Customer Service

Apparently there is no middle ground, when it comes to customer service. It is either very very good, or just plain sucks.

On the top of my list of doing it right, is Garmin, Direct TV and Apple, and at the bottom of the list is Eye-Fi and Mozy…

I have several recent examples of the good and the bad. I’m going to start with the good.

On the very top my list of great customer service is Direct TV.
They are just outstanding, a few weeks ago I had a problem with 2 of my receivers, on Sunday morning I called them and my call was answered immediately by someone on the U.S.A., and we walked through a few steps to see if the first of the boxes was really dead, it was, replacement was requested in the system. The second box, a DVR box, needed to churn on some of the things we told it do so instead of chatting for an hour or so while it did its thing I opted to call back if the reformat reload didn’t work, which it didn’t. I called back, call answered on the third ring, they were aware of my issue, we tried on more thing, it also failed, I was informed that since it was the second box reporting an issue at the same location that someone from tier 2 support may be following up with me in the next 24 hours, ok I request that they call me on my cell if it is not today (Sunday), the next day I’m on the road to Philadelphia and I get a call from tier 2 support, they ask me to try a couple things, I explain to the guy that I am about 200 miles away, and that all the steps he need to check had indeed been done. He was happy and said my box was on the way. The following morning my wife calls me to tell me that there are 2 Direct TV receivers that just arrived, and was there anything special that needed to be done, I told to follow the instructions that came with the equipment, about 45 minutes later I get a txt message that both boxes are operational, old hardware is boxed up, and scheduled to be pick up.
Thats is great customer service…

Next on the list, almost a tie, is Garmin.
I bought a new GPS at the beginning of the month, and on the Saturday before Thanksgiving after a kayak trip I plug the GPS into the computer to download the data, and it has a message that it cant find the system files. I look online to see if I can find out what the problem is, and I try the things I find with no success, it late I’m tired, so I just pop off an email to them, figuring I’d get a response sometime Monday, I get an email overnight that tells me to try A B and C, I give it a go, and no luck still a brick, I send another email, and a few hours later I get an email with an RMA number and where to ship the unit to and they’ll get it back to me 5 to 10 days after they get the unit, Monday I ship the unit to Kansas for repair, supposed to be delivered on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but apparently Garmin is a decent place to work and they are actually closed on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I am a little bummed thinking that it is just going to add more time before I get my GPS back. So Monday around noon I get the FedEX email that the GPS has been delivered. No I figure that I will have my GPS back in a couple weeks, no biggie. Today I get home and I notice a small box on the steps, not even thinking it is my GPS, I pick it up ask the wife what she was expecting, she responds nothing she’s ordered is expected arrive until next week, so I look at the label, and I see it is for me, and it’s from G International. I am a little shocked, it’s Thursday they only got the thing on Monday, fixed and good to go. If I had a complaint about the whole thing was that I had to drop the $15 to ship a broken GPS that was only 2 weeks old

Number 3 on the list is apple.
A couple weeks ago I ordered 2 different computers on 2 different days, both with applecare, the first machine arrives as expected, I get them set up trying to do the applecare registration, and it keeps being rejected by the system, I give them a call, they tell me that there was a data entry issue on their end, and they would take care of it, 2 days later I get confirmation that all is now good with that machines applecare. A couple hours later the other order arrives 2 Macbook Pro’s check 2 applecare for MacBook Pro’s well not 2 but 1 for a MacBook Pro and a second for an iPhone. I make the call, and I kind of ask sarcastically ask why the cant seem to get something as simple as a little box right, and she ask why, I told her what happened earlier in the week, and she apologizes for the mistake and gives me a $100 credit. problem solved customer happy.

So now we have the not so great customer service…

I had a couple of problems with my eye-fi card for my camera.
One was that it was getting very hot, to the point of being able to feel it outside camera, it was forgetting networks, and sometimes not even working. I send eye-fi tech support an email, a day later I finally get a response, asking me questions that were answered in the original email, all that is in my post from back in September, Making a long story short it took nearly 3 weeks to get the card replaced, not so great customer support.

The card has been working great since I got the replacement, there are things I’d change, more about that later.

Then there’s mozy, I am done with mozyhome, I still use mozypro at work, they seem like they are completely companies, never a problem.
Basically I contacted mozyhome customer support, sent them my logs, they lost them I sent them again they forgot to get back to me for a week, it wasn’t until I asked why am I paying you guys for a headache, when BackBlaze is working on 2 of my other machines without a hitch, and I am moving the impacted machine to BackBlaze as well, do I start getting responses from several people at mozy… I am sure if I wanted to spend the time to deal with this we could most likely resolve the issue, but I don’t have the time, hell they even offered to have a tech call me, but enough is enough…
I had an initial problem with BackBlaze that was resolved in a day or 2, and no one forgot to get back to me.

Basically all you have to do to provide decent customer service is just treat your customers right, don’t ignore them….