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Subject: 
Re: Has anyone ever been missing a piece?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Thu, 16 Dec 1999 02:36:38 GMT
Viewed: 
1330 times
  
In lugnet.general, Jasper Janssen writes:


But that's not the point. The point is that it is damn near impossible
to get average customers to tell you what the part actually _was_. Not
that the parts aren't easily lost, and all.

OK . . . I can understand this point. I worked at a bookstore, and I had
customers all the time that would come in and tell me that they wanted the
big green book that was on *that* table, three months ago. They had no idea
of the title, or what it was about. Just that it was big and green and we
had it three months ago.

And if a customerr informs you that it is part #320, and you send him
that, and then he discovers what he _meant_ to say is #230, he'll
likely call up, have himself convinced that he did in fact order the
right part (even though his customer records show that he didn't),
insist he called the right number, and then starts demanding that not
only do you send him the correct part by UPS
Right-The-Fuck-Now-Delivery, but refund him $10 for the long-distance
phone charges (to the 800 number and his oh-so valuable time spent on
the phone.

And this point I also understand. I know that some customers can be
tiresome, but I always looked at it as "just doing my job". I was getting
paid to wait on them and, as long as their requests/demands weren't out of
the ordinary and weren't hard to accomplish I generally forced a smile (if
necessary) and went about my work. Not all customers, however, are extremely
demanding and unreasonable, I've found. A majority of them are just normal
people that would like the quality product they paid for.

Before you say "customers aren't that stupid".. well, they are. I've
done a few mercifully short stints on firstline support on a popular
ISP here (the AOL of .nl, sortof), and trust me, they are.

I have to disagree with you here. I feel that the entire computer world is
completely new territory to a lot of people. Not everybody is going to pick
up on things right away. Especially when you factor in the fact that adults
do not pick things up as quickly as a younger person. If you're going to
look at it that way, you may as well call a two year old stupid for not
knowing their alphabet and a ten year old for not knowing calculus.



$5 is peanuts compared to wages of persons on the phone for a long
time (15 minutes at least before you know for certain which part is
referenced), sorting through bins of parts for the right one, storage
costs for keeping parts on hand, and loss of customer goodwill when
the customer screws up (or the (usually) more unlikely case of the
company screwing up).

Well, as true as this may be, it was not the case with my situation. For
starters, I sent the company a letter, clearly stating the missing part by
the term that is used to describe it in the instruction sheet, along with a
brief physical description. If it took somebody more than five minutes to
read it and understand what part was missing, then they're the stupid ones.

-Jonathan



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Has anyone ever been missing a piece?
 
(...) Ah, but my Calc teacher says that a good teacher should be able to teach calculus to a first grader :) (at least geometrically speaking) --Bram Bram Lambrecht / o o \ BramL@juno.com ---...---oooo-----(_...o---...--- WWW: (URL) pay more to get (...) (25 years ago, 16-Dec-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
  Re: Has anyone ever been missing a piece?
 
(...) The problem is that a) the minority completely ruins your life as a support person and b) in the end, it's cheaper in terms of time and material to just treat _everyone_ as a total idiot because it costs only a little extra, compared to when (...) (25 years ago, 16-Dec-99, to lugnet.general)

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