customer service

Gone Are The Good Merchants

When I first started home-brewing, I bottled my beers. There’s something almost magical about popping the cap off a cold bottle of beer that you brewed yourself, pouring it into a pint glass. I love it. But pretty quickly the hassle of putting the beer into the bottles gets old, and most brewers begin kegging. I only bottled two batches of my beer before I said eff it and bought myself some kegs. Then I went online and ordered a kit – the regulator, the hoses and attachments, and a five-pound CO2 tank.

There are smaller tanks available. You see them attached to paintball guns all the time. But when it comes to home-brewing and the like, I’m not sure you can get a smaller bottle than a five-pound. And it’s about the size of one of those large fire extinguishers you see on the wall at work. Anyway, I immediately went to the homebrew forums trying to find where I could get my tanks filled. There were a couple of places in downtown Dallas that did it – well, they swap tanks, but don’t fill your tanks. That means you have to give them your new shiny empty one and they give you one of their rusty old ones full of air. But there was nowhere real close to where I lived. And then I stumbled on a liquor store.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:6 mins read

Farewell to the Help Desk

For the last 18 years I’ve been working on computers in some capacity. About eight of those years were server engineering and data center operations, but the rest has been help desk. I’ve always preferred the help desk because it’s more hands-on with people. I have the great privilege to make people happy, one person at a time.

Help desk obviously doesn’t pay near as well as the server side of things, but it’s always been enough to support my family and me. And you know me – I’m not greedy. I only want to make enough to cover what I need, plus a little allowance for toys and beer. I have no desire to drive a fifty-thousand-dollar luxury automobile, or have a summer cabin in the mountains. Though that does sound quite nice now that I think about it.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:11 mins read

New York Diaries, Vol 1

I’m finally changing career paths. At almost forty years old. But they say it’s never too late to learn something new, right? I’m tired of fixing computers for a living. I’m pretty good at it, and I’m almost never stumped by a problem for too long anymore. I mean, there are perhaps an infinite number of things that can go wrong with a computer or a piece of software, or a printer… But a lot of them start to look alike – and certainly have the same solution. And I’ve been doing this a really long time. Yeah, it’s time for a change. So my company sent me to a three-day training course in New York City. So this is it, huh? I finally get to go to New York. Well let’s do it!

You see, all my friends have been. Well, most of my friends anyway. My red-haired wife has been. My dad has been. And everyone says you have to experience it firsthand to really get the full drift of what it’s like down on the street. Well, I’ve been here for four days now, and let me just say this about it: you have to experience it firsthand to really get the full drift of what it’s like down on the street.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:travel diary
  • Reading time:9 mins read

You Can’t Trust the System

I’d like to tell you that this story is true, and that you need to believe it because I’m telling the truth here. This is not a work of fiction! But how do you say that at the beginning of a column, when the entire purpose of the site upon which you write is entertainment? A lot of what I write here is fiction. Heck, everything Haycomet writes is fiction. But this, my friends, is real. This is true. And it really happened. And I have witnesses.

So I’d like to tell you the ridiculous story of how my pals and I ran into a series of events governed by Murphy’s Law, and were unable to get out from under his oppresive thumb. If I ever meet Harvey Murphy, I have a few words for him, I assure you. And alls we were doing was trying to have a little lunch.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:8 mins read

More Ways to Screw the Customer

I’ve long been of the opinion that companies should listen to their customers. I know you all remember my column about Coca-Cola changing their formula. Well, I highly doubt a consumer requested that. Companies that listen to their consumers though, are the ones that will last. Like Dodge, when they listened to Dodge drivers and installed a step in the tailgates of their pickups. Who doesn’t want a tailgate step? Another example would be Microsoft, when they listened to consumers and made Windows 7.

Ahem. To a lesser extent.

But what about those companies (like Coca-Cola) that don’t listen to their customers and consumers? The ones that make changes that cause all kinds of havoc and ill schlit to happen? Those are the ones I want to talk about this morning. And one of them just happens to be a company I’ve already mentioned.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:6 mins read

Truth in Advertising

I’d like to talk with you about radio commercials. Well, I don’t really want to, but rather, I think we need to talk about it. Specifically, I think a message needs to be sent out to these radio advertisers. And the message doesn’t need to be long or complex, or deep. I just want to say a couple of words. Namely, “I don’t give a flying AIDS-infested skunk’s ass what your damn name is!”

Wow, it feels really good to get that off my chest.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:5 mins read

Why SpaceBrew Was Down

Another good title for this column would be “Why You Should Never Host With HostMonster”. Or even another good one might be something like “HostMonster And The Incredible Display Of Incompetence, And How They Are So Disinterested In Their Customers That They Would Rather Cancel Their Accounts Than To Make Money, So I Don’t Know How They Even Stay In Business, But They Should Probably Be Shut Down, Bombed, Or Both”. That would be a pretty long title, but it gets the point across. So let me tell you what happened.

Now this is pretty high-tech stuff, and I have to admit, I wouldn’t understand it if I hadn’t been in IT for fifteen years, and spent four years as an Internet Systems Engineer. So I don’t expect you to get it all, but I’ll try to use some awesome analogies. But I absolutely must write about this, because they pissed me off so bad I almost went postal on them. Through Live Chat. Yeah. It was that bad. Read on, dear friends, loved ones and enemies. Come with me on a little journey of customer disservice, ridiculous policy and guarantees of dissatisfaction.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:6 mins read

It’s a scam and I’ve got proof.

DirecTV is my satellite service provider. But when I say ‘service’ I use the term loosely. And I’m talking loose like a two-dollar whore. You know, like throwing a hot dog down a hallway loose. They don’t actually provide a ‘service’ in any respect, if you want to get technical. What you have is them flipping a switch which allows you to receive certain channels on the box you pay for. So you pay for a box and they allow programming to be sent to your dish. Right? I mean they don’t really have to do anything after the install of your equipment is finished.

And that’s the thing. They don’t actually install anything. Well, at least not properly. You see, there are different crews when it comes to installing and repairing. Example, an install crew comes out, does a shitty ass piece of mothercobbler shit ass job of installing your shit, and leaves as fast as possible. They get paid per job. Not per hour. So then what happens is your shit doesn’t work. So you have to call the company. Who then dispatches repair crews out to your place. Not the original install crew. Not any install crew, for that matter. And for that matter, how about another matter – they aren’t even the same company. The repair crews work for a different company who is contracted out by DirecTV.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:4 mins read

Calling the Call Center

I hate having to call customer service. Mortgage company, bank, cell phone company, whatever. I hate having to call them. If I can’t handle whatever problem I’m having on the website, I’d rather just cancel my service than have to call and sit through all the bullshit. Alas, that’s not very realistic though, as I’d be changing providers and canceling shit about every month. So I have to deal with calling in and talking to someone – hopefully – a lot more often than I would in a perfect world.

The first thing that pisses me off is the menus. Forget the fact that I have to push a certain number to hear it in English. I don’t mind the “Para Espanol prima el numero dos” or whatever, so the Mexican folk have to press two to continue in Spanish. That’s fine. Just don’t make me push something to continue in the national language. But the menus are just silly and time wasting. Now what they’re trying to do here is keep you from talking to someone. If they can take care of your problems with an automated system, they much prefer that. Keeps their call volume down. Store hours, available balance, directions, whatever – they can all be taken care of without having to talk to a human. But most of the time I already know all that shit. And I need to talk to a person. Enter my next complaint.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:6 mins read

Finally, I’ve something positive to say.

I’m always on here ranting about shitty customer service and how people suck so badly. So I figured you’d probably like to hear about a good experience I had as a customer. Wednesday afternoon, present tense.

I just got back from the barber. Actually it’s a salon. I was on my way driving to the Sport Clips when I passed by a shopping center that had a little salon in it. So I said, “What the hey.” I knew it probably wouldn’t be as busy as Sports Clip during lunch hour, and you really can’t mess my hair up. Even if you do, no one will ever know, because of the way I wear it. So the point being that I really have no preference when it comes to where I get my hair did, because I deliberately mess it up anyway, as a rule. That’s how I roll.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:3 mins read