Got a call from my buddy "Mike" at CompuBiz in Van Nuys, CA today. He said that even though they haven't received the returned printer from FedEx yet, they are going to be shipping out another one today to me.
Of course, I don't have a tracking number just yet, so I'll believe it when I see it.
23 October 2007
22 October 2007
Customer Service (update)
So the saga with my printer and CompuBiz continues. I FINALLY got a call back from them on Friday and they let me know that when they get it back in their office, they will inspect and then determine whether or not they give me a refund or a replacement.
I let them know I'd prefer the refund. Anyway, the printer was picked up from my house on Monday the 15th, and 4+ days later it still hadn't arrived back. So these cheap-asses had it shipped back to them FedEx Ground just as they sent it to me.
Today marks 21 days since I first ordered the printer and I'm still without one. I called FedEx to chase this thing down and they told me it was scheduled to be delivered today. I'll be calling CompuBiz tomorrow if I don't hear from them. I'll let you know how it goes.
Don't forget to check out my restaurant reviews at Yelp.
I let them know I'd prefer the refund. Anyway, the printer was picked up from my house on Monday the 15th, and 4+ days later it still hadn't arrived back. So these cheap-asses had it shipped back to them FedEx Ground just as they sent it to me.
Today marks 21 days since I first ordered the printer and I'm still without one. I called FedEx to chase this thing down and they told me it was scheduled to be delivered today. I'll be calling CompuBiz tomorrow if I don't hear from them. I'll let you know how it goes.
Don't forget to check out my restaurant reviews at Yelp.
15 October 2007
Customer NON Service
I think I understand why the United States economy is really just one of consumption and NOT of actual production of anything anymore. Over the last month, I've had the misfortune to deal with a lot of people in the service industry as well as the retail industry.
The service I have gotten is putrid. About four weeks ago, I took a week off of work so that I could get a lot of things done around the house prior to the arrival of "BabyLo". I had lined up a large variety of service industry professionals to come to the house to give quotes or provide services for things like finishing our basement, fixing our powder room, installing cabinets in our utility room, doing that cool textured finish on the garage floor and other types of things.
Between missed appointments, "running lates", scheduling cock-ups and every excuse known to man, only ONE of the tradesmen I worked with was on-time, billed me accurately and took the care with my house as he'd take with his. That was Bernie the plumber. Bernie earned my business for life with that.
For a week that I had perfectly scheduled out (for MY life) that left me plenty of open pockets to do errands, work on projects in the house that only _I_ could do and basically just be ME, I was left hurried and rushed to get the things done that I felt I had to get done.
This horrible service issue has continued over the last four weeks with the most recent being CompuBiz, from whom I bought a new color printer/scanner. I ordered from them because they had an excellent rating from Mysimon.com and they also had the lowest price. The printer arrived damaged (the inks had exploded within the printer and there was ink everywhere). I called and actually was responded to on the next business morning by CompuBiz. They took a day to tell me how they wanted me to ship the product back to them and then told me that FedEx would just be stopping by our house to pick it up either Wed or Thurs. Both days went by and FedEx never showed (for some reason I doubted CompuBiz because frankly, FedEx is always here when I need them to be). When I called back to CompuBiz on Thursday night, I was told that my contact there had left for the day. This was 20 minutes prior to when they supposedly closed. I asked to speak to his manager, and was rudely dumped into his voicemail. I left a nasty message and then called back because I wanted to talk to the receptionist who was rude, and instead a male answered the phone. I asked to speak to a manager and he stated that they were closed. I asked him what time they closed and he said 5:00. It was 4:50.
Americans want to know why so many companies outsource or offshore their customer service and frankly a LOT of pieces of business. It seems that service in this country has basically gone to shit, so why not go somewhere where it at least costs less and frankly is better at times. Canadians are pretty reliable people and also rather intelligent because they have education guaranteed to them. Indian people are really intelligent and when they can understand and work with the cultural differences between the US and India, they too provide amazing service at a high quality level.
Folks, if my random sampling of the service industry is any bell weather of what the rest of America is experiencing, no wonder why our economy is in the shitter.
The service I have gotten is putrid. About four weeks ago, I took a week off of work so that I could get a lot of things done around the house prior to the arrival of "BabyLo". I had lined up a large variety of service industry professionals to come to the house to give quotes or provide services for things like finishing our basement, fixing our powder room, installing cabinets in our utility room, doing that cool textured finish on the garage floor and other types of things.
Between missed appointments, "running lates", scheduling cock-ups and every excuse known to man, only ONE of the tradesmen I worked with was on-time, billed me accurately and took the care with my house as he'd take with his. That was Bernie the plumber. Bernie earned my business for life with that.
For a week that I had perfectly scheduled out (for MY life) that left me plenty of open pockets to do errands, work on projects in the house that only _I_ could do and basically just be ME, I was left hurried and rushed to get the things done that I felt I had to get done.
This horrible service issue has continued over the last four weeks with the most recent being CompuBiz, from whom I bought a new color printer/scanner. I ordered from them because they had an excellent rating from Mysimon.com and they also had the lowest price. The printer arrived damaged (the inks had exploded within the printer and there was ink everywhere). I called and actually was responded to on the next business morning by CompuBiz. They took a day to tell me how they wanted me to ship the product back to them and then told me that FedEx would just be stopping by our house to pick it up either Wed or Thurs. Both days went by and FedEx never showed (for some reason I doubted CompuBiz because frankly, FedEx is always here when I need them to be). When I called back to CompuBiz on Thursday night, I was told that my contact there had left for the day. This was 20 minutes prior to when they supposedly closed. I asked to speak to his manager, and was rudely dumped into his voicemail. I left a nasty message and then called back because I wanted to talk to the receptionist who was rude, and instead a male answered the phone. I asked to speak to a manager and he stated that they were closed. I asked him what time they closed and he said 5:00. It was 4:50.
Americans want to know why so many companies outsource or offshore their customer service and frankly a LOT of pieces of business. It seems that service in this country has basically gone to shit, so why not go somewhere where it at least costs less and frankly is better at times. Canadians are pretty reliable people and also rather intelligent because they have education guaranteed to them. Indian people are really intelligent and when they can understand and work with the cultural differences between the US and India, they too provide amazing service at a high quality level.
Folks, if my random sampling of the service industry is any bell weather of what the rest of America is experiencing, no wonder why our economy is in the shitter.
10 October 2007
Miscellaneous post 10/10/07
I have no idea how to put a title to this post, so I'm leaving it as this generic one.
Topic 1: I've taken up restaurant review writing now as a new hobby. I've placed links here on this site and also put a nifty little graphic thingy on the lower right side. Yelp.com is a website where "real people" write reviews for restaurant or for any sort of business or service that one can use. I put "real people" in quotes because I haven't quite figured out yet if there's "professionals" lurking in here or not. There's people that have 500+ reviews. I guess that's possible, but it sure seems fishy.
Anyway, I'm gonna try this out for awhile. I would have never found this but for my friend Heidi (link to her blog to the right as well).
Topic 2: I'm actually now afraid that I'm fully over the Cubs loss (2 days total). I think the dismal performance in the desert prepped me for the eventuality back home. 2003 took me WEEKS to get over. Since the Cubs had home field advantage for the series against the Marlins, I made it to three of the four games including games six (Bartman game) and game seven, the closer. It WAS my single days and so I lived it and unfortunately died with it. It took just a little bit of my heart with it along the way. Of course the good news is always that it's also the reason I met my wife since my online ad at Match.com had the intro line, "Did the Cubs break your heart too"? Let's face it, if I ever was going to get married, it was going to have to be a girl who understood this part of me.
Topic 3: We're officially now only 60 days from the due date of "Baby Lo" and I couldn't be more excited. We were back at Babies R Us tonight to inspect the hutch and glider and had the pleasant surprise of finding out that the night stand was there also. We've also ordered the last piece which is the ottoman for the glider which is also available. Hopefully all is delivered within the next 1-2 weeks. That'll complete the baby's room and allow us to focus on other things yet to be finished. I also took the liberty of registering 2 domain names through Network Solutions. Since we are now officially down to fighting over 2 baby names, it was worth the $19/piece to lock them up for the future. Who knows what our kid will want to do, but I imagine that websites will still be around as he grows up. At least this way, if he wants to create his own website, he'll have it already in his name. I don't think the combinations of names we're coming up with are THAT common, but since I was floored to find 3 other Brian LoCicero's in the world, I can only imagine that somewhere there might be babies being born who have similar names to what we're thinking.
Topic 4: Work has been quite nice as of late. Other than the normal daily "emergency" that seems to pop up I am making progress on several initiatives that I have under my belt and as I get them finished, new ones tend to show up. But for the first time in years, I see closure to things that I start or am working on. It actually is nice, that's all, to be in this position finally.
That's it for now. This is a late-night post, so it's all over the place. Go Tony Stewart!
Topic 1: I've taken up restaurant review writing now as a new hobby. I've placed links here on this site and also put a nifty little graphic thingy on the lower right side. Yelp.com is a website where "real people" write reviews for restaurant or for any sort of business or service that one can use. I put "real people" in quotes because I haven't quite figured out yet if there's "professionals" lurking in here or not. There's people that have 500+ reviews. I guess that's possible, but it sure seems fishy.
Anyway, I'm gonna try this out for awhile. I would have never found this but for my friend Heidi (link to her blog to the right as well).
Topic 2: I'm actually now afraid that I'm fully over the Cubs loss (2 days total). I think the dismal performance in the desert prepped me for the eventuality back home. 2003 took me WEEKS to get over. Since the Cubs had home field advantage for the series against the Marlins, I made it to three of the four games including games six (Bartman game) and game seven, the closer. It WAS my single days and so I lived it and unfortunately died with it. It took just a little bit of my heart with it along the way. Of course the good news is always that it's also the reason I met my wife since my online ad at Match.com had the intro line, "Did the Cubs break your heart too"? Let's face it, if I ever was going to get married, it was going to have to be a girl who understood this part of me.
Topic 3: We're officially now only 60 days from the due date of "Baby Lo" and I couldn't be more excited. We were back at Babies R Us tonight to inspect the hutch and glider and had the pleasant surprise of finding out that the night stand was there also. We've also ordered the last piece which is the ottoman for the glider which is also available. Hopefully all is delivered within the next 1-2 weeks. That'll complete the baby's room and allow us to focus on other things yet to be finished. I also took the liberty of registering 2 domain names through Network Solutions. Since we are now officially down to fighting over 2 baby names, it was worth the $19/piece to lock them up for the future. Who knows what our kid will want to do, but I imagine that websites will still be around as he grows up. At least this way, if he wants to create his own website, he'll have it already in his name. I don't think the combinations of names we're coming up with are THAT common, but since I was floored to find 3 other Brian LoCicero's in the world, I can only imagine that somewhere there might be babies being born who have similar names to what we're thinking.
Topic 4: Work has been quite nice as of late. Other than the normal daily "emergency" that seems to pop up I am making progress on several initiatives that I have under my belt and as I get them finished, new ones tend to show up. But for the first time in years, I see closure to things that I start or am working on. It actually is nice, that's all, to be in this position finally.
That's it for now. This is a late-night post, so it's all over the place. Go Tony Stewart!
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