cellio | Entries tagged with customer service

This would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. It appears that Amazon has (rightfully) yanked his selling privileges, but he's got an awful lot of unsatisfied customers yet to deal with.

( email log; watch the seller behave like a twit )

Lesson learned: use Marketplace for stuff I wouldn't mind buying, but stick to direct, reputable sources for stuff I actively want on some sort of schedule.

This video is a hilarious compilation of feline "I meant to do that" moments, some of them probably even real. :-) Thanks to

cortego for the link.

Dani's birthday was yesterday. I bought him a copy of Puerto Rico, a Rio Grande game, because that many of my friends can't be wrong. :-) So now we just have to get some locals together to try it out.

After several days of silence the third-party seller (through Amazon) said he'd refund my money. I don't think he ever shipped the DVDs. What an annoying twit. And according to his feedback, he's done this to lots of other people too. (Feedback also suggests that promised refunds don't always happen, so we'll see.) Why in the world would you set up shop and then not bother shipping, when your customers can get their money back through Amazon and Amazon can presumably nail you? I mean, it's one thing to rip off individuals through your own shop; most of them don't have the resources to nail you for small-stakes amounts, so you can probably rake in some loot. But the idea of being able to hide from Amazon or eBay or the like seems...unlikely.

This afternoon we helped Ann and Karen move. It went well, and the final unloading of stuff went much more quickly than I expected.

Mid-afternoon they passed around Luna bars, which I'd never had before. The one I had was pretty tasty, and according to the nutrition information, provides much better bang for the buck than other nutrition bars I've encountered. I may have to keep a stash of these at work. (Ironically, I just read the latest Consumer Reports, which had an article on nutrition bars, and it pretty much panned them all. Different strokes, I guess; they tended to use chocolate-flavored bars for their tests, and I much prefer non-chocolate flavors in such things.)

I wonder what bad things happen if you average well over 100% of RDA on Vitamin A. The nutrition-tracking software I use thinks I'm tending rather high on that, presumably because baby carrots are among my favorite munchies.

Thursday night is Shavuot (and Friday). The service starts at 7:30, with late-night study beginning at 10. (Tradition calls for staying up all night studying Torah, though we usually finish around 1:30 or 2.) I don't think there's any way I can get home from work, prepare dinner, eat dinner, and walk to shul in time for a 7:30 service, so maybe I won't try and will instead just go for the study (and the morning service, of course). I'm not sure yet. I don't want to skip the evening service, but I also don't want to bail from work early enough to make it feasible. And I don't think something like ravioli (which cooks quickly) is really ideal for a festive holiday meal.

Shavuot meals are traditionally dairy. Mmmm, cheesecake. :-)

Version-control systems should not behave differently depending on the location of a file. That is, "cvs [operation] somedir/file" and "cvs [operation] file" should produce the same results with respect to the file in question. You may infer from the fact that I'm writing this that this is not the case. Hrmpf.

In happier news, last night was the Transarc doc group reunion dinner. I had fun; Dani had less fun because he knew fewer people. (We were also seated near people I didn't know all that well, though enough conversations got shouted down the length of the table that this wasn't that much of a challenge.) Jim and Laurie were both there. We haven't seen them in ages! (Well, I saw Jim at a previous reunion dinner, but it's been a long time since I saw Laurie or Dani saw either.) Gotta fix that. Jean, too.

Coincidentally, the NetBill gang is talking about holding a reunion dinner next month. It's been about a year and a half. That'll be fun too. I volunteered to host that one; there are fewer NetBillians than Transarcians.

Tuesday was D&D. It was largely a role-playing session this time; I infer that there will be monster-bashing next time. :-) (I also need to figure out the best use of my character's share of recent loot.)

I've been having an annoying experience with a third-party seller through Amazon Marketplace. Almost a month ago I ordered the second season of B5 on DVD; it's not here yet, though it was required to ship three weeks ago. The seller has given me two different bogus tracking numbers for the package, and doesn't really answer email. (Those two tracking numbers are a significant percentage of the total word count of his messages.) He has thus far failed to tell me when the package actually shipped; I'm betting on either "a few days ago" or "never".

If worst comes to worst I can file a claim with Amazon for the money (in another few days), but I'm kind of irked that this loser seller will have cost me a month and some extra money. (The going rate is higher now than it was then.) He's got a large pile of negative feedback (all since I placed my order); I haven't left any yet. I wonder what makes people like that tick. I mean, I assume Amazon is going to go after him for all the insurance claims they'll have to pay out. How stupid is this seller?

But in happier news, according to Amazon the third season will be out in August. Yay!

I took Erik back to the vet last night to have more blood drawn. I went armed with questions about the tests (thanks,

spiritdance!), and got lots of information. We will know a lot more when these next results come back, but one of the tests takes a few days so I might not hear until next Monday. With luck, though, this time I'll hear something a little more conclusive than "ok, I know which other test to do now". I hope.

Embla was hiding in the attic this morning. This is unusual; she generally comes running when I get up. When I walked downstairs I realized that the carrier was still out from last night, so I put it away. She was back to normal tonight when I came home from work. I guess she was worried that it might be intended for her. :-)

Choir last night was missing some of the regulars, but we also picked up two new people. One,

ommkarja, has been in the choir before; the other is a member of the choir at Ray and Jenn's church. They're both good; I hope they stay. (And one is an alto! Yay!)

Our newspaper delivery has been rather spotty for the last few weeks. (The problem pre-dates the recent weather changes.) The service hasn't been good in a while, really; the carrier seems unable to put the paper on the porch or even, often, on the walkway. I've found papers in bushes, papers on the street in front of the house (that's not even trying), and recently, far too many missing papers.

I think I finally have the attention of someone who might care, though; tonight was the second time in a week that I've gotten a call asking if service has improved. And today I did get a paper on the porch without asking. But it's still annoying. Not quite as annoying as the thought of regularly reading That Other Paper, though. :-)

In the "at least they're making gestures" category, I now have a stack of coupons good for free coffee at 7-11. Maybe one of my local friends would find them useful.

I'm impressed.

Tuesday I ordered a DVD from Amazon (to be shipped directly to my father). I took the free shipping, and they said it would ship by January 27.

Yesterday I got mail saying it had shipped (UPS ground) and would arrive in 5-9 days.

Today my father called to say how much he's enjoying the DVD.

Now that's service!

Tonight we watched the first two episodes of a new Tv show, "Mister Sterling". It has real potential! I enjoyed both episodes, and the style is reminiscent of "West Wing" -- fast-paced, crisp dialogue, strong characters, and a sense that things are going to be done a little differently with these folks. I didn't pay attention to the credits, so I don't know if there are any familiar names there. (For the most part, I probably wouldn't notice.) I'm looking forward to seeing more. I wonder how it's been doing in the ratings.

(Next up: "Sports Night".)

I came home today to find that our contractor has finished in one attic room and moved everything into there so he can paint the floor in the other room. Part of "everything" is about 15 bookcases that started out in that room; he moved them with a dolly, books and all. I hope he put them back in the same order; I forgot to check. The floors look good, and he was able to patch the holes and wobbly spots before painting.

Today I pinged half.com, because their rep said (on Saturday) that he was going to poke the seller for me. I actually got a quick reply this time (one person at half.com understands customer service, at least), and he said that after discussing it with their abuse department they had decided to just refund my money and deal with the seller in some appropriate way. Yay! (Apparently the seller hasn't answered their email, either. Unwise move.) So I ordered the DVD from Amazon and had it shipped directly to my father. I tried to leave feedback for the half.com seller, now that the transaction is "complete", and couldn't because he is not a registered user. Good. Pity that I didn't leave feedback while I could affect his score (I assume the suspension is temporary), but oh well. Now what I want to know is: is there some way that I can get this same rep if I ever have to deal with half.com support again? (Derek good, Tracy bad...)

Last night's choir practice had low turnout. We've got to get some altos. (I am looking forward to Jenn's return!) In an odd twist, we're actually strong in tenors, which is a real change from a year ago. The new Rossi piece we're going to start soon is SATTB, because we can. :-) (I gave my transcription and transliteration to Gail to proofread last night. She's got the best Hebrew in the choir.)

Sunday dinner was pleasant. Ralph makes good brownies! (The rest of the food was good too.) Ralph and Lori have the cats confined to a few rooms while they paint upstairs, so we hung out in the family room after dinner and evaluated the effects of kitty drugs (catnip). Their cats are much more entertaining drunks than mine are. (Well, I've never given catnip to Embla; my catnip experiments ended before I got her, when I concluded that Baldur gets mean.)

And now, it is time for me to go take another stab at sorting out who said what about when to say the evening Sh'ma, because my next Talmud session with my rabbi is Thursday.

This Shabbat we had a cantorial intern; she's in her first year of school. She has a nice voice that I think will mature into a great voice with more training. More importantly, she sang with real feeling -- the kevanah (intention, spirit) was present in her singing in a way that it often is not. We'll have her for two more weeks.

Small-world syndrome strikes again: Friday night I ran into a co-worker from Transarc (now IBM). His son was bar mitzvah this Shabbat. He remembered me by name; I remembered him sans name (until I sneaked a peak at the program). Everyone I know seems to be much better with names than I am.

We got a call Friday night from a friend who wanted to organize some last-minute gaming Saturday. It ended up being at our house. Since Shabbat was already underway, that posed some hostly challenges, specifically dinner and having drinks/munchies on hand. Fortunately, we had enough drinks on hand (leftovers from another recent gathering), and the friend ended up bringing a main course that I was able to supplement. Maybe next time we can play last-minute games at his house.

Are board games getting visually more cluttered and hard to use, or is it me? We played "Kings and Things" (not a new game), and I was struck by how hard it was to see some of the counters on the board. (Compare this to, say, the first edition of "Cosmic Encounter", or "Civilization".) The board could have been perfectly functional with less "art" and different colors. I rejected "Twilight Imperium" (a newer game) as a candidate because I have trouble seeing the low-contrast chits. I also rejected "Disc Wars" (a recent game) because the important parts of the counters, the stats, are tiny, low-contrast, and buried in busy art. I stopped playing Magic primarily for visibility reasons. (I found that I was memorizing the art because I couldn't read my opponents' cards, and then they both increased the number of different cards by a factor of 4 or 5 and started producing up to four different versions of the art for each common card. That was too much to keep in the cache.) And it happens in computer games, too; the reason I never advanced beyond "Civilization" (I) was that the map and units were too darn hard to see in Civ II. (I've looked at Civ III over Dani's shoulder and it looks like they didn't improve things with that version.)

I got mail from half.com again Saturday night (time to reply: 5 days this time). They are sorry that their seller shipped my DVD nearly a month late without prior communication of any sort, but until 30 days elapse from his claimed shipping date, they can't do anything to help me, like issue a refund so I can go buy the DVD somewhere else without double-paying. So by the time they can issue me a refund, two months will have elapsed from my order. And while the amount in question is not large (about $80), they'll have had use of my money for those two months. Given this experience, I would recommend against buying anything major through half.com. It's likely to be a long time before I buy anything at all from them.

This afternoon, finish transcribing the Rossi piece and then Sunday dinner. (We've missed Sunday dinner the last few weeks, and I'm looking forward to tonight.) If there's time, catch up on some taped TV.

On the transliteration, I finally opted for using the apostrophe to mark a shva. It seems to be what most transliterators use, and there's probably a reason for that. (Last week during services I paid some attention to the transliterated passages in the siddur; that's what they do, and everyone who was obviously reading from translit seemed to be comfortable with it.)

On December 4, I placed an order with a half.com merchant for a (new) DVD, to be shipped by media mail (the only option available). According to half.com, the seller was required to ship within, I think, 48 hours. This should have been fine for a gift I needed at the end of December. On the same day I ordered another DVD from an Amazon associate, also via media mail, and that one arrived within about 10 days. Afer a couple weeks passed I began to fear that my DVD from half.com had gone missing.

However, there was no way to ping the merchant to find out what had happened. The merchant's email address was hidden, and half.com only accepts feedback/requests via their web form. The web form, in turn, would not accept a missing-package complaint until January 7, because media mail can take up to 30 days in the worst cases.

So this afternoon I filed the report, and tonight I got email from half.com. To quote: "We wanted to let you know that the following order was shipped late on January 1, 2003 by [...] The seller apologizes for the delay and you should receive the item shortly."

Out of curiosity, I decided to check out the order via the web site, mostly to see if they had even bothered to update the shipping date (they hadn't). And there I found a more interesting story:

Dear Buyer, We have re-shipped your DVD set by USPS. We are very sorry for the inconvenience, but USPS returned ALL of our packages due to the post date we had from (Post marked the day before shipment).. USPS cls we are not to ship unless the date post marked is the exact shipment s has caused a tremendous amount of time and confusion as we sold and shipped over 3,500 packages. If you left negative feedback, please leave a follow up once your package arrives. If you did not leave any feedback, please wait until the package arrives. We don't need any more negative due to USPS. We are loyal to our customers and hope you understand... We guarantee that you will receive your item soon. Thank you and have a Happy and Safe New Year.

The seller screwed up with a lot of packages, which is probably their fault but they point to the post office. The bigger screwup, however, was in not letting customers know, which might be either the seller's problem or half.com's (or both). At the very least, shouldn't I have received an "oops, resending" message on January 1? Couldn't someone have updated the transaction record with the new ship date? Sheesh.

This was my first experience with half.com. I only went there because Amazon's database was having problems with that item for a couple days. I think next time I'll wait for Amazon or try to buy locally. All of my Amazon purchases arrived promptly.

Wow, and I thought I'd had annoying problems getting support at times... Thanks to

seanmcguire for this link: http://www.movie-reviews.org/hp/ .

Friday and today, I have attempted to buy a total of 7 items through Amazon's "marketplace" (network of sellers who aren't them, which is the only way to get most of the items I was trying to buy). Five of those have gone as follows (multiple times): go to product page, click on "buy used", click on first seller offering item to add to shopping cart, proceed to checkout, and get told the item is no longer available. Return to list of sellers and refresh; the link I clicked on is still there.

I know it's not just server lossage, because I was successful in buying two items this way.

WTF?

In one case I gave up and bought the item new; in another, I'm probably going to just order from the publisher. But the others are out of print.

In happier news, our zone-free DVD player has arrived. I'm going to hook it up today.

( consumer failure )

( TV room )

( Sunday dinner )

Our receipt from Circuit City included a URL for a customer-response survey, so I filled it out. They just sent me email with a follow-up for their delivery/installation survey, which I am now completing. I didn't save the text I entered on the first survey (I assumed they'd email it); here's what I'm entering on the followup:

As I said in the previous survey, the delivery team itself was fantastic but the people who handle scheduling were abraisve and inaccurate, and just generally did not seem to give a hoot about the customer. I was told incorrect delivery times (more than once), I was given the run-around and was not permitted to speak with a manager who could solve my problem, and I was massively inconvenienced. I have written a full account in my public web journal; you can read it at http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=cellio&itemid=116312 .

I want to be fair here. If you respond, I will make a follow-up entry in the journal. If you satisfy me, I will continue to shop at Circuit City. As things stand now, your customer-support people have tainted the experience to the point where your fine sales people and excellent delivery teams will not be enough to motivate me to return to Circuit City.

Now we'll see what happens.

I had thought, after the incident with the bozos from Circuit City, that the worst of the power-surge recovery was past. ( I was so wrong. )

Current Mood: irritated

The sales person we worked with on Sunday at Circuit City was pleasant, knowledgeable, and highly competent. He went out of his way to get us what we wanted.

The delivery person who brought the new TV today was similarly pleasant and helpful. He even -- unasked -- did all the wiring to hook up two VCRs (including for tape-to-tape copy) and a DVD player. I had expected his service to end at depositing the TV on its stand.

Every single person between these two points of contact whom I encountered was an incompetent, stupid, lying bastard. The people who fancy themselves "customer support", who arrange the home delivery, are absolute scum.

( No, tell us how you really feel. )

Current Mood: annoyed

You've just got to love support conversations that include phrases like "how long did you say this has been working for you?" and "who told you that?".

( Whee. )

Last week I was in Giant Eagle and picked up some peeps (mmm, peeps), because I'm a small-scale addict (not Laura-class). I remembered a claim on the peeps web site that they are kosher, so I looked for the hechsher (certification mark) on the package and didn't find it. I wrote to them suggesting that they add it.

Let me digress for a moment. We are talking about the peeps web site -- the marshmallow candy, and a site published by the manufacturer. This is not their general web site; this is about peeps and peeps only.

This is the reply I got back:

Dear Ms. Cellio,

Thank you for your recent e-mail. We hope you enjoyed visiting www.marshmallowpeeps.com.

All of Just Born's jelly candies (Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales, Zours, Teenee Beanee Gourmet Jelly Beans, Peeps Jelly Beans, and Just Born Jelly Beans) are certified kosher by the Orthodox Union. The gelatin used in our marshmallow candy is derived from pork products.

Again, thank you for your taking the time to contact us; we hope this information is helpful.

When I first read this today, I assumed a typo -- that they meant to write "...is NOT derived from pork...". After all, their site said peeps were kosher.

Then I took a closer look. Note the list of candies above. Note that peeps are not on this list (but peeps jelly beans -- which I have never heard of -- are).

So I went back to the web site. The last entry in the FAQ at http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/fun.html says: "All of Just Born's jelly candies (Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales, Zours, Teenee Beanee Gourmet Jelly Beans, Peeps Jelly Beans, and Just Born Jelly Beans) are certified kosher by the Orthodox Union." This is the same text as above, except that it fails to provide the warning about marshmallow peeps, the specific candy this web site is about!

So peeps are not kosher, I accidentally ate pork last week, and I did that as a result of reading a true-but-misleading statement on their web site.

Lovely.

Package arrived from Artscroll today (that was fast!). Packing slip says Shabbos II. Actual book says Sanhedrin III. A fine tractate, but not the one I wanted just now. Oops.

I sure hope they haven't run out of Shabbos II yet.

Actually, I don't know if it's publisher antics or bookstore antice; I just know which way I'd bet.

So, 6 weeks ago I stopped by the local Judaica shop to pick up the volume of talmud that Rabbi Gibson and I will be studying. They were out, and I placed an order. They said orders usually come in in about a week, though December could be slower. After two weeks the store said the publisher had been delayed and it would be another week. The week after *that* they said it was back-ordered. I got the impression that it would be another few weeks, maybe a month. Last week I asked Rabbi Gibson to photocopy the first few pages of what we'll be looking at, so we can get started. (With luck, he remembered and I'll get that tonight.)

This brings us to today. I called the store and they said that the publisher had *now* told them that it was out of print. The store clerk (who has been very friendly and helpful through all of this) told me that in their experience, this could take 6 months or so. They last successfully ordered in June, and we don't know when between then and December they ran out.

So I went to the publisher's web site to see if I could find out more. The summary page for all of their talmud volumes said "to be reprinted May 2005". (No, I did not just make a typo.) But there was a link, so I clicked it. I got to a sales page that said "quantities low". So I ordered one, and the web site let me complete the order. I considered adding on second-day air rather than UPS ground, but decided that their default behavior was more likely to go smoothly. (They will, in theory, ship it tomorrow morning.)

If this actually works, then when I cancel the order with the bookstore I will tell them what happened, just in case the publisher is jerking them around or something. I would have preferred to give the order to the local store, but I also want the book... Maybe it's normal for publishers to give priority to direct sales over bookstore orders, but I would have thought that an order that had been pending for 6 weeks would trump a fresh direct sale.

Current Mood: irritated

Office Depot scored major points with me today.

In October, I bought a new monitor. They had advertised a $100 rebate; when I got home, after shlepping the monitor up the front steps and then down to the basement office, I discovered that the rebate form they had given me was for $50. Hoping that I would not have to return the monitor (it was worth the posted price to me, but not $50 more), I called them the next morning to see about resolving this. They eventually said that they had been in the midst of a price change (well, rebate change) when I came in, but they would honor the posted value. I should send in the $50 rebate, and they refunded me the other $50. So that got them points -- I was in the right, but they didn't make me fight over it. (I did have to spend about an hour explaining it to *four* different people, though.)

Yesterday's mail brought a letter from Phillips: this coupon is for the wrong model, so we're not honoring this. Fix it if you can before the deadline (end of January). Upon closer inspection, I agree that the coupon and the model from the UPC don't match, though the number on the coupon was not listed as a model number and I don't think I can be faulted for not noticing that a stray 107S on the coupon didn't match a 109bc103 (or whatever) on the UPC.

The coupon had a phone number, but it was apparently set to auto-hang-up all day. So this afternoon I called Office Depot and asked if they could do anything to help me out. The reasonable thing for them to do would be to issue a corrected coupon so I could send the thing in again. What they actually did was give me the $50.

Now that's customer service.

Current Mood: pleased

I feel like I'm a victim of bait-and-switch.

bankrate.com has been claiming, for the last week, mortgage rates (15-year fixed) of 5.25% -- yeah, with some points and fees, but 5.25% is still pretty damn good. The problem is that none of the mortgage companies to whom they attribute this rate is quoting anything near that low -- and that info is public on their web sites. So what's up with bankrate.com? Are they dishonest, or merely inept?

The other part of the problem is actually getting a mortgage company to answer the phone to talk about a refinance these days. We've been trying for a couple weeks. Even if we can't get lower than 6.0 it's worthwhile for us; we're currently at 7.625. But I'd like to be able to lock in a lower rate, if only someone would answer the damn phone or email. Sigh.

Current Mood: annoyed

It's really sunny out today. Painfully bright, to me. (My threshold is pretty low.) I'd really like someone to invent user-adjustable sunglasses. I don't mean photogray, where you can't control how dark or light they are, or clip-on sunglasses, which only have two settings (on and off); I want to be able to turn a dial and get more or less tint in real time. Amber, as long as I'm dreaming.

There appears to be no good protocol when the person at the head of the checkout line has a problem (like a price dispute). The default seems to be to hold up the line while dealing with it; this is especially frustrating when it's the express lane and all you want to do is pay for your salad and go. It appears that the Giant Eagle registers do not support a "buffer" function that would let them ring up the next person while someone checks the price on the shelf. They could tell the person to pay for the food and then go to the customer-service desk to discuss it and maybe get a refund, but that's also unsatisfactory (and probably has him standing in line a second time when all he wanted to do was pay for *his* food and get out).

Why is the week-to-week variance in sunset times (and presumably sunrise as well) highest near equinoxes and lowest near solstices? There's one week in December (and another in June, to match) where it doesn't really budge for several days. Currently, we're getting variances of 10-12 minutes (this is in Pittsburgh; I know lattitude matters). Why isn't it consistent year-round? I assume it has something to do with the discrepancy between local noon and true noon, just as the solstice problem [*] does, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the geometry.

[*] The winter solstice is not the day with the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset. Here in Pittsburgh, and I presume all points north of the Tropic of Cancer, the events occur in the following order (~2 weeks apart here): earliest sunset, solstice, latest sunrise. There's a corresponding phenomenon in June, of course.

Monica

that Amazon affiliate

short takes

recent happenings

short takes

Amazon rocks

short takes, in reverse order

weekend

my missing DVD (a small rant)

customer-support hell

WTF?

(no subject)

more from Circuit City

(no subject)

rant place-holder: Circuit City

network

ack!

(no subject)

publisher antics

how to run a business

mortgage rates

lunchtime musings

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