Consumer Evangelism

Customer service experiences: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Monday, September 10, 2007 , early morning

Merrick dry dog food

You know you’re a little bit strange when a friend wants to send you a nice gift, and decides the gift will be a 15 lb. bag of Merrick dry dog food smile I’ve always been curious about Merrick’s dry food for dogs (they don’t make a dry cat food yet), and none of the stores in my area sell it.  It’s also pretty expensive, so the gift of Cowboy Cookout food was appreciated for a number of reasons.

I fed the kibble to our two large dogs, and they truly did seem to enjoy it.  There are some kibbles they prefer to others, and Merrick was one they just dove right into.  The kibble pieces release a “gravy” if you stir them with some warm water, and the dogs both licked every drop of moisture from their dishes.  In the poop department, their stools were smaller than they would be with a brand like Solid Gold or Canidae (generally a sign that the food has a lot of absorbable nutrients, without a lot of fillers).

My biggest disappointment with the food was that it didn’t look like the picture on the packaging.  The bag shows pieces of dried potato, carrots, and peas, but I searched the entire 15lb. bag and found just two small bits of dried potato.  I wrote to Merrick to mention this and they didn’t reply—their customer service is sometimes a bit lacking.  It’s unfortunate, because they make great food, but they don’t know how to handle comments which aren’t just glowing reviews.  All I wanted them to say was that the bag of food I received was unusual, or that the photo on the bag isn’t a representation of what’s in the bag, etc., but they didn’t utter a peep. 

If you feed your dog dry food, and have access to Merrick, and can afford it, I think your dog will enjoy it.  And if you buy Cowboy Cookout, let me know if you find any peas or carrots in it, will you?!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/10 at 07:45 AM
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Monday, September 03, 2007 , the wee hours

Free online trades and a donation to autism research

I like to dabble in inexpensive stocks when we have extra cash, and I was happy to find out about a new online trading site called Zecco which offers up to 40 trades each month at no cost.  That means I can buy tiny amounts of things like penny stocks (for example, I can buy 100 shares of POPN for $1), and not have to pay at least a $10 transaction fee.  I opened my account last week and was approved within 24 hours, but I haven’t made any trades yet as I’m still waiting to hook up my bank account for ACH transfers.  I think the site looks good, though, and I enjoy the extra content like the blogs and forums.

I’m posting about it because if I refer any new members to the site before the end of October, Zecco.com will make a $50 donation to the Autism Society of America.  I know that’s a cause which is close to many people online, and seeing as it’s free to open an account (and you’re under no obligation to trade), I thought I should mention it.  $50 is a lot of money (it’s 5000 shares of POPN!), so if you’ve considered doing any online trading (or just want to try a new service), I encourage you to sign up.  I don’t receive anything for posting the link so I’ve got no other motive than helping someone else with fundraising.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/03 at 01:43 AM
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Sunday, August 05, 2007 , evening

My little black rain cloud

I’d like to share one more black cloud moment, and then I promise, I promise that I’ll be all sunshiny and lollipops for the rest of the month.  I just need a moment to gripe.

About two and a half years ago, Flippy and I had a bit of extra money.  We wanted to invest it in our online business, which was rapidly tanking, so we were looking for something we could still do via the Internet in addition to running our websites.  We decided on dye sublimation.  That’s a method of printing which allows you to print images on almost any flat surface (for example, everything from mouse pads to t-shirts to floor tiles).  We’re both very good with Photoshop, so we didn’t have the design learning curve, and we figured we could market any number of customized products online.  With that in mind, we purchased a mid-range dye sublimation setup at a trade show.  The package included an Epson printer which could be modified to take special ink, a large heat press (it weighs about 250 lbs.), and a mug press.  In addition, we received a lot of special transfer paper, lots of samples, bulk sublimation ink, and some special design software.

When the shipment arrived, we didn’t exactly know what to do with it.  The press was so large it had to go into the garage, but there was no table for it so it had to sit on the floor.  We quickly realized that we’d need to do some cleaning and tidying just to create a space where we could easily use the equipment, and I didn’t want to set up the special printer in an area where it would get full of cat hair.  In short, we just weren’t prepared, so we set the equipment aside and chipped away at the problem as time passed (we got a great deal at the trade show, so it was hard to pass up, and that’s how we ended up prepared to purchase yet not really prepared).  Eventually, I had a proper mount for the press, a cat-free room with a desk for the printer, and most importantly, the time to sit down and start to make this investment into a part-time job as we’d planned.  The only bad thing was that over two years had passed since we’d bought the equipment, so we were running a bit behind schedule smile

The unpacking of the printer only happened about three weeks ago, and I did it in my new “office”—the cat-free room I was so proud of, until Greg and Spiderman moved into it rasberry As I assembled the printer and did some test runs, I was confused because I couldn’t find the special ink attachment system we’d been shown when we bought the system.  I checked the shipping box again but I hadn’t missed anything, and the photo of the printer didn’t show the special ink dispensing system (the printer uses bulk ink, and not regular cartridges, so the ink attaches to the printer with bottles and tubing).  I pulled out our order receipt and saw a specific mention of “Easy Flow Ink System”, so I wasn’t crazy—there was supposed to be another printer piece to control the ink.  Long story short, the item was never sent to us, even though it’s listed as delivered on our invoice.  I thought the item was part of the printer, and that it would be packed in the printer box, so it never occurred to me to look elsewhere for it.  I did unpack and check every item we received (except the printer!), and it was hard to know if anything was missing because all the materials were so unfamiliar to me. 

I wrote to the vendor who sold us the entire setup, and explained what had happened.  Her “helpful” response was that I should have checked for the missing part sooner, and that there was nothing they could do to help me except to sell me a new ink system for $850.  I don’t know what I expected them to do, but I feel like there must have been some way to check their past inventory, and to know that a problem might have occurred.  I also feel like their cost on the ink system must be substantially lower than the retail price, so it probably wouldn’t break them to just send a replacement, or to offer it at a big discount.  And finally, it’s annoying for them to blame me for the problem, when they’re the ones who didn’t send us what we’d paid for.  I just wanted a bit of sympathy from them, but instead, I got a lecture about how I was irresponsible and hence, out of luck.  That’s not the way to get on my good side.

Setting the bulk ink problem aside for a moment, the printer did ship with conventional ink cartridges, so I was playing with it, printing some test sheets, getting to know the features, etc.  I took out the cartridges and put in a newer set, and suddenly, the printer stopped working.  It had a “red light of death on it”.  I’ve spent the past week trying to diagnose the problem by buying head cleaning systems, service manuals, more new ink cartridges, etc., but nothing was working.  I’ve crawled every printer helpsite and forum looking for answers, and even learned how to run all the super-secret printer diagnostics, but I couldn’t get it to print.  Finally this evening I found the problem: the printhead is damaged.  One of the contacts which must meet the ink cartridge has broken off completely.  Cost to repair this is $100 for the printhead, plus an estimate of $120 for labour.  Despite the fact the printer hasn’t even been out of its box for more than three weeks, its warranty expired long ago.

In summary, two and a half years ago we spent almost $5000 with a company called Conde. In exchange, they sent us a defective printer, and didn’t send us a bulk ink system, so we now need to invest over $1000 to repair and/or replace these items if we want to use them.  I totally acknowledge that I am to blame for not using the setup immediately when it arrived, however, I think most of us expect that when we pay a lot of money and are promised “the best”, that we’ll get products which work (and we’ll get what we ordered).  I think we also expect that the company will go out of their way to help us when a problem arises, because hey, if we spent $5K once, maybe we’ll spend it again, or maybe we’ll recommend them to friends.  $5000 is a really small investment for starting an entire business, and I know the idea might appeal to some of you, but I can definitely tell you what company I don’t think you should buy from, and that’s just sad.

We had a lot more disposable income a few years ago, obviously smile That was before health and work problems caught up with us and surprised us, so now is when I could really put that past investment to good use.  I’ve been so excited about it as I’ve been setting it up, but surprise, my excitement is waning!  I’m now thinking about just selling the heat press before we take any more losses, although the thing is so heavy it would have to be sold locally.  I just don’t know what we’ll end up doing.  We have a lot of income problems now that we should be able to ease using stuff we have on-hand, but it’s not working out as planned.

Anyway, that was the last little black rain cloud I wanted to vent about.  The whole thing has been annoying, from the missing items to the broken items to the “I told you so’s”.  I’ve never tried to fire up the heat press but I guess I should, because odds are, I’ll turn it on and it will emit a dramatic puff of smoke before it passes to the great beyond.  Or wherever dead heat presses go.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/05 at 08:01 AM
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Monday, June 18, 2007 , the wee hours

Pet supplies at Amazon grocery

I don’t know if many people are aware that Amazon.com sells groceries.  I’m also not sure if many people know that they sell a small but decent selection of pet treats and supplements in the grocery, and the prices are quite good as well.  The problem with Amazon grocery is that they tend to sell things in large lots, so if you want a box of Blue Dog Bakery dog biscuits (our dogs love those), you can’t buy just one box, you have to buy a case of six.  It works out quite well if you have a lot of dogs or can share the boxes with friends, but it’s not always practical for just one family.

I thought I’d mention Amazon grocery because they offer free shipping with a $25 order, and your order can be a combination of books, music, or catnip… it doesn’t matter.  If there’s a particular type of “people food” you use a lot of (we like Luna protein bars, for example), the per case prices plus free shipping are pretty hard to beat.  Ordering canned cat food from them would be fantastic if only they sold a brand other than Iams—they sell it by the case, and shipping is free, which is unheard of when it comes to ordering pet food.  They don’t seem to carry any dog food, though.  I think the grocery is still a work-in-progress, and I hope they’ll eventually expand to carry a better variety of items, and more unique items.  It’s tough to get too excited by cases of Pupperoni (unless you’re a dog, I guess).

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 06/18 at 12:14 AM
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Monday, January 29, 2007 , early evening

J2, JConnect, Jfax cannot be trusted to serve your business

Sorry to rain on the kitten parade with a rant.  Flippy and I signed up for a toll-free fax number with Jfax/J2/JConnect so we could receive contracts related to one of our part-time jobs.  We paid our credit card fee, received a phone number and PIN number, and I logged in to configure the account.  We even sent a test fax to ourselves and everything was fine.  So, we put the new phone number in all of our business emails, but today we noticed were weren’t receiving faxes that clients claimed to have sent.  I called J2 customer support and THEY GAVE OUR PHONE NUMBER TO SOMEONE ELSE!  The tech support rep IN INDIA (like I wasn’t apopletic already), then admonished me for allowing clients to send faxes to that number, telling me, “The current customer will get charges for those faxes”.  Yeah, well bite me Bangalore boy… you and your incompetent company, too.  I was given a new toll free number with three months of free service, but I don’t care… just one lost contract today is worth far more than $45 in free service.  How can I trust them with the business that pays our mortgage and our bills?  I’m furious (obviously) and disgusted, and if I felt litigious I’d just sue them for what we lost.

In any case, for goodness sake, don’t sign up for one of their “premiere” accounts and then use the number on letterhead or on a business card.  They may just pull the number out from under you, and you’ll have no recourse.  Can you imagine if Sprint or one of the phone companies just arbitrarily gave your phone number away?

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/29 at 07:22 PM
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Thursday, January 04, 2007 , late at night

My promised rant about US Airways

I know I promised you a rant about America West airline, but AW has actually been taken over by US Air.  Thus, this is a rant about US Air, with America West as the primary defendent.

When I lived in New Mexico, my parents briefly lived in southern California.  I was able to visit them often, and always flew via America West.  I accumulated 32000 frequent flier miles.  At one point I redeemed 20000 miles for vouchers to buy a ticket to visit my parents, but then I ended up moving to Las Vegas and they drove to visit me instead.  Then they moved back to Canada.  This was in March, 1999.

Fast-forward to today.  America West is owned by US Air, and I still have my “Flight Fund” frequent flier account, as well as my unused mileage certificates.  I contacted US Air a few days ago about my mileage account and was told it was “dormant” because I hadn’t used it in over three years.  If I wanted to reactivate the miles that were in it, I’d have to pay 1 cent per mile, plus $50 ($170 for 12000 miles), although the point is moot, because I was also told that any miles which went unused for three years had been taken away completely.  I was also told that my 20000 in mileage certificates were useless, and that they expired after one year.

Of course US Air has the right to make any rules and regulations they wants regarding their mileage programs, but that doesn’t mean the rules are fair.  I earned my 32000 miles by giving America West my money, and I chose to fly them (and sometimes even paid a higher fare than on Southwest) so I could earn a free airline ticket.  There’s no reason my account needs to be “dormant” (it can’t cost very much for their computer to store my file), and there’s no reason my mileage certificates shouldn’t still be valid.  I’d be completely willing to pay a redeposit fee if that was necessary.  Can you imagine if banks treated your money this way?  If you didn’t add any money in three years, they’d just take what was in your account.  If you withdrew money and didn’t spend it, it would become worthless after one year.

I’m mostly angry because I was excited that I’m finally able to visit Canada, and that I had a free ticket.  Not only don’t I have a free ticket, I don’t even have the 12000 lousy miles I thought I had left so I could start building up my account again.  It’s ridiculous that US Air can’t spare one empty seat on any of their flights for someone who could again be a frequent customer.  As it is, I’m going to try to avoid flying them completely, if I can—I’m not letting them take anything else from me.

I imagine this also means the 20000 miles I had in my American Airlines account are dead, too… I guess I’ll check that out next.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/04 at 11:07 PM
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Wednesday, December 27, 2006 , terribly early in the morning

I interrupt the festivities for a rant about Sears

You know you can always count on me for a good rant, even during the most festive time of year.

I’ve had a Sears account for over a decade, and for the past few years I’ve made my payments online.  I recently went to check to see if any payments were due, and I was hit with a message screen when I logged in.  The message said I had to choose three security questions to protect my account, and that the questions would be asked randomly when I login, to ensure there’s no fraudulent access to my account.  I have to choose these three security questions within my next three logins, or I’ll be locked out of my online account completely.

I figured the security questions would be the typical, “Mother’s maiden name”, and “city where you were born”, but oh no, the Sears people got creative.  Here is the entire list of security questions you have to choose from.  You’ll notice the questions are in groups of three, because you have to pick one question from each section.  How many of these could you answer:

  • Last name of kindergarden teacher
  • Place where your wedding reception was held
  • Favourite city, other than the city you currently live in
  • Favourite person from history
  • Foreign city you’d like to visit
  • Name of first school you attended
  • Name of childhood best friend
  • Name of favourite childhood pet
  • Youngest child’s nickname
  • Highest mountain you’ve been on top of
  • If you needed a new first name, what would it be
  • Name of childhood doctor
  • Favourite cartoon character
  • Favourite novel
  • Bosses first name at your first job
  • Last name of first grade teacher
  • What is your hobby
  • What is the name of your best man/maid of honour
  • Favourite fictional character
  • Model of first car
  • Favourite singer

Just for starters, these questions have a real heterosexual-skew to them, and I’m eliminated from answering the two questions about weddings, as well as the question about my “youngest child’s nickname”.  I don’t have a driver’s license, so never had a “first car”.  I’ve never climbed a mountain, or been on top of one, except for the “mountain” in Albuquerque and I have no idea if it has a name.  I had a turtle and budgie as childhood pets, but neither was a “favourite”.  I find all the “favourite” questions impossible, because I never have just one favourite anything—I’m interested in tons of stuff.  The question about hobbies made me laugh—yeah, like I only have ONE hobby.  I don’t know if I had a boss at my first job (TV reporter, seriously), and if I did, I have no idea who it was.  The name of my childhood doctor?!  Gee, what doctor in which city—I moved at least half a dozen times and had different doctors everywhere.  I can, ironically, name my kindergarden teacher and first grade teacher, but what if someone didn’t go to kindergarden (it’s optional in many states).  I actually skipped almost all of grade one and went quickly to grade two, so that could also be an issue.  Also, I don’t know the name of my first school, because I went to nursery school.  It’s fine for me to just guess at the answers, but if I’m hit with one of these questions out of the blue, would I remember what I answered?  Would I remember the exact phrasing?

My solution to this is that I’ve chosen three questions to answer, I’ve written the questions and the answers on a piece of paper, and I’ve taped them to my monitor for all to see.  Oh, the security!  I feel so much safer now that I have security questions that even I can’t answer.  I wrote to Sears to complain on the 22nd, but haven’t heard a peep from them, not even an auto-response.

End of rant, and soon I’ll post about Christmas.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/27 at 03:23 AM
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Monday, December 04, 2006 , early evening

Merrick Pet Care’s pet birthday cards

It’s no secret that I love to feed our pets Merrick pet food, even if I can’t always afford it.  Still, that’s my dream—to just have cases and cases of Merrick in the garage, so I never have to worry about feeding “Friskies” again.  Merrick has a birthday club, and if you’ve purchased at least $15 worth of food from their website during the year, you can sign up all your dogs and cats.  It’s almost the one-year birthdays of Bing, Tie, and Scampi, and in the mail they each received a birthday card from Merrick, and coupons for two free 5.5 oz. cans of Merrick cat food (six coupons in total)!  I think on the dog’s birthdays, they’ve received dried pork roll chews, but it would be fine with me if Merrick sent them canned food coupons as well.  It’s a nice little customer service perk that Merrick offers, so if you ever order from them, be sure to sign up all your pets.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/04 at 07:44 PM
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My little rant about Dell

Please indulge me while I engage in a small rant about Dell Computers.

I recently had to place an order with them.  I received an order acknowledgement email, and that was it.  For all intents and purposes my order “disappeared” after that point, and was never “Confirmed”.  I waited five days and finally decided I’d better try to get in touch with Dell, because I’d ordered with a 25% discount coupon which had since expired, so placing a new order would cost me more money.  I couldn’t contact customer service, because I hadn’t yet been given a customer number or order number, and one or both were required to even get to the customer service email/chat/phone page on the Dell site.  I couldn’t contact sales about “an order already placed” for the same reasons.  I finally was able to live chat with “Rajesh” in the pre-sales department, who of course couldn’t help me, although he did assign me a customer number so I could contact customer service.  I then talked to “Poonam” in customer service via live chat, who could tell me that my order was “on hold”, but could not specify the reason.  He told me to phone customer service during “regular business hours”, which didn’t include the weekends.  Today, I called customer service.  After going through an excrutiating menu, I finally spoke to someone in customer service and I had the most horrible time understanding his heavy Indian accent.  I think I might do okay speaking to him in person, and I love accents, and I love India and their culture, but this guy was extremely difficult to decipher.  I told him my email address included the words “cynicaldog”, and he spelled it back to me: s - i -n - a....

After half an hour or so, the customer service guy can’t help me, so he transfers me to someone he assures me can help.  After being on transfer hold for about five minutes, the line goes dead and I get a dial tone.

I have a temper tantrum for a few minutes, then call back and start the entire process over again.  This time, I thankfully get someone named Jose, with a Mexican accent.  I’m not sure if he was actually in Mexico, or just happened to have a Mexican accent and was in the US (or even in India, I guess), but he was delightful to speak to.  I could understand him!  Mexican accents, I’m comfortable with.  He could have spoken to me entirely in Spanish and he would have been easier to understand than the Indian guy.  Jose fixed my problem, which he described as, “at first there was a problem with your order but now there isn’t”, and now I think everything is fine.

Dear Dell (if you happen to read this), I have nothing against people in India wanting jobs, although I do have something against you for outsourcing.  Nevertheless, give your workers training to help them eliminate their heavy accents, you cheapskates.  The workers end up taking abuse (not from me, but from other frustrated customers) because they’re hard to understand, and it’s not their fault—it’s Dell’s fault.  Also, if there’s a problem with an order, send an effin’ email to the customer, you boneheads.  I had this EXACT same thing happen with Dell six years ago with two different orders, and it also took a number of phone calls to resolve.  At that time, I ended up ordering from Gateway because Dell just didn’t seem to want my money!  Both Flippy and I now have Dell desktop computers and monitors which we bought two years ago, and we love them, but we have no love for the company at all.  We also feel no loyalty whatsoever.  I wish Gateway was still a major force like they were so many years ago.

One humourous thing to arise from all this was the “psychology-speak” the customer service reps used.  During my two live chat sessions, the guys repeatedly used phrases like, “I understand how frustrated you must feel”, “I understand that this is an inconvenience for you”. and, “I’m sorry this is taking your valuable time”.  They must have had “appease the customer macros” built into their keyboards. 

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/04 at 06:57 PM
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Monday, November 13, 2006 , late evening

EV1 Servers can bite me

In early 2003, Flippy and looked at the outrageous website hosting bills we were racking up every month, and we decided it was time to make the move up to a dedicated server.  If it’s an unfamiliar concept, most small websites are hosted on shared servers --- one computer might hold data for 5000 or more websites, depending on size.  With a dedicated server, one “owner” controls everything on the server, and there’s no sharing.  It’s like renting an apartment vs. having your own home—when you have a dedicated server, you have more fancy options and growth opportunities because you make your own decisions.  Depending on the size of a server and the amount of bandwidth each month, the average fee for a dedicated server is about $300 (monthly).  Flippy and I started with one dedicated server from EV1Servers.net (at that time, it was called Rackshack.net), and then we added a second one.  At one point we had three servers, but we scaled it back to two.  We were always good, quiet customers who rarely needed tech support, and we were never in trouble for sending out spam, hosting illegal content, etc.

As many of you know, last month both our servers were hacked.  Whomever compromised the servers used them to set up phishing schemes, and to also set them up to send out spam emails.  This type of security information is totally over my head, so I was really scrambling to find help.  EV1 refused to help me diagnose any of the problems on the server, or to recommend someone to help us fix the problem—they just kept threatening to unplug us.  I asked for advice on their message board and no one came forward.  When I couldn’t figure out how to fix what had happened, I decided to rent a third server, a “clean” one, and to move all our websites there.  I could then cancel the accounts of both other servers and have them unplugged, and that would stop the spam mailings, the phishing, etc.  I had taught myself to install firewall programs and to tweak some security settings, so I thought a brand new start would be the best idea.

I went to the order page on the EV1 site to pick out a new server and the first thing to annoy me was the price.  There were fast, powerful servers with huge harddrives for a much lower monthly rental fee than we were paying for our inferior servers.  I picked a model out and ordered it, and was promised it would be set up in about 24 hours.  Five days later, the server was still not available.  I asked for help via live chat, I sent emails, I submitted support tickets, and got no response.  The only thing EV1 managed to do was to charge our credit card for the new server (they charged us the day we ordered it).  I finally posted a note on the message boards at EV1 eight days afer my order and surprise, my server was suddenly ready.  I immediately went into my account and cancelled it—I’d already made arrangements to rent a server from a different company.  I’d told EV1 in emails that I was cancelling my order, but I guess they chose not to listen to me.  Now that I’ve moved all our sites to a new server and cancelled our two old EV1 servers, they’ve locked us out of our old account.  I’m no longer able to access things like our old billing statements, even though I didn’t ask to have my entire account cancelled, I just asked to have my servers cancelled.  This pretty much guarantees we’ll never be ordering servers from them again.

Anyway, they still owe us $143 for the server we were charged for, but which we never used.  The charges are pro-rated, so they charged us six days before the server was even online and ready to be used.  I guess I’ll go post a note on their forums to ask for our money back, as it seems the only way to get their attention.

If you want a good company from which to rent a dedicated server, I recommend VertexHost.com.  The servers are managed, and it can cost less than $300 per month.  The guys at Vertex spent literally hours and hours moving our sites from our old servers to our new server, and they fixed our security problems for free.  It’s nice to see some good customer service.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/13 at 10:44 PM
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