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Friday, February 16, 2007

Technology Makes Me Cry Part 2

The Consumer End:
Monday night ordered an upgrade to some Photoshop Plugins made by (Company ABC--not its real name) that I only had for Classic mode and I wanted it to run native in Photoshop 7 for OS X. I couldn't download the upgrade (Company policy), I had to order them on CD. Fine, no problem. But then it seemed to take forever to hear from them with my order status. I went to their homepage and tried to lookup my order status. It said to enter my order number. Herein lies part of the problem. They never emailed me with an order number, just an order confirmation, but no number. OK, so I tried one of their alternatives, using my email and last 5 digits of my CC. That search turned up nothing. It's as if they never even processed my order. I tried emailing them. Heard nothing, in fact that email was RETURNED to me undeliverable. I tried using their web form. Still nothing. I checked my credit card. Nothing has been charged by them. This AM I went to their site and looked up a phone I could call. A pre-recorded message with a somewhat unfriendly-sounding woman came on telling me there was no one there to take my call.

What the hell kind of business is this? I mean they have been in business for a long time (I bought their original Plugins back in the late 90s or 2000 or so) and have been aware of their products since I first purchased my computer in 1995. They brag about all their important companies who are using their products. But they can't be reached for a simple question! What the hell is going on here? This is bullshit. I am only one person and I always reply to my customers and send off their merchandise in a timely manner. This is a bigassed California-based tech company that can't even process one damn order for $40.

You know what sucks? I get it on both ends. Here's some gripes from being on the other side of the equation:

The Producing/Supplying End:
- Customer wants to know if I have any more of a certain kind of widget. I always hate this. I mean, I have less than 200 items in my ebay widget store...that's about 5 pages to look through. Easy. Can't they find it themselves? Anyway, I check for myself. Sure enough, I have more of them, so I send them the url to the ebay page where they can buy some. Then they email me asking me how much they are and how many can they buy? WHAT-THE-BLOODY-HELL? It says so right on the page...They are $X.XX each and I have 20 available!!!! Why do they have to ask me? Do they want me to bottle feed them their formula too? Not only that, I check my ebay store, and THAT IS THE FIRST ITEM SHOWN ON THE PAGE!!!! How fucking lazy is that? The irony is, is that the item listing has now expired, so they can't buy it now. Lazy asses.

- On a similar note, I've been getting a lot of "can you recommend a certain kind of widget?" questions. I mean, I'm not dealing in high tech complicated things here. Pretty much, you look at it, if you like it, you get it, if you don't, you don't. It's up to the customer to decide. Not me. I'm not a paid consultant. If you don't like it, don't get it! And I have recommended things and then I never hear back from them. WTF is up with that! Why even contact me in the first place...certainly you are capable of going to my site, looking at the stuff, and deciding whether to buy something or not. How can I help you? I can't.

- Customer requests I send him an invoice for a widget. I'm confused about what widget he wants because I don't have any widgets by the name Widget Q, so I ask him if it is widget D he actually wants (because it's the only one that halfway fits the description), and naturally he doesn't include a URL for me to verify what widget he wants. No, that's wrong, he says. He wants Widget Q, not Widget D, and he thinks the name is "Butterfly." Sounds familiar, so I do a search on my site to see what "Butterfly" brings up, and sure enough, it's been sold. I check the page online just to make sure it says "Sold" and it does...in BIG BOLD LETTERS. Why does he want an invoice for something that's been sold? This doesn't even make sense to me. Naturally, he wants me to recommend other Widgets for him...like he can't look himself (well, obviously not, because he can't read if they're sold or not!)

- Customer buys one widget. One. Usually these kind of widgets are sold in pairs. Not unheard of to buy an odd amount, but rare. I contact them, just as a courtesy (damn, I've gotta stop being so damn courteous, seems like Company ABC from the top paragraph doesn't know what that is, and they're probably a big-assed company who can pay their employees to take time off not to answer phones or email) I email them to remind them that they only bought one--which is fine--but usually people buy them in pairs. So I get an email today saying that he'll take two, and to invoice him. Um...doesn't work that way. He has to BUY the widget first. Then I invoice him. Damn lazy people, I tell ya.

I really need to change my approach to this. From now on, if someone asks me a really stupid lazy-assed question, I'm not going to respond. Yes, there are such things as dumb questions, and those questions are when the information is right there on the page, or if the question is asking you to do something for them that is not up to you to do (like decide for them). It's not like my responses to these people has made me money. When I do recommend something, or give them a little extra help finding something, they don't then buy the item. So what's the point?

I need a vacation. Really badly.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Stan said...

It seems that people who have lots of questions rarely actually buy anything. You seem to get a lot of flaky customers and/or non-buyers you have to work with. I'm sorry they are so emotionally draining too.

8:59 PM  

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