customer service

Last week my wife called me to say that her laptop — my old Dell Latitude D610 — wouldn’t boot. Of course her whole life is on this machine and she had a paper due that evening and, no, she didn’t have any backups. So I left the office around 3pm to try to save the day. Alas, after about five hours troubleshooting and researching and on the phone with Microsoft and Dell customer support, I was forced to admit that the hard drive was toast. Three different Dell technicians all gave me the same advice: Reformat the hard drive and reinstall WindowsXP.

Doing that would have deleted all of her data — including her 3000+ iTunes library. This was clearly not a good solution.
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Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality

The new member registration form at the Blue Cross of California website has what I consider to be several major bugs.

• A user’s username must contain a number and a letter. Because this is not exactly a ‘net “standard”, they need to do a better job of bringing this to your attention.
• When you submit the form with an error — for example, not including a number in your username — any values selected in drop-down combo boxes are reset to their defaults. This means that you have to re-select your “Group Member Type” and “Secret Question” before submitting the form again. If you don’t re-select these fields, the submission fails.
• When you submit the form with an error — for example, if you didn’t include a number in your username and then re-submitted the form without re-selecting your “Group Member Type” and “Secret Question” — the two password fields (which you entered twice to avoid typos) are cleared as a security precaution. You must enter these values again.
• When you submit the form with an error — for example, if you didn’t include a number in your username and the re-submitted the form without re-selecting your “Group Member Type” and “Secret Question” and then re-submitted the form without re-entering your password twice — you really have a strong desire to punch your monitor.

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Rochambeau the front line. Seth is brilliant.

When I have the opportunity I am apt to choose the underdog. Aside from the sinfully delicious Cinnamon Dolce Latte, for example, I dislike Starbucks and will generally go to the mom-and-pop coffee shops scattered around Los Angeles. More often than not lately, though, I am finding that Starbucks’ secret superpower is consistency. Mussolini kept the trains on time, and the Seattle coffee giant manages to use economies of scale and various other buzzwords I remember from my one college economics class to open earlier and provide better service than the little guys.

This morning I stopped at Bueller’s Bagels on my way to work. It was 5:55 and they don’t officially open, apparently, until six. A Mexican radio station was blaring, there was nobody manning the counter, and there was no coffee ready. I waited patiently for about five minutes — an eternity when you’re standing in an otherwise empty bagel shop at sunrise — and then walked across the street to one of the ten Starbucks located on my way to the office. They open at five. I walked into a store bustling with activity, with lovely music playing, and with a bacchanalian amount of caffeinated beverages to drink.

A medium coffee at Bueller’s, including tip, is about $2.50. A medium CDL at Starbucks is $4.00 with tip. This morning my coffee was free. The cash register was malfunctioning so the baristas had been instructed to just give customers their morning sustenance gratis. You can’t beat that. Sometimes the underdog loses for a good reason.

At some point about fifteen years ago I subscribed to Sports Illustrated. With the exception of a tragic few months during which most of my mail was trapped shuffling between coasts, I haven’t missed an issue. Generally I ignore all the commemorative editions and t-shirt and sweatshirt offers; I have enough t-shirts and sweatshirts to clothe most of the Sudan, and Lord knows I have far, far too many back issues that I refuse to trash. But when I saw this morning the inevitable Gators Championship Package I knew I was going to have to make a phone call.

My annual subscription automatically renewed at the end of December and the Championship DVD, hard-bound edition, and t-shirt is only available to new subscribers, so I was ready for a fight. To my surprise the helpful customer service rep at SI graciously helped me credit my existing subscription towards a “new” one so I could get the deal. I am going to go out on a limb and credit that to the fact that the call center I reached is located in Ocala, Florida.

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Dear IHOP,
At the end of September I visited your brand new Marina Del Rey location with several of my co-workers. Everyone in my office had been excited for months while we waited for you to open. When you decided last year to demolish the friendly, inexpensive, personal, small-town bagel shop that we all knew and loved, we were very sad. But we were glad when we learned that an IHOP — a friendly, inexpensive, personal, small-town restaurant — was taking its place.

I ordered a big breakfast even though it was my lunch break. We all did. Terrific eggs, two pancakes smothered in strawberries, bacon, ham, hash browns. So good. I thought that $11.94 was a lot to pay for breakfast and coffee and an orange juice, but I understand that you have to charge $3.00 for a glass of orange juice because oranges are so hard to get here in southern California. I left a $3.06 tip because I like nice round numbers and the service was pretty good.

Imagine my surprise when I connected to my bank to synchronize Microsoft Money that night and realized I was charged $25.00 instead! Sure, I suppose it could have been a typo, but I’m guessing that Hector the waiter pocketed that extra ten-spot with glee. My penmanship isn’t brilliant, but I’m fairly certain that anyone can tell the difference between my 1s and my 2s. I was a little bit bothered, but not irate.

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Where do I go to complain about grocery store shenanigans? I’m at the end of my rope with Ralph’s, the local supermarket here in Los Angeles. There are two things they are doing to blatantly defraud customers and it’s driving me crazy.

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We have a Norstar phone system in my office. Sometimes people leave me voicemails on this system. When I look at my phone, it shows “Messages” in the little digital display so I know I must check my messages. To do this I press the “Check VM” button and enter my super secret password. Here’s what drives me crazy: The system robot says, “You have three new messages. To listen to your new messages, press 2,” and then ten other options. I am checking my voice mail. Of course I want to hear my new messages. Why in the world would I check my voicemail and not want to hear my new messages? (Cingular handles this perfectly, by the way. When I check my cell phone voice mail the system robot says, “You have seventeen new messages. The first message was received yesterday at 2 pm from some phone number, and here it is …”)

That’s only mildly annoying, though. What really drives me over a cliff is that once I have listened to the (usually quite unimportant) message, I have to listen to all NINE options before I’m able to delete the thing. “Press 1 to listen to the message envelope. Press 2 to forward the message. Press 3 to reply to the message. Press 4 to replay the message. Press 5 to hear the next message. Press 6 to hear the previous message. Press 7 to save the message. Press 8 to delete the message. Press 9 to hear more options.” I have to listen to all of that before I can delete the damn thing! If I press 8 while the system robot is still talking it ignores me until it has finished reading me all nine options! So. The vast majority of the time, I am simply going to delete the message. The option to delete should be NUMBER ONE. And under no circumstances in any universe should I possibly be forced to listen to all the options before making my choice!

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How’s this for retarded? I recently moved. Yesterday I went to Washington Mutual’s website to change my address for my checking account. Today I realized that I am out of checks. That’s okay. I can order checks on-line and they get delivered in like three days. But when I went to the website to order a new set of checks, I got this message:

We’re sorry. Our records indicate that you have changed your address within the last 30 days. For your security, we do not allow web- or phone-based check orders within 30 days of an address change. Please visit a financial center or wait 30 days to submit this order.

Gaah! How in the world is this making my life more secure??

CapitalOne’s website is just terrible. About every third time I click the “LogIn” button on the front page it simply redirects me to the front page. Even on my work connection the entire site loads like it’s running on a 1992 486 box. There are ridiculous pop-ups thrown at me every time I attempt to download a statement. The layout is cluttered with AdSense-esque ads and 63 small-print disclaimers on every page. This is a company that must have money falling out of their pockets — why can’t they have a fast, slick web site? Even Washington Mutual — my local bank — has an infinitely better system.

NOTICE:
Threatening a state employee is unlawful and may result in a fine and / or imprisonment.
CA Penal Code Section 71

from a sign posted at the California Department of Motor Vehicles

The California DMV has an extraordinary, superb, terrific license plate Online Registration Renewal system. I was able to register my tag in about 2 minutes and pay by credit card. What a beautiful thing! I love technology. I love that the ‘net makes tedious crud like renewing my license plate so simple sometimes.

Here’s my problem: I had to pay four dollars ($4) extra! There was a $4 “convenience fee” for registering on-line instead of at the DMV office! WTF?!? I should get charged $4 less for saving them paperwork! Boneheads.

The Daily Grill is one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles. It’s a bit pricey, but the portions are huge, the service is great, and the food is delicious. The night before I left for Ryan’s wedding, I visited the Studio City Daily Grill with my girlfriend and family.

It was the first night of their new “Summer Menu” and I bravely ordered the Chicken in a Bucket. I had eaten most of my mashed potatoes (a DG favorite), my cornbread, and my salad and was well into my third piece of fried chicken when I noticed something just wasn’t kosher. I was engaged in a fairly animated conversation and hadn’t been paying close attention to my food, but something tasted very strange. I inspected my chicken breast a bit more closely and realized it was raw!

I’m not talkin’ “a little undercooked”. I mean it was bloody! Gah! So of course we called the manager to our table and complained and such. I was quite scared that I would be knocked out with food poisoning the night before I was supposed to get on a plane to be the Best Man! The manager, Charlye Martin, was painfully apologetic and polite. He took my address and was honestly concerned; he made sure that I knew they were sorry and handled the situation very gracefully.

A few days ago I received a tremendously nice, personal letter from Charlye and the Daily Grill expressing their regret. He enclosed $35 worth of gift certificates, took full responsibility for the mistake, and in no way tried to make excuses. It was refreshing to see such a display of good customer service and I just wanted to make a note of it here.