Customers are like crack babies....

jonnyGURU

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Oct 30, 1999
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This analogy is open to comments, suggestions and feel free to input your own suggestions and experiences.....

When a crack baby cries uncontrollably it is usually because they are addicted to crack and want more crack. Of course, you should not knowingly give a baby crack cocaine, so one struggles to find some way to pacify the baby.

Customers cry uncontrollably because they are upset that their purchasing experience did not go as smoothly as they would like and despite the fact that you would like to simply give the customer a hit of crack and tell them to move on, this is politically incorrect so very much like the individual with the crack baby, one is left with the task of wondering how to go about pacifying the customer.

Example:

Customer buys a Tekblam (brand names have been changed to protect their reputation) Slot A board almost a year ago. The board dies within the one year period. We have a one year warranty on our boards so we are obligated to replace it, but we no longer carry that board. The customer asks for a recommendation and I inform him that the Battlestar has the 133 FSB, three DIMMs, and ISA and support for all known Socket 370 CPUs.

The customer receives the board and calls back. The customer states that the secondary IDE controller is flaky at best. This may be true since I tested the board with only devices on the primary controller. The customer confirms that the primary does work fine. I offer an RMA to exchange the board yet again.

The customer does not want another Battlestar board because of this bad experience and wants to pay the difference to upgrade to an Assoos board. I inform the customer that his defective board is a fluke and that I personally stand behind the brand. The customer points out that the board also has on board sound which is something that he did not want. At this juncture I feel it's a legitamite reason to request a different board, without sound, and pay the difference so I give the customer an RMA number telling him that I need to receive the board back in a COMPLETE and good condition, essentially as I shipped it to him so I can send the board back to Battlestar for a refund.

Mind you that I ship motherboards in boxes filled with foam peanuts.

I receive the board back from the customer as a Battlestar retail box with a shipping label slapped on it. No fill. Of course, this is unacceptable. I inspect the board from physical damage, confirm the flaky secondary IDE and put a new, tested board in the customer's trashed Battlestar box and ship it back in another large box filled with foam peanuts.

Of course, the customer calls me up wondering why he did not get his Assoos board. I told him that the condition of the Battlestar box was unacceptable and that I had to take the new motherboards box so I would have something to send the bad board back in. I also pointed out to him that I could not understand why he would ship a motherboard the way he did after seeing how I shipped the board to him with the outer box and foam peanuts and after I told him that it need to be received &quot;COMPLETE and good condition&quot;.

Of course, the balling starts and I have no crack cocaine to offer.

Another example:

A customer has an Ablip motherboard. The board seems to have a flaky RAID controller. He RMAs it for another Ablip RAID board.

The replacement works fine with PCI video cards, but an AGP video card offers no output to monitor. Video card works in other machines and customer has tried other video cards. He RMAs the motherboard for another Ablip motherboard.

The third board works perfectly except for the LPT port is completely dead. By this time, our company has discontinued carrying the Ablip board due to an unusually high RMA rate. I inform the customer that he can RMA the board with Ablip if he wants another replacement. This is unacceptable because they take longer and charge $25 to swap a board out, even if it's under warranty.

I tell the customer that we can give him a store credit for the full value of the board and I suggest a better quality board like a Macrostar or Assoos and then buying a Promiss RAID controller card. The card would be beneficial becuase if the RAID controller ever failed, he could replace the card without taking the whole board down.

The customer said that this is unacceptable and that he expects a full refund on his credit card so he can go elsewhere and buy an Ablip board with RAID.

What a glutten for punishment. :(
 

ltk007

Banned
Feb 24, 2000
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The life of a guru is a tough one. Poor jonny, why not just give these morons actual crack, that should shut them up.
 

iamwiz82

Lifer
Jan 10, 2001
30,772
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its a good thing you changed those names, i was afraid i would grow to hate certain brands =]. lol
 

yakko

Lifer
Apr 18, 2000
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ltk007,

Actually he should take a bat and crack them over them head to shut them up.


jonnyGURU,

Could you pm me the real names of those brands so I know what to stay away from?:)
 

RevVveD1

Senior member
Feb 1, 2001
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remind me never to buy an Ablip board.. oh wait.. you changed the names...

Arg! Now I will never know! Hmmm... maybe I will just never upgrade... ever...

But, hey, you have to love the customers sometimes.. Especially the whining ones he think they know more than you... I hear from a lot of that kind...
 

Soybomb

Diamond Member
Jun 30, 2000
9,506
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I can't even guess what crappy company this ablip is. I mean charging $25 to replace their defective product.....surely they can't break that much though ;)
 

jonnyGURU

Moderator <BR> Power Supplies
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Oct 30, 1999
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warcleric: It's a reasonable request to request a different brand motherboard when you completely deface the retail box of another and risk potential physical damage by shipping it without any fill?

Ok... Whatever.

The second request for full refund was not too ounreasonable. He got a refund. What was unreasonable was that despite his experience with THREE BOARDS being defective in THREE DIFFERENT WAYS, he STILL wanted the same brand board. Even after being told by his supplier that the product was dropped because of unusually high RMA rates he STILL WANTED THE SAME BOARD.

It's not that he was unreasonable, just a glutten for punishment as I said.

Oh wait... you didn't really read them, did you? ;)

:p
 

ArkAoss

Banned
Aug 31, 2000
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It took me a while to remember what customers where.
I used to work as a returns person at everyone's favorite store. Compusa!!! A good one was a guy, who bought his monitor back, he couldn't get it to work. Well maybe if he hadn't let the dog chew up the end of the monitor cable, it'd have fit onto the back of his pc....

Or the guy that bought back unmarked, and reciept less mainboard, hard drive, and processor. No proof he'd bought it from us at all. We ran a check, no one had even bought those items from us during the weekend's he'd claimed he'd bought them. Though we had carried them.
But we had this TWit of a manager, who had the nerve to make me stop processing a very angry women who was buying a $3000 sony setup, and a $300 waranty plan, to process that guy.
Then after the women said to stuff it about the warrenty, and she bought her other stuff and left, the twit manager had the nerve to try and bust my chops about it, and then convinced the GM that he had to bust my chops about loosing the sales guy's warrenty. The sales guy wasn't happy that the TWIT manager tried to make it look like it was his fault I got chewed out by the GM.
I said oh well.
The woman had returned a little $5000 sony laptop for the desktop, and we were supposed to charge a 15% fee for that return, but the sales guy had talked the gm into waving the return, if she got the warranty, but the TWIT manager made them loose both.
SO they lost $750 on the return, and the $300 waranty, plus the guy who was returning the stuff he'd probly not bought there, got a refurbed system, with dvd and burner..


Maybe that's why alot of compusa's are hated by inteligent consumers. Because compusa certaintly doesn't like having inteligent employees. Most of the guys are stuck up idiots; much like the PAPER mcse's.



p.s. twit=prick
 

yakko

Lifer
Apr 18, 2000
25,455
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ArkAoss,

I love CompUSA. It is where I go to find out what deleting certain files will do.:) That is where I found out that WinME will not run if you delete all but 5 .exe files and over half of the .dll files.
 

ArkAoss

Banned
Aug 31, 2000
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HAA ha ha, yakko!!
almost lol
I hate winme too, but gonna hafta get a copy, spent 4 hrs last night trying to install japanese win me, and win 98se to dual boot, it was like trying to get 2 supermodels to share a mirror. i ended up having to format both partitions.. too bad you can't format super models.
 

SmiZ

Senior member
Oct 6, 2000
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I for one would like you to reconsider your hurtful comparison.


-disgruntled crack baby.
 

Pretender

Banned
Mar 14, 2000
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You shoulda given him the Assoos...I have a P4X3V (actual model name changed to protect the innocent) and they're generally reliable. Give him the crack and by the time he wants another dose, he'll be onto another dealer by then ;)
 

jonnyGURU

Moderator <BR> Power Supplies
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Oct 30, 1999
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I don't know what's with you guys....

I make up the name Ablip and Assoos and one of you says your Ablip is working fine and the other recommends their product. :p

Geez! They're FICTIONAL names. You couldn't POSSIBLY know what brands I'm talking about. ;)

 

xaigi

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Some advice on the Abit Socket A boards: when a customer complains about non-working ISA or parallel port, tell them to play with it. Theres a group of magic settings required to use ISA and parallel on the abits. Have them try random settings often enough, and they'll find it.
 

jonnyGURU

Moderator <BR> Power Supplies
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No no no.... The brand is &quot;Ablip&quot;. You're thinking of a different brand. And only the third board had a non-working LPT. The first two worked. All the same cards, in the same slots, with the same hard drive, running the same software.
 

jonnyGURU

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You know what's really good quality? Buttle and Dingling Flour. Those rule!

Don't forget Doormat Sonic.