cellio | Entries tagged with customer service

The replacement phone arrived Wednesday (faster than they said, good). I'd already done a manual backup on top of the automatic one, but migration from one phone to another of the exact same type and OS version is easier: connect them via a cable and wait. Basic data transfer happened within an hour, though it took a few hours for apps to get installed and Chrome was being especially finicky for some reason.

My settings were almost all there; I expected to have to do more manual configuration (including re-laying out the icons where I wanted them). Nope, that was all fine. I had to set up each individual app again, though; sometimes that was just a matter of logging in (for example, Tusky or Authy), but sometimes it required redoing everything (email client for my non-Gmail accounts). Chrome had a weird bug where tabs didn't work (!) but the update ("new version available", it kept saying) would hang; after a few reboots it sorted itself out.

There was a feeling of trepidation as I kept asking myself "are you sure you have everything you need?" before doing the factory reset on the old phone, but I finally did that today. It started doing the flashing-display thing during the reset, so I just left it for a while. The documentation says a factory reset can take an hour, so after a couple hours I power-cycled to see where it was.

I was greeted by the "new phone" setup screen, so that worked.

And then it started flashing again. Ha.

Yes, support person, I was right: that's a hardware problem. After another power-cycle (so I could see what I was doing) I shut it down and boxed it up, and tomorrow I will take it to FedEx.

The replacement they sent me was marked as "refurbished", but they are holding the price of a new phone against my credit card, which feels wrong. It's only a problem if the package doesn't arrive in time (which is why I will hand it to a human at FedEx and get a proper receipt), but it's still sleazy. And yes, if they were to charge the card they would add shipping charges, so it's not to offset that.

I've never had to make a warranty claim on a phone before, so I don't know how my experience with Google compares to what I would have had with other vendors. It's something I should try to find out before I buy my next phone, which I hope will be several years from now.

I got my Pixel 5A in March of last year. So, fortunately, it is still in its warranty period.

This is the weirdest failure I have heard of. Yesterday, I took my phone out of my pocket, woke it up, and was greeted by a flashing screen. What it was flashing was a screen full of "snow", like what you get on a TV that's tuned to a station that's not broadcasting, but static -- the whole screen was flashing but the snow wasn't moving around. Hmm, very odd. As I tried to shut it down gracefully I could see that the "underlying" image was responding to me -- there were the usual buttons for "restart", "shut down", and whatever else -- but so fleeting that I couldn't catch them with my finger or read them. On to the hard reboot via the power button.

I Googled this but did not find answers.

I hoped it was a one-time glitch, but I wouldn't be writing this post if it were. Almost every time, but not every single time, since then, recovering from "sleep" mode gets me not the usual desktop but this flashing thing from which I can only hard-reboot. Rebooted about 20 times yesterday.

After the first reboot I had a new notification of a pending OS update, so I applied that. No change. I uninstalled the app I most recently installed, which should have been safe but it's basic troubleshooting. No change. I had, I think on Friday, gotten a batch of miscellaneous app updates, but I don't see a way to review exactly what now. But also, it wasn't right before this behavior. None of that was; that app (from my bank) was sometime last week.

Off to chat support I went. The agent I spoke with told me both that it's a software problem and that I would need to take it to their designated repair place for a hardware repair (for which you must first do a system reset); I asked her to reconcile those two things but she didn't. I pushed back on the repair place, noting that earlier in the warranty period I'd had a problem for which they said that was the solution, but the place couldn't help me and was kind of rude about it and it never got fixed. I asked if the software problem was something I could fix but her script didn't have any info about that. I said in that case, since it's under warranty, I want to exchange it, and I know they have a scheme where they send you the new phone (with a hold on your credit card), you migrate to it and send back the old one, and they release the hold. After I sent her a video of the behavior (an adventure of its own, as she was assuming I could do that from my phone and share it and I was like "uh, this is a video taken with my partner's iPhone and no it's not in my photo gallery and I need to upload or email it to you"), she collected some information from me and came back a few minutes later to say something like "good news, it's under warranty" (I knew that), and then gave me instructions for mailing back the phone and then they'd send me a new one, "or if you like, we could do" (exactly what I'd just asked for). Yeah that, I said.

Meanwhile, I installed Authy on my tablet lest the phone become completely unusable, because I wouldn't want to be locked out of anything that requires two-factor authentication. Today I noticed a seeming pattern where the phone would be fine so long as it was active, and if I set it on the desk next to me I could then wake it up but if I put it in my pocket we'd be back to the snow. This is, uh, the same pocket position I always use. But then the snow thing happened while I was using the phone, so apparently it's not that either. I am mystified.

It's going to be an aggravating several days, methinks.

In the midst of all the stuff in the world, I hope that some customer-support person's day was a little brighter for a moment or two:

Hi Chewy! This is Monica's cat, Orlando.

I'm delighted by all the goodies I got today -- I'm so glad I finally got her to do autoship so poor pitiful me never starves! I mean, there was that time that she made me wait hours because she had to go to the store. Humans -- what can you do?

I noticed something with today's boxes, and I wanted to ask if you can do anything to help. She'll never admit it, but my person isn't as young and strong as she used to be, plus she's short, and that humongous 40-pound box was a struggle for her to get in the house. And that delayed me getting snuggles and treats! I'm sure you can understand the dire circumstances here. She didn't have any trouble with the largish box that had two 15-pound jugs of litter in it, so I don't think it was the weight. I think it was that the other (bigger) box was so wide that she couldn't get a good grip on it to carry it up the steps, and she doesn't have powerful claws to help hold things like I do.

Is there any chance that, next time, you could use another box instead of packing so much into one giant one? Or should I sneak in one night when she's sleeping and change her autoship to be a smaller order sent more frequently? I worry a little that she's going to sprain something and that might affect her can-opening ability, which would be terrible. Ok, it also wouldn't be great if she got hurt, but -- priorities! My dining depends on her being fully operational!

As a token of my thanks, I would happily share the next mouse I catch with you -- just let me know where to send it.

Orlando

(I hope the human doesn't find out I cracked her email password.)

(14 minutes later:)

Hi there Orlando,

Thank you so much for meowing in! At this time, our warehouse has an automatic system which chooses which box your items are placed in. The only way we can 100% guarantee a certain item will be packed alone or with other certain items would be to place a separate order containing only those items. As long as every order reaches the $49 your human will still receive free shipping.

In the meantime, we wish you and your human family to stay happy and healthy. If you have any further questions, please let us know and we'd be happy to lend a paw. (And don't worry, we'll keep your email cracking skills quiet)

Best Whiskers,

(name)
Customer Service
Chewy

A few weeks ago I wrote about a Stack Exchange design change that made the site much harder for me to use. I wrote a post about it that got a lot of attention -- which led to a meeting invitation from the relevant product manager. We had a very productive conversation, after which they fixed the main problems I reported (and one that came up during our meeting). Woot! Calm-but-firm user feedback works sometimes.

The meeting was supposed to include one of the designers, but time zones are hard. The product manager and I spent the better part of an hour talking about the design, use cases, the need for responsive design, vision problems, and so on. Through screen-sharing, I showed him what things were problems for me, what I was using user scripts or CSS overrides to get around (but I can't do that on my tablet), what I was just having to put up with, and what site functions I was just ignoring because they're too hard now. While it's not about the top bar (the specific UI change that led to this meeting), I pointed out a problem that basically means I can't do some key moderation tasks on any mobile device. (No word yet on whether they're going to fix that.) Along the way we bumped into a couple things where, apparently, normal people see some color differentiation that I couldn't see, and he said they'd work on that. He shared some of their then-future plans for the top bar and asked for feedback. He said they are trying to move to responsive design, which will make a lot of things better, but we both know that's a big change for a site that wasn't designed that way from the start.

This UI change has been quite contentious among the larger user community. Some users are, sadly, being quite rude about it. I'm glad that, against that backdrop, someone was willing to take the time to try to understand and address the problems I was facing with the new design. I'm one of about 15 million users and about 500 moderators, and nonetheless I was worth a few hours of somebody's time. Courtesy of course matters, but even with courtesy I'm usually brushed off, not engaged, when part of a large user base somewhere.

This is actually my fourth^* significant meeting (not email, not site chat, but synchronous meeting) with SE employees -- two community managers, one VP (escalating a problem), and now this product manager. All have left me feeling that the employees in question really cared about me as a user and moderator, and most of them resulted in my problems being fixed. I'm pretty impressed.

^* I was also interviewed by a member of the design team for the now-ended Documentation product, I think because of this post I wrote about some planned changes there. That was them doing user research (for which they paid me), not me bringing something to them. And I once interviewed for a job there, but that's different.

There is an old joke that goes something like this:

A man in a helicopter has become lost in a heavy fog. He finds an office building and pulls up alongside a window. He leans out and asks the person inside "where am I?" (Yeah I know; office-building windows usually can't be opened. Work with me here.) The person inside says "you're in a helicopter 500 feet in the air". With this information the pilot is able to proceed directly to his invisible destination. When asked how that answer helped, he said "I got an answer that was completely true and utterly useless, so I knew I was outside the Microsoft customer-support building".

Microsoft is the traditional butt of that joke, but today I've had that experience with Apple, from whom I expected much better.

I got a new(er) refurbished Mac Mini this week (having given up waiting on Apple to update their product line; my 2009 Mini is showing its age). I plugged in the ethernet cable, booted it, and was greeted with a prompt to migrate data from my current Mac. Great! I've heard good things about that tool. So I went through the prompts to start, and just after the point of no return, it announced that this would take 16 hours. It had completely ignored the ethernet connection and was using wifi. (I should have been more suspicious that earlier in the start-up sequence it asked for a wifi password, but I figured they just always did that as a fallback. I don't remember setting up wifi on the other machine, but I guess I did.)

Everything I found on Google with my phone (you can't use either Mac while this is happening) said that aborting this is bad and you might have to reinstall the OS on the new machine. Since my new machine came with neither installation disks nor a CD/DVD drive, that was going to be tricky. The Apple store was by this point closed, so I tweeted to Apple support asking for guidance.

They responded pretty promptly (good) with a link to instructions about how to run the migration tool (bad). Here's what followed:

Me: Thanks, but that doesn't tell me how to recover from where I am. I plugged new mac into ethernet (old was already), booted, & followed prompt to start migrating. It ignored ethernet & used wifi. Looking at 16+ hours. Am I stuck or can I restart with ethernet not wifi?

Nine hours later:

Apple: The best way to be 100% sure it's using ethernet for migration is to disable Wi-Fi on both computers before starting the migration process.

I repeated that I had already started and asked if there was anything I could do now, as opposed to have done differently earlier. Their answer to that was that I could turn off the machines but I'd probably need to erase the new machine, so I should probably just let it run.

I'm disappointed that the migration tool (a) didn't use the ethernet connection and (b) didn't tell me it was going to use wifi (or give me the time estimate) and give me a chance to bail before it started. But I'm even more disappointed by responses from Apple that make me think nobody was actually reading my messages. Was I talking to a bot?

My past experiences with Apple support have been good. (Also rare, which is good for me but bad for data sampling.) I hope this experience is an anomaly.

Me: books hotel in foreign city.
Me: books tour in that city.
Me: books another tour in that city.
Me: attempts to book tour in a different city.
Booking site: couldn't get approval.
Me: tries a different tour (and different vendor).
Booking site: nope, we don't like your credit card either.
Husband: tries (joint card) and fails.

Phone rings.

Caller: Hi, this is (bank).
Me: Oh good; I was just about to call you.
Caller: There were these transactions...
Me: Yes that was me.
Caller: Ok, better safe than sorry. We'll unblock your card now.
Me: By the way, here are some travel dates and locations.
Caller: Got it.

I'll gladly accept those five minutes of inconvenience for that level of fraud protection. I even still had a valid session for the failed transaction, so retrying was easy.

I would have called them with the dates and locations closer to the trip to avoid card declines, but I didn't think about how the advance charges would look.

Today I used Uber for the first time (aside from a shared ride a couple months ago that someone else booked). It wasn't mainly because of the better price, though that's nice too. And it wasn't mainly out of objection to the monopolistic protection racket that runs transit in my city, though yeah, that too. It was mainly because of UX.

Here's how things go with Yellow Cab:

Attempt to make online reservation. After completing all fields, get told that online reservation is not possible and I need to call. Every. Single. Time.
Call, wait on hold for too long, and eventually make reservation with brusque or disinterested agent.
Usually but not always, cab shows up. If it's going to be a no-show, you won't know until it's too late.
Get bombarded by video ads in the cab until I figure out how to make it stop, which is hard because the LCD touch-screen is at a bad angle so I can't see the buttons well.
Pay using that same bad touch-screen. I seem to be incapable of seeing the UI for specifying a tip amount without opening the car door and half-lying on the seat. Buttons for 20% and 25% are easy to access, presumably by design.

So I got disgusted enough to try the competition. You can't make a reservation, which concerned me a bit, but I checked the app earlier than I needed to leave, saw multiple cars within a couple miles, and relaxed. When I was about ready to book, the app told me we were in a higher-price (prime time) period that would end in two minutes. So I waited. When I called for one it took no more than five minutes. I could watch the driver's progress on a map.

The driver was fine and the car was clean -- that and punctuality are really all I require.

Payment was simple, through the app, with an emailed receipt. The trip cost about 65% of what the last cab trip on the same route cost.

Yellow Cab's user experience is terrible. Uber's is good. I know which one will get my business next time.

I do have to ding Uber on one thing, though. When the driver heard that this was my first time using them he gave me a promo code for a significant discount. I tried to enter it during the ride and the app said I couldn't use it on an in-progress trip. Fine. But later I tried to enter it for future use and the app said it was only good for a first-time ride. So... if it's not available until it's too late, what's the point? If the driver had never given it to me I wouldn't have noticed the lack, but because he did I feel Uber goofed here.

I have a personal Skype account, which I use very rarely via my personal tablet. That's all fine, or was the last time I checked, anyway.

I also need Skype for work, so to prevent mingling I created a work account (6+ months ago), using my work email address for the account name. I log in to Skype using that email address and password on a (work) tablet all the time. That's all fine.

It would be convenient for me to also have a Skype client on my work laptop, so I went to download one. Along the way I tried to sign into the Skype web site, using that email address. Whereupon it told me that my account name can't be an email address and I need to either give it a proper account name or sign in with my Microsoft account. I've no idea what they think the former is nor do I have one of the latter so far as I can tell. There's a "forgot user name?" link, but it leads to a login page for a Microsoft account. After making a few failed guesses about all of this I found my way to their support page.

Their help pages are useless for this particular situation (no I didn't forget my password). They don't publish any email addresses for support, of course, but there was a link for "support request page". Great, I thought -- so I clicked on it. And it demanded that I log in.

Earth to Skype: If you require login for people to get support, you aren't providing support for identity/password issues! Sheesh.

I verified that I can still log in on the tablet, then went back to their web site for one more try at "forgot account name". At which point it told me I've tried too many times and come back tomorrow.

By the way, neither help@skype.com nor support@skype.com is a valid address. I'm not even going to bother with postmaster or webmaster; most customer-facing sites I've tried to contact send those into a black hole, never mind that at least the former is supposed to always be defined.

Grumble. It was to be expected that Microsoft would be bad for Skype in the end, but this particular set of failures puzzles me.

By the way, I tried downloading the Windows client anyway just to see if I could log in there with my email address -- break the tie vote between the tablet (yes) and the web site (no). But it wants to make Bing my default search engine (no obvious way to turn that off) in every browser on my machine, so, um, no thanks. It has a checkbox (on by default but can be unchecked) to change my home page (again, in all browsers), but there's nothing about disabling the Bing thing. I'm willing to give IE over to Microsoft (and/or corporate IT) to violate however they like, but I draw the line at inviting tampering with the browsers I actually rely on.

Skype: this is not the way to build customer engagement. Maybe I'm better off just using my cell phone.

The first time I traveled for work with my employer I saw that I could register frequent-flyer account numbers with them and they would do the right thing there. I didn't yet have a frequent-flyer account on the carrier we usually use, but I figured I could come back and add that later.

I downloaded the airline's app, used the confirmation number for the flight as an entry point, and created an account with them. The app did all the right things for that trip.

I recently booked another trip and noticed that I hadn't yet entered the frequent-flyer account number in my travel profile (and so the app couldn't find it for me). Ok, I figured -- I'll just ask the app for my account number so I can add it to the profile. (Meanwhile, I had to use an actual phone to talk to an actual human being to connect this flight to my account.)

Nope, no way to get the account number in the app -- I'm signed in, but I apparently don't need to know the account number so they're not going to trouble me with a line in "settings" or some such.

I searched my email and found the "welcome to (us)" notice, but it didn't contain the account number either.

So I went to the web site, at which point I had to log in. After failing with my standard password algorithm I went down the "forgot password" path, which is when I discovered that my algorithm wouldn't work with them (see rant below), hence the failed login. So I reset my password with their insecure rules, logged in on the web site, and therein found my account number, which I then added to my corporate travel profile. I suspect I'll need this password at most one more time (if the app challenges me for it because it changed, which it hasn't yet).

All of this could have been averted if either the app or the welcome email had a way to find the account number. Sheesh.

In theory, now, everything should be wired up: next time I need to book corporate travel on this airline the flights will automatically show up in the app and I'll never need to directly interact with the airline. That wiring makes things easy, but it was way harder than it should have been to get the information in order to effect that wiring.

Rant: In these modern times, why in the world does anybody have password rules that do not permit any low-order ASCII character? No punctuation except periods and underscores? What is this nonsense?

Dear First Data (online payment system):

If, on the first page of the transaction, you asked me for the credit-card type, and then on the second page you gave me a text-entry box for the card number that allowed enough characters for me to type the spaces between the groups of numbers on the card, do not get all snippy at me about "wrong format". First, you should have told me "no spaces" up front; second, you shouldn't have let me type more than 16 characters there for my Visa card. You had enough information to present a correct-for-my-card-type input box and remove all doubt. It's not 1995 any more; we have web technologies that can handle this. Actually, given your multi-page setup, we could totally have done that in 1995 too. I think I did, actually.

Also, after clicking the "pay" button I should not be presented with a blank page that takes nearly two minutes to show a receipt, leaving me wondering what happened. A simple "working, please wait" could do wonders.

I would be happy to refer you to someone who could fix your user-experience problems for a reasonable fee.

Air Canada sold me a ticket that couldn't possibly work, treated me badly, and cost me two days, and then they refused to compensate me (there's way more there that I haven't published, ending with them telling me to get lost). So I filed a complaint with First National Bank of Omaha, the issuer of my VISA card, in late July.

The first-tier customer-support rep who took my call collected very basic information about my complaint and told me that a representative would call. Instead I received a letter a couple weeks later, in mid-August, saying they had investigated my claim but, since Air Canada had transported me, albeit badly, there was nothing they could do. I called the person who signed the letter, and our conversation went roughly like this (I'm summarizing slightly):

Me: This is not how your representative said this would go. I'm very disappointed that my case was closed without even talking with me. By the way, I'm a customer of 19 years who's only once before ever asked you for anything.

Her: They did transport you. If you hadn't used the rest of the ticket we could have helped you. You have to take it up with them.

Me: When the problem arose I was stranded in another city. Three times. They had me over a barrel, don't you think? Also, they sold me a ticket that could not possibly work; isn't that at the least misfeasance if not fraud?

Her: I can talk to their bank (instead of the merchant) and try to work something out. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't -- it's basically a professional courtesy. What do you think is fair compensation? A full refund probably isn't going to happen.

Me: They did transport me, as you said, but they messed up my vacation and cost me extra money besides. I think a refund of half the ticket price is fair.

Her: I'll see what I can do. It may take a month.

Today I received a letter saying they have credited me for half the ticket price. The letter says "this is an attempt" and that if the merchant disputes it they will have to charge me again. So now we wait. Let's hope that this bank-to-bank negotiation is usually settled at that level without further interference.

I've finally distilled my pictures from Israel into a single album (68 photos). Lots of parks and sculptures, and a bunch in and around the Old City.

Album (Picasa)

I still owe more posts about the trip, including the program at Shalom Hartman, davening at Shira Chadasha, and miscellaneous other things. Oh, and for the curious, my complaint against Air Canada is currently at VISA. Next up on that front will be Christopher Elliott (thanks for the tips).

I sent copies of my Air Canada complaint to the CEO/President, Chairman, and Senior VP of Customer Relations (with suitable wrapper text to explain why they were getting this). Yesterday I got email from an assistant for Mr. Rovinescu, the CEO/President. She hasn't given me permission to publish the letter, so I will summarize:

She is disheartened to hear of my experience. Given my description, she can understand how frustrating that was. She regrets that their call center let me down and is sorry for the poor impression their discourteous employees left me with. As a gesture of goodwill, she would like to offer me 40% off the base fare for my next Air Canada trip, provided I complete it within a bit less than a year. They do not cover consequential expenses, but nonetheless require my original receipts for same for auditing purposes.

That does not help at all, and since it's not a voucher for a fixed amount I don't think I could sell it usefully. (I haven't read the fine print and don't know if it's even transferable.) This is the reply I sent:

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, I'm an infrequent traveler; I've only flown three times in the last decade and would not be able to use a discount in the next year. (Even if I could, I'm sure you can understand my reluctance to book my next trip with your airline.) A discount on future travel also doesn't help me with expenses incurred now. Is there anything better you can do to remedy this terrible episode?

(Belately I see that there is one error in that. I now realize I've flown four times, not three. This does not change the substance.)

VISA is prepared to dispute the charge if I can't settle the problem with the airline, but of course we would both like to try the direct approach first. I'm not yet sure of the process should VISA get involved; do we go to some sort of arbitration or what? Air Canada already has my money, but I guess VISA can take it back.

This is the complaint I am about to submit through Air Canada's web form. I'm posting it here to summarize and to give them a place to post comments if they choose.

Also, a request: if any of you link to this elsewhere (which is fine with me; it's a public post), please let me know. I am mindful of the laws of lashon hara (hurtful speech) in posting this; I believe I am on the correct side of them, but I do want to make sure that any followup from Air Canada reaches the places my post(s) did. Thank you.
( Read more... )

I'm supposed to be 2+ hours into a flight right now. But apparently I'm not allowed to have nice things, and Air Canada needed to go for a clean sweep. Ten (!) hour delay this time! The mind boggles.

BTW, even though they had my email address and (local) phone number, there was no contact. I knew I couldn't print a boarding pass at the hotel and Internet there was kind of expensive anyway, so I didn't see it before I left. (Though I don't know if it was even posted; someone behind me in line said he had checked a couple hours earlier.)

They wanted to put me on a combination that would get me home around noon tomorrow. I asked if they could do any better and explained the urgency. After more than three hours of standing in lines I have a flight through Newark that gets me there around 8AM. And, learning from history, I confirmed that if that connection fails, there's another flight an hour later. They claimed to be unable to put me on the El Al flight leaving at 4PM for bureaucratic reasons, grumble.

This may surprise some given the comments in another thread, but most of the agents I've dealt with here have been polite. (One seemed to have no respect for the queue, though; she kept pushing me aside because I was going to be here all day anyway, but I didn't want to be in her Internet-deprived office all day! Sheesh.)

I came to the airport hoping to get an upgrade as partial compensation for the difficulties they caused on my trip here. Instead I'm begging for a flight home a mere 10-12 hours late and, of course, I'll get whatever seat nobody else wanted (middle, I assume) and I have to assume I won't be able to eat the meal and plan accordingly. I will be contacting Air Canada's customer service when I get home, and frankly, I want a full refund. This is freaking ridiculous.

I'm done with Air Canada after this. I might also be done with Israel; we'll see when I calm down more. It is too frustrating to try to get there and back from Pittsburgh. At the very least I am done with solo major travel.

TL;DR: Not one but two late flights causing me to miss connections, and I've lost a day of my vacation (and a lecture I wanted to attend). Most of the Air Canada reps didn't seem to give a hoot about passengers. (Note: the flight crews are not included in that statement; they were fantastic. The rest of AC could learn from them.)

An open letter to Air Canada:

( Read more... )

All I wanted to do was to buy some stamps.

The last time I did this (a couple years ago, I think), I went to the USPS web site, chose my stamps, and supplied a credit card and shipping address. It took about three minutes.

Last night I went through the following process:

1. I dug through product pages; the generic "forever" stamps that almost everybody wants are no longer the first thing you see.

2. I also wanted some pretty stamps for some invitations, so I browsed those. Clicking on the link for a specific product to get a closer look and then going back to the previous page reset the page values I had set (specifically: show all, instead of in batches of twelve). So after the first time I launched new tabs to view products.

3. Some of these invitations are going to Canada so I had to look up the postage rate. This involved approximately the following, all in form-like interfaces: choose type of package, choose shape of envelope (kind of a stumper; is my card a "letter" or a "square envelope"? no sizes were given), choose weight, and finally get a price. I'd been hoping for a simple rate table or at least for the most-common question ("how much to send a letter?") to be answered up front.

4. Now that I had everything in my shopping cart I thought I was within a minute or so of being done. That "crash-tinkle" sound you heard was my hopes being shattered. My options at this point were to log in or create an account.

5. I tried the username and password that I would have used had I created an account last time and got told "no such user". (Bruce Schneier is cringing, I'm sure, but at least they saved me the trouble of trying different passwords.) There is still no option to just pay already. Ok, I'll create an account. (By the way, Firefox offered to remember that password I typed. This will be relevant later.)

6. The password-entry form includes an assessment of the strength of my password. Nice. It thus came as a total surprise to me that my strong password was also not a valid password. They said special characters were fine, but I guess they didn't mean all of them. I simplified to a less-strong password.

7. The personal-information page requires a phone number. I typed it with hyphens and it accepted that. It thus came as a surprise to me when, on a later page, I couldn't put spaces in my credit-card number. In neither case was there any direction about formatting.

8. I had failed to notice that giving my credit card a "nickname" (what? I'm only giving you one!) was a required step. Clearing all form fields and telling me to try again was unnecessarily rude.

9. I finally had an account and now had to log in. I wondered whether my shopping cart would still be intact after all this, but it was. Yay. 20+ minutes after I'd started, I was finally able to submit my order.

10. After signing out, I decided to sign back in and let Firefox remember some data this time, since I'd had to violate my password patterns and might not remember. The login dialogue wasn't the form that I'd previously encountered but, rather, some pop-up (Flash?) thing that was very sensitive (had to try a few times to get it). Firefox couldn't detect this as a login dialogue. So I guess when I come back in a couple years I'll be finding out what the "forgot password" link does. This won't be helped by the fact that I had to provide answers to security questions including the word "favorite". Pfft.

I liked it better when the minimalist approach worked. Yeah, sure, now they'll remember my address and credit-card number, but it takes me 30 seconds to type those and anyway the credit-card info will probably be stale by the next time I need stamps. I'd have to make an awful lot of transactions before last night's time sink would pay for itself.

Followup June 15: This is how they shipped my stamps to me. Those pieces of cardboard are pretty thick. I think they could have done better.

( Read more... )

Dear Verizon,

Thank you for the phone message alerting me to the impending expiration of the credit card I have on file with you. Unfortunately, the URL you gave in the phone message does not exist, and when I searched your site for "pay" and "credit card" I did not find the page (that you assured me exists) where I could update this information. Your URL contained "pay online", so I had high hopes for "pay".

So then I tried your "contact us" link, which tried mightily to direct me to chat, forums, help, and all manner of unsatisfactory-to-me (but easy-for-you) destinations. (Let's hear it for crowd-sourced support, eh?) When I reached the "send email" option I found a form (not an email address) that, among things, asked for my name, phone number, and email address (twice). It also asked for an account number, but since you bill my credit card directly I've never seen a paper bill and have no idea what that number is -- so that "sample bill" image didn't help. Your form required that I type something there and wouldn't let me type letters, so my plan to signal this with "unknown" was foiled. It wouldn't accept "?" either.

So, I'm sorry that my "account number" of 0 will slow you down, but you left me no choice. I hope you can still manage to respond to me, as otherwise we'll have to wait for Visa to decline a payment to you. On the plus side, I'll bet that will get you to talk to me.

By the way, I'd be happy to refer you to web-site developers who could greatly improve the usability of your site for a small investment.

Oh, also, I'm still waiting for the opportunity to spend more money with you each month for FiOS. Surely my neighborhood full of geeks, university folks, and the like would make it profitable for you to run fiber over here. Practically everybody else in the east end seems to have it...

How companies learn your secrets is a long but interesting article on commercial data-mining. The case studied here is Target, leading with a bit of a fumble where they showed they knew a high-school student was pregnant before her family did, but practically everybody analyzes their customers like this. This article explains some of what they're doing and why it works.

"We have the capacity to send every customer an ad booklet, specifically designed for them, that says, 'Here's everything you bought last week and a coupon for it,' " one Target executive told me. "We do that for grocery products all the time." But for pregnant women, Target's goal was selling them baby items they didn't even know they needed yet.
"With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly," the executive said. "Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We'd put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We'd put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.
"And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn't been spied on, she'll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don't spook her, it works."

I know someone who used to get together with friends every now and then to randomly redistribute store affinity cards to mess up the data mining. I don't know how long hat will keep working (if indeed it still does) -- unless you also pay with cash. Personally, I just assume that any transaction I make that involves a credit card, affinity card, or disclosure of an address or phone number is not really private.

Last night my four-month-old phone (my first smartphone) died -- wouldn't power on and didn't light up when plugged into a charger. This said "dead battery" to me; I briefly considered popping and replacing the battery on the theory that that's probably the control-alt-delete of the phone world, but I was stymied by the case.

A word about the case: I didn't get the phone with a case and wasn't looking for one. I'm pretty careful with my portable electronics and don't expect to be using a phone in situations where I'm likely to drop or crush it. A month after I got the phone the screen-protector peeled off and they replaced it since those are supposed to last a year or more. (So maybe the initial application was faulty, I figured.) A month after that the second one peeled off, despite my being very careful in how I handled the phone. I carry my phone in an otherwise-empty pocket, same as bunches of other people; this should not happen. So that time the guy suggested that a case would help hold it down; the price of the case was comparable to the price of a two-pack of protectors, so I grudgingly bought a case and he put it on for me.

I've not had cause to try to remove the case since then, until last night when I found I wasn't sure how to do it without damaging something. And this "pop the battery" idea was just a theory anyway. So today I visited the T-Mobile store and spoke with Matt.

Matt's first guess was "confused phone", not "dead battery", and he took the case off, popped the battery, put it back in, and plugged the phone into a charger. This time it responded. I asked him to show me how he'd taken the case off and he said that it's very fussy. He then went to put it back on so he could show me, and discovered that it wouldn't go -- something had cracked or bent or something. He apologized for breaking the case and replaced it with a new one. I decided at that point that if somebody who probably does this dozens of times a week couldn't succeed, there's no hope of me doing it -- next time I need to access the battery I'll take it back to the store.

From Matt's point of view this is probably "stupid-customer 101" stuff, but he never said anything that implied that I was anything less than a smart person in an unfamiliar situation. He was very friendly and helpful and not at all condescending. While we were waiting to confirm that my battery could hold a charge, I overheard as he helped someone with questions even more basic than mine -- a customer trying to learn how to use a new "plain old phone". He was just as courteous and patient with that customer.

The salesperson told us when we bought the phones that we could come in any time for help; this wasn't just a sell-and-forget operation. Today they delivered on that, and I'll be asking specifically for Matt if I need to go back there again.

A few days ago I wanted to order some books from Amazon. While I was getting a delivery anyway, I decided to throw in a small kitchen item that I hadn't been able to find locally and that Amazon sells directly. I wanted two of said item.

The shopping cart would not allow me to order two of them, though I saw no "almost out of stock" notice on the product page. So I split it into two orders, since I was ordering enough to be able to do that and keep the free shipping, and I was able to put one of the kitchen items in each order. Mission accomplished, though it felt a bit silly.

Then yesterday the email came. For my convenience (and at no extra charge), each of these orders was split into two, one for books and one for the kitchen item. (Presumably they ship from separate warehouses.) I will apparently be receiving four packages from them, two on Tuesday and two on Wednesday. This is more than "a little" silly. :-) It could have been two instead of four, but the interface stumped me. I'm glad I didn't also throw in, say, a clothing item, a DVD, and some electronic gadget into the order; mail carriers have enough hassles this time of year without my help.

Netflix's business people may have their heads in anatomically-challenging places, but their customer support continues to be excellent. We recently ordered the first disc of a three-disc set (The 10th Kingdom). The sleeve proclaimed a running time of 4:25 and the DVD had a label on it. At around the three-hour mark play stopped with a directive to switch to side B.

This does not fit neatly into any of the categories of problem supported by their web site, so I called. I explained the problem to a friendly, sympathetic rep and said that since this is the first of a multi-disc set I have no way of knowing if I've seen everything that's supposed to be there -- yeah, it ended in the middle of the story, but you expect that. So I don't know if they have a problem with their discs or with the time labeling.

"Amanda" said she would send a replacement for that DVD (just in case the problem is a label on a two-sided disc, though that would be a manufacturer error) and also the next disc in the series so I can tell whether there seems to be anything missing in the story. I have the one-DVD-at-a-time plan, so I expected to have to do this in stages.

I've only had a few problems over the course of my Netflix membership, but they have all been handled well. I'm glad to see that's still true after their semi-restructuring.

Tangentially, how can I get GMail to stop treating my Netflix mail as spam? I would have thought that adding the relevant address to my contacts list (which I would otherwise never do) would suffice, but no. Nor did manually reclassifying a couple dozen messages as "not spam" make any difference; where's that "filter bubble" that delivers personalized results when you need it?

Followup: The second disc picks up right where the first left off. The error is not in the discs but in the labelled duration. I'm not sure how to get Netflix to fix that to avoid confusing future viewers.

This blog post ends with an email exchange between the author and Amazon customer support that made me laugh and sigh at the same time. (You can skip right to it without loss of context.) I think they need to tune the AI or involve humans a little more. (Granted that it's also challenging to effectively use irony, sarcasm, and humor when contacting anybody's customer-service department.)

This morning I found my 2008 Honda Fit unable to start. After checking for obvious problems I called AAA. It turned out to be a dead, not just drained, battery; a jump would get it started but it wasn't going to recharge. (The symptoms suggested battery and not starter, but while waiting for AAA I called around to find a place I could have it towed to and repaired today if needed. The nearby Honda dealership was unable to help me with that, but Mark's Auto Repair in Greenfield was happy to oblige.)

Now my car only has 11,000 miles on it, so a dead battery came as something of a surprise to me. I think I replaced the battery in my Mazda (15 years, 75,000 miles) once. Maybe I got a dud, I figured -- but it's out of warranty, so what can you do? I paid Honda to replace it. (Aside: it is a non-standard size, so the AAA guy didn't have one on his truck. I didn't know "normal" cars had unconventional batteries.)

But then I did some Google research, and it turns out that lots of people have had this problem with the 2007 and 2008 Fits. One of them also reported it happening at 11,000 miles. Most of them encountered it while still under warranty, but I wasn't so lucky. (Hey, I cherish my 4.2-mile commute, ok?) But this is clearly a known problem, so I called the service manager at Honda and left a honey-laden message saying that I've been a very happy Honda customer except for this little blip, and I got bitten by a known problem, and is there anything he could do to lessen the sting of that repair bill? Now I wait...

To add insult to injury, today's mail (which arrived after all this happened) contained a 15%-off-service coupon from Honda. :-(

Sunday I wrote about the current Cirque show and our bad seats. I also sent them polite email expressing my disappointment and suggesting that they downgrade seats with obstructed views. (I figured the show was a sunk cost; I was trying to modify their future behavior.) I received an email reply asking me to call them, which I did today.

The person I spoke with said that the posts were indicated on the seating chart but that they're hard to see. On re-examination I can infer them from some "cut-outs" in the seating area, but I don't see anything that looks like "obstruction here" signals. He also referred to a 3D view, which I couldn't find a path to today. Perhaps it is only available during the seat-selection phase of a purchase; I don't know. He said they were unlikely to reclassify seats but he would look into clarifying the chart.

Nonetheless, he said, he wanted us to be able to see the show and offered free tickets to another show. They're only here for a few more days and the remaining dates don't work, so I declined that. At that point I thought he might offer a discount on their next show, or (on a really good day) a partial refund. What he actually did was to refund the base ticket price (he apologetically explained that he couldn't do anything about the service fee). He said that they want their customers to have a good experience. This is more than I expected and has repaired the negative feelings I had for them (though I'll still be wary about the seating chart in the future).

An aside: when I called their 800 number I was greeted with "blah blah blah... for service in English, press 2". This mono-lingual American is not used to being on the other side of that branch. :-)

Monica

Pixel fail: followup

Pixel fail

fluff break

followup: Stack Exchange user-interface changes

not the customer experience I expected

I like my credit-card provider

yes, user experience matters

Skype is customer-hostile now?

making things easy = making things hard

design failure

Air Canada fails, but First National VISA comes through

Israel pictures

Air Canada followup

Air Canada complaint

unbelievable

an open letter to Air Canada

user-experience fail

Verizon, surely you can do better than this

data mining

good customer service: Matt at Sq. Hill T-Mobile

it's kind of like the sorceror's apprentice

better than I expected from Netflix

customer-service misfire

that was premature

Cirque du Soleil followup

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