I was taking a self-paced course. It was good. Not amazing but solid.
There were errors. Significant errors, not typo-type errors. Errors that were changing the quality of my learning from the course.
I let the creator know there were a few problems.
They were angry and defensive and called my character into question … and only fixed one of the errors.
I will readily acknowledge that putting together a course of that size is enormously time-consuming. For anyone who has never tried to do it, the time input is orders of magnitude larger than what you see.
And that’s even in a self-paced, nothing-to-monitor course made up of minimally-edited selfie videos and a couple of handouts. It takes time.
As I continued through the course, I found more errors, including one video posted twice with another missing.
I didn’t contact them.
(I wasn’t invested in the video that was missing, or I would have probably taken a deep breath and given it a shot.)
Two takeaways:
How you respond to your people matters. When someone has given you trust (with or without money), how you manage the relationship matters. In this case, they offer a lot of other products and services, but I’m inclined to find information elsewhere after this experience. If I were to give a referral, it would be with a giant heads-up on it.
People who are invested in you will help you do better. Most of the time, someone with investment in you or your product is going to point out significant errors if they see them. “Everything is great!” feedback feels good for the ego for a moment, but it’s rarely useful. The most common and least useful feedback is silence. Sometimes, it’s good to hear some noise.
As a student in a variety of private lesson situations, I knew if something wasn’t good and the teacher moved on anyway, it was because they gave up.
When people offer you constructive criticism, it’s a gift. Most people won’t take the time or energy.