Beyond Pissed Off

This is a personal rant that has nothing to do with current events.

 Xfinity, my cell phone provider for many years will lose me as a customer next month.

 My 51 year old autistic son lives in the Seattle area. He has a phone I pay for. When he has had a problem, lost a phone, etc. he would go to an Xfinity store and the problem would be promptly solved.

 He needs a new phone. Off to the Tukwila store where he is turned away. He was told, since it is my account, I need to physically be there so they can scan my i.d. WTF, over.

 OK, I go to the Longmont Xfinity store and am told I need to buy the phone and send it to him. WTF, again. They order a phone. Can’t do right there because my Colorado Driver License expired. OK, have a new phone shipped to me. I then ship the phone to him. He goes into the Tukwila store and is again turned away.

 Now, I’m not flying to Seattle just to get a phone activated.

\Next week his aide will take him to another company, likely Cricket, and we will try to get his phone up and working.

 Next month (this month is paid for) I will have a new phone company.

 Here is my take, based on a lifetime of working on commission. For whoever waits on him, it is floor time lost (they think). I see a pattern, both in that store, and my local store. Add, no local phone number at any store so they don’t waste time with callers. Stupid, IMO.

 1988, Sound Ford, Renton, WA closed at 10:00 p.m. At 8:45 or so a man got out of an older pickup and I greeted him at the door. He stunk, really, really bad. Turned out he did sewer work. He drove away in a new truck around 11:30. After thanking me, he said, words as I recall, “I really appreciate you waiting on me. I know I stink but by the time I get home and shower, you are closed”.  In the coming months that man bought four vehicles from me himself and sent two other buyers my way.

Winner do what losers won’t.

As always, YMMV

Yes, letting my driver license expire was dumb; beat me! At my age a new eye exam is needed. That is scheduled next week. Our socialist run state government requires a DMV appointment; no walk ins. An appointment is scheduled later in the month.

 In the mean time I am stopping at stop signs, using my turn signal and diligently observing speed limits.

Cheap Ways Bite Ass

Pulled the plug on my television four years ago but left the DVR player hooked up. Don't play video games. Rarely watch a movie. 

My gripe with TV is the 50% content, 50% advertisement, ratio. I'll be watching something that interests me when the ads start. By the time the program resumes I've lost interest.

Comcast is doubling (nearly) my high speed internet cost. In my little city, and old apartment building, options are limited. Not to mention I'm cheap. The greatest compliment my ex gave me, while living with my youngest, was to say, "You are cheaper than your father!"

So today I met the "bundle". For far less than I pay for Internet alone, I now get cable TV, "free" HBO, etc. Fuck me running!

The equipment is sitting in a spiffy red canvas bag next to the dusty TV. Hooking it up will mean reading instructions, putting batteries in a controller and bending, kneeling, finding tools, and where is the long power cord? Then the dreaded call to get everything "activated". Maybe I'll just put the spiffy red bag in the closet. 

Amazing, isn't it, that is cheaper for me to pay for stuff I don't want, to get what I do want, as a stand alone service. Wonder how many meeting hours were spent devising these plans?

In fairness, the young man who waited on me was professional, helpful, not full of himself, and didn't try to b.s. Were I still in the car business, I would have hired him away.

Customer Service Fails

Guffaw In Arizona had a recent post about customer service

http://armedlaughing.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/variations-on-a-theme/

that brought back a not so pleasant memory.

Late 70’s found me overseeing the sales/marketing for a modular (UBC Compliant) manufacturer in Seattle.  All the units were built to order and seasonally we would have long lead times.

One day a handwritten letter was brought to my attention. In a shaky hand was written, “I regret to inform you my husband did not live long enough to see his new house…………….” Ouch!  Two weeks later we received a similar letter from a different customer that started, “Sadly, my husband has passed away while we have waited for your warranty crew to fix our new home ………….” Yikes! Oh well, shit happens.

Our biggest failure was building a LDS Chapel for an Inuit Village. The man we sent to install it went on a roaring drunk with the local LDS Bishop. That caused some very heated telephone calls.

Customer Service

Rodeo contestants are unique group who put in unimaginable hours.

The owner of the car dealerships I worked at for many years was a former bull rider. We had many customers who were involved in professional rodeos. We went out of our way to accommodate them. Sometimes, this became interesting.

A repeat customer was a young Wyoming bull rider. As a committed Christian, he took his young wife and three children with him. They traveled in a crew cab pickup with a self contained camper. One night on his way to a rodeo he stopped by and they traded in their ¾ ton Ford for a one ton dually crew cab Ford. As part of the deal, we needed to move their self contained camper from the trade to the new vehicle.

Since he didn’t have camper jacks, we opened the shop and backed in the trade to one of the hoists. We were able to remove the camper by lifting it with the hoist and pull the trade out of the way. The problem now became backing the dually under the camper. Much less clearance and a much larger turning radius made for very tight squeeze. By now it was two hours after closing. The owner, another salesman, the customers, and I were still at the dealership. The other salesman, AKA, was by far the best driver in the group and was finally able to maneuver the dually into place. The camper was lowered and bolted down by the customer. While this was going on, the rest of us were transferring the contents of the trade to the dually. AKA maneuvered the dually out of the bay, the customer drove off, and the rest of us went home. The customers still had a seven hour drive in front of them.

Strange as it may seem, in our world, this was a normal transaction. Whatever the hour, whatever the situation, we dealt with it. The old Jackie Cooper axiom, “Winners do what losers won’t”, was a “core value” with us.

From where I look, the only place you can always find that commitment is in our professional military. Good reason to hire a recently discharged vet. They know how to work.