Category: consumer watch

Linksys customer service destroyed by earthquake

I called the sales team at Linksys today to ask for help in picking which one of their products Summersault wanted to purchase. I saw this notice on their "contact us" web page:

Due to a major earthquake in the South-Pacific area, telephone, internet circuits, and services from the United States have interrupted our call center operations. We apologize for any inconvenience or delay and appreciate your patience.

I felt bad for them, but carried on and called them anyway, assuming that they would prioritize sales calls in their time of rebuilding. The guy who answered the phone made it very clear, before letting me say anything, that he would ONLY help me with PRE-SALES questions. (I suppose it's a universal problem that people call the sales extension when they really need technical support, assuming they'll get someone faster.) I said "okay, I need help deciding which one of your products to buy." I explained our requirements and which product I thought we needed, and his response was...

"Okay, let me get you over to..." and then I hear a click, and all of the sudden I'm back in their automated voicemail menu, with options that were completely unrelated to my question. No "can I transfer you?" or "Can you hold?," just an end to our sales conversation. Wow.

Now I know which Linksys product I need to buy: none of them.

The reason for the season, from Menards

IMG_0350.JPGI opened up today's Sunday newspaper bundle to find a brown paper grocery bag from Menards that said "Merry Christmas! 15% OFF ANYTHING YOU CAN FIT INSIDE THIS BAG!" The fine print - inscribed on both sides of the bag, mind you - was my favorite:

All merchandise must fit inside the bag, all at one time to qualify for the 15% discount. No modifying of the bag is allowed. We will allow products up to twice the height of the bag to qualify for discount as long as they fit inside the bag. Multiple items must all fit inside the bag. No stacking allowed beyond the height of the bag. All merchandise must remain in its original packaging. Merchandise cannot be disassembled to fit in bag. Limited to one bag per guest (or household) per purchase per visit. (In keeping with the spirit of the sale, please do not ask the cashier to split your purchase up across multiple bags. You may make multiple shopping trips during the week, but only one bag of savings per trip.) Bag must be surrendered at time of purchase.

For those of you mapping out your trip to Menards in advance using the product dimension information you can find online: the bag is approximately 17" high, 11.5" wide, and 7" deep. Under the terms of the program including the double-the-height clause, this means you can accommodate 2,737 cubic inches, or 1.58 cubic feet, of product material. My initial calculations show that the following items will not fit in the bag: the body and teachings of Jesus Christ, personal happiness, peace, justice.

What will you put in your bag?

The difference between dollars and cents

IMG_1326.JPGI have yet to reach the end of the enjoyment I am experiencing from hearing this tech support call that someone recorded: Verizon doesn't know the difference between dollars and cents. As it turns into a global phenomenon, the caller documents his experience on his blog: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/.

Your call may be recorded to insure quality, indeed.

Customer service done poorly by Ramada

Earlier in life I had a job as the senior front desk clerk at a national hotel chain. I made reservations, served breakfast, transferred calls, checked people in, checked people out, cleaned the pool, cleaned rooms when housekeeping had left for the day, chatted with vacationers and placated frustrated guests. The experience has instilled in me a great deal of appreciation (and sympathy) for those who work in any sort of hospitality business, but it has also made me acutely aware of particular lapses by the same when I visit. Earlier this week I was traveling through Eastern Pennsylvania and ended up having to stay in a Ramada hotel when the camping plans I had (which I was really looking forward to) didn't pan out. Ooops. Here's what happened:
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A review of Blue Vinyl

It would be nice if some day we could say, "great, now we know about ALL of the human-made products and processes that can give us cancer and harm the planet, now let's start doing something about them." But alas, it seems that everywhere you look, there's a new story about a chemical or drug or food or way of raising your children that can endanger our lives. Some of it is fear-mongering, but some of it is an honest and long-overdue look at the products and practices that we take for granted, examining them for harm they might cause and seeking healthier alternatives. And in her award winning film Blue Vinyl, that's just what Judith Hefland has done with...get ready for it...vinyl siding.
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Customer service done right by Fazoli's

E8AEFF9E1A8811DA.jpgOver the weekend I visited the Fazoli's drive through on my way out of town - it's the closest thing we've got to an Italian restaurant (though maybe not for long) and I have a certain affinity for it after having worked at one as a teenager for one of my first real jobs (it did take me a 10 year hiatus to wash all of the garlic butter out of my clothes before I could go back, but hey...). This particular visit to the restaurant was horrible - garbled drive through communication, messed up order, improper packaging that led to messes and burning of skin, etc.

As I tend to do, I used Fazoli's web-based comment system last night to describe my experience in hopes of helping them make things better. I was really impressed that today, I got a calls from the store manager and the regional manager, both telling me how devastated (their word) they were about my experience. When I talked to the store manager further, she went into detail about the specific things they should have done differently, and mentioned what steps she was taking to prevent it from happening again. And of course, she said "it would make her feel better" if she could send me some coupons. I really appreciate that.

So from a customer service perspective, despite the negative initial experience, they did everything else right:

  1. They made it really easy to contact them with my comments and concerns
  2. They quickly and sincerely acknowledged my concerns, and showed me that it was important to them to take action
  3. They addressed the specifics of my comments and what should have been done differently, without making excuses
  4. They offered to make it right in a tangible way

Nicely done.

When people driving cars kill people riding bikes

IMG_0031.JPGWhile I was in Chicago this past week for the professional technical conference some of us from Summersault were attending, we were walking to dinner one night and witnessed the driver of an SUV come within inches of hitting a cyclist. Despite the fact that the driver was rushing to turn through a yellow light, in typical big-city style, the driver of the SUV had the additional gall to yell at the cyclist to look out where she was going and then speed off. The biker was shaken up a bit but carried on fine, and we went on our way.

Not the most positive exchange, but at least the cyclist wasn't actually hit and hurt or killed. Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the death of Earlham graduate Jessica Bullen after being struck by a driver in Madison, Wisconsin - her story and memorial fund are described here. Even more sadly, Jessica was a strong advocate (in a town that I consider quite biker-friendly already) for cyclists and worked to raise awareness for motorists that inattentive driving could result in a preventable injury or death. My life has been impacted in other ways by similar deaths - a good friend of my family started Fernside, a now internationally known center for grieving children, after her son was killed on his bike as a result of being struck by a car.
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Pal-Item forgets that framing trumps truth?

As the whole EDC mess swirls on and the gloves come off, the Palladium-Item, Richmond's local daily newspaper, has continued to insist that its role in fueling the fire of outrage over the EDC's affairs has just been about reporting the truth. It is with this sentiment that they've responded to public criticism of their aggressive coverage and editorializing, it is how they responded to concerns raised in an editorial board meeting I attended shortly after the initial series ran on their pages, and it is how managing editor Rich Jackson responds in an editorial column today. But Jackson and the rest of his staff surely know that the impact of their actions in this and every other matter they cover is not limited to the letter of the content they deliver; in a world of fast paced news delivery, short attention spans, and the need for sexy sound bites, the way the information is presented often has as much (if not more) impact than the "truth" that it might be trying to convey. In other words, the framing of an issue tends to trump the truth of an issue. This isn't their fault, but if credibility is important, it is their responsibility to acknowledge their role in that phenomenon.
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Switching to Parallax for home broadband

This is an unabashed plug for Parallax and their high speed wireless Internet access service. I complain enough on this blog about poor customer service experiences, so it's important to me that I document the rare but special times when I have a really positive experience. I'd been using Insight's cable broadband service, which costs $45/month and included somewhere around 3 MBps download and 400Kbps upload (your mileage may vary widely - learn about different connection technologies). It also malfunctioned every time my cat sneezed. Parallax's service is $40/month and includes 1 MBps download and 1 MBps upload (really nice for sending large files out or hosting something). Important: you don't need a wireless card to use this service - your home network can still be wired all the way. And they're local, which has a number of benefits. And they're reliable. And their customer service tends to be excellent. I know these things well since my business depends on them for mission critical network operations every day. So I didn't really know why I'd even waited as long as I had to get setup with their wireless service. (I did call Insight and ask them to make me a better offer...they couldn't.) The Parallax sales rep and installers treated me like a real human being, they worked fast and effectively, and the connection has worked great from day one. Thanks, Parallax, for being a quality local provider of a valued service!

More credit card offers...from Miami University?

Sound the rant alert. I've written here before about how much I don't like getting credit card offers in the mail, but I've learned to deal with it. Or, I thought I had. Then came the onslaught of offers from the Miami University Alumni Association for a card branded by Miami - "support us and save with our low introductory rate!" Groan. One of those mailings I could have dealt with...but I've gotten four identical offers in the last two months alone - and I didn't even attend Miami. So, that means that not only does Miami (and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the organization they're working with to make this offer) not observe the national "do not contact" lists I've subscribed to, but that unless they are *trying* to tick people off, their mailing list management also stinks. Apparently they have some data privacy issues to work through, too.
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