s site?

The Honolulu Board of Realtors informed me that Cybersunshine was requesting the IDX passwords because they were not using the RETS server.

Cybersunshine quickly responded that they were using both to cover themselves. They stated that the IDX had information that the RETS did not which is just the opposite and the board confirmed that.

I also got a message from a friend and a good source confirming that Cybersunshine never implemented RETS and the owner knew for almost 3 years

Note: I do have emails, correspondences and documentation to support all of what is posted here. Feel free to contact me about anything in this post at 808-792-7040. I also want to let you know that my 1st year with them was not that bad, but their services declined quickly after that.

I would love to hear how you would handle this and what actions you would pursue if any.

This was my experience with Cybersunshine and others may have had a great experience. So it is very important to ask for references if you are considering any company that is going to have control of your businesses website.