The Other Drummer

I really, really hate it when companies try to make it sound like they’re doing you some big favor when they aren’t.

“Hey, you seem like a nice guy. So here’s what I’m going to do for you…”

I detest it.

Two recent examples come to mind.

Apple

When the agency laptop battery exploded our IT guy took it to the Apple Genius Bar. The “Genius”, after treating our IT guy with 16+ years experience like a 6th grader, said, “Well, these are normally $179 but I’ll replace it for free.”

Gee, YA THINK?

The conversation should have gone more like this:

“Hi. This happened to my laptop. I was…”

“Oh, wow. I am so sorry. Yeah, we’ve had problems with these batteries and I’m so sorry this happened. Would you mind waiting a minute while I go to get you a replacement battery?” [After returning with the battery.] “There. This one shouldn’t give you any more trouble. Let’s turn on the laptop and make sure there wasn’t any damage. Working? OK, good. Again, I’m really sorry for this happening. I know it’s not much, but I’d be happy to offer you a $5 iTunes gift card for your trouble.”

Instead of acting like some self-righteous, faux-benevolent retail cog he should have been apologizing profusely. THE PRODUCT EXPLODED after all.

Comcast

When I got out of the shower and walked into my bedroom to get dressed last week I saw the shadows of two guys against the blinds. Creepy. I got dressed in the bathroom.

A few minutes later at about 8:30 there was a phony-sounding “tap-tap-tuh-tap-tap…tap-tap” at my front door. It was the guy who’d been lurking outside my bedroom window! Just who I wanted to see as I was walking out the door to go to work!

He explained that I was getting more channels than I was paying for. I was aware of this as we had called Comcast and told them but it apparently took them three years to get around to checking it out.

The short version (yes, there is a longer version which I will most likely write about later) is after lurking outside my bedroom window unannounced, knocking on my door at 8:30 in the morning and then trying to do a high-pressure upsell he had the nerve to say, “You’ve been really nice about this. [Note: I've said about four words the entire time.] I can give you the premium (or standard, or whatever it was) service for $29.99 for six months.”

Don’t BS me, jerk. Comcast advertises their “$X for Y months” promotions all the time. Don’t act like you’re being all nice to me and making some giant concession on my behalf when you’re really just trying to score some kind of commission for yourself.

I’ll end here. But, like I said, more later on the Comcast bit.

Image courtesy of here.

 

Oh, the drama. First, I freak out because I can’t get the specific notebook I want. Then my friend/distant relative Erin brings one up from Provo for me. Then I get the one I ordered online (and was too impatient to wait for) so I have two. THEN the one Erin brought up began falling apart, the cover ever so sadly separating from the spine, so I wrote Moleskine and ask/beg for a new one.

Being in Italy (Milan, darling) our correspondence was a bit delayed and with the language barrier a little choppy. However, they very kindly said that, since they’re handmade, sometimes these things happen and they’d be happy to send me a replacement if I’d provide my address, which I did.

Long story short, they ended up sending me two replacement notebooks, one with the cover written in Italian and one written in German, in addition to the original one I’d ordered online. While all this was happening, I found some good glue and was able to (mostly) reattach the cover of the original notebook which I’m still using.

I wrote Moleskine, told them they sent me an extra and offered to ship it back to them. They wrote back and told me not to worry about it. 

So now I have four total (three unused) softcover, ruled, pocket-sized Moleskine notebooks when just two months ago there was only one to be found in the entire state of Utah. Crazy how things turn out, huh?