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Once upon a time, the die hard NFL fan who couldn’t afford the outrageous (corporate) ticket prices for the Super Bowl had an alternative. The alternative was Las Vegas. For years, Las Vegas held Super Bowl parties at almost every casino. For paid admission, you got to watch the game usually on stadium size monitors, all you can eat stadium food and best of all some parties were Open Bar. Oh those were the days. 

Today, those parties are almost non-existent due to the NFL threatening lawsuits on casinos for charging for an event that is free. This was a rude awakening in 2004 when my friends and I were in a cab after landing in Las Vegas and our cab driver told us “The NFL sent lawyers to shut down the parties!” We were not quite sure whether this was rumor or fact.  This would be our 4th year going to the party and we had been waiting for this day since the end of the last Super Bowl.

At the hotel, we jumped out of the cab and headed immediately to the concierge where they told us “We will not be having a party this year.” We tried to find other parties but received the same disappointing news from every place. 

So since that year, my friends and I have joined the masses in watching Super Bowl from a TV in one of our living rooms. Its not Vegas but we still have fun; and maybe, all those years in Vegas, wasn’t about being in Vegas that made it fun, but rather just us getting together to celebrate the biggest Sunday in sports.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that our CEO Chris Larsen made the announcement at Prosper Days 2007 that Customer Support was coming in house to SF. It’s definitely been a challenging but fun 18 months for our department. We are a close knit team that strives hard to provide the best customer service to our community. As a result, we have built a solid foundation upon which we are continuously looking to improve. It’s no secret that with any start up company things can get pretty hectic. However, I feel management has been extremely supportive in dealing with any issues we’ve presented to them — which in turn only makes for a better user experience for all of you.

I’ve worked in support for several different companies in various industries and working here at Prosper has been one of my best experiences. In other companies I’ve worked at, the customer service departments were treated as outcasts which generated this feeling of irrelevance. Here at Prosper, other departments enjoy hearing our feedback. Seriously, why wouldn’t they? We talk first hand with you, the community. Confused about messaging you get or screens that perplex you? If you’ve emailed or called us about it, then we’ve brought it up to someone who’s listening.  (Contact Customer Support.)

Personally, I’m amazed at the improvements we made in such a short period of time. We could not have achieved this if no one was listening. For those of us that were here in Feb 2007, we now catch ourselves saying “Remember when we had to…” I expect a few months from now I’ll be saying that more and that’ll be music to my ears.

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Terence Dela Cruz is member of the Prosper Support Team and looks forward to helping Prosper Members on a daily basis.  He highly recommends the Prosper Tutorials.