Brickbats (and the occasional bouquet)

This post will showcase events in which we have received spectacular client service. To be fair it will include the good and the ugly (the merely bad isn't worth wasting your time with).

I have decided that in this post I will add more recent stuff near the top.

My initial blast was for Microsoft, because my posts appeared to have the wrong time etc on them and, with any computing problem, the default is to blame Bill Gates. Sorry for the sexism, but I don't usually give Melinda a serve. However it turned out that the issue was not with XXXXsoft but with Google, since there is an obscure setting in Blogger which defaults to all bloggers being on pacific Time. Thus Google get a brickbat. However they also get a bouquet because I was able to find the solution intheir help pages: a difference to XXXXsoft products.

Lets get positive: http://franmart.blogspot.com/2007/10/interesting-things-to-do-with-yeast.html includes some sideswipes - not quite brickbats - but also some large bouquets for the better brewers I have encountered!

Here is a brickbat for the United Nations Federal Credit Union (UNFCU) and a bouquet for Westpac (with a foreshadowing brickbat for UPS):


  • I wanted to order an MP3 player from B&Hphoto on 9th Avenue and this process went very well: just what I wanted, and even allowing for freight a very good price. Into the checkout and put in my address etc and my credit card details.
  • To avoid the extortionate exchange rate which Mastercard applies I decided to use my still active UNFCU Visa card and pay directly in greenbacks. Put in the number for that card and suddenly we end up on a UNFCU Visa security screen where they want an online purchase password (or some name like that). To get one of these you have to give them a few details including the zip code to which your bill is sent. So:
  • -> I put in the 4 digit postcode for El Rancho Carwoola. Sorry, not a valid zip code.
  • -> I put 10017 which I used last year. Sorry doesn't match billing address.
  • -> I said &%^&^%&!!! and reverted to my Australian card. I guess the key thing is to get one of their stupid passwords while still in the US.
  • The final amazing bit of this story is that within 5 minutes of finishing this business my phone rang and it was the folk from the Westpac Fraud Prevention Unitconfirming that the transaction was kosher. So my MP3 player is now in the tender hands of UPS (and if they perform as well as they did last time I used them I may have the player before Christmas)!

    In one of the first posts in this blog http://franmart.blogspot.com/2007/01/semi-homeless.html I expressed some angst about the fact that Palerang Council couldn't tell me when something was going to be delivered "because it's coming by courier". This post is not about the Council however - if anything it is more of an insight into what the person had likely experienced in the past. Cutting to the chase:
    Part 1
  • this story began one Wednesday when we found a card from TNT in our mailbox saying they had a package for us which they had not been able to deliver. It also included things to fill in to authorise the driver to leave it without seeing us on a subsequent visit.
  • I rang TNT to check that the driver would come to the house, not stop at the mailbox as do Australia Post. Not a problem. They couldn't tell me who the article was from (sent from Newington in Sydney, which no-one has ever heard of, but includes Homebush Bay) or to whom it was addressed. It was a small article - a standard envelope!
  • I then read the small print to find that as the signature required box was marked the driver couldn't leave it without seeing us. Another call, to discover that they couldn't try again until the Friday. It was suggested I ring again about 9am on the Friday to find if it was on the truck - they would have scanned the barcodes by then.
  • Ring at 9am on the Friday. No scans received yet: might not happen until 11:30. We'll just have to wait.
  • By 3pm Friday our drive has been untroubled by trucks so I ring again. Oh: the article hasn't loaded on the truck; agreed that it should have been; still can't tell me what it is etc. After explaining to the call centre person how much grief this is causing me, I tell them that the only thing I can do is to visit their yard in Fyshwick on the following Wednesday and pick it up myself. For once I hope that my "call is being recorded for quality purposes" because my end of the chat included a few statements about the quality of the service offered by the company. I concluded by suggesting they buy a dictionary and look up the words 'overnight' and 'express'.
  • Monday was a public holiday so nothing happened - not really that much different to other days. On Tuesday the phone rang and someone from TNT told me that the parcel was ready to be picked up. Words failed me, beyond checking that I could in fact pick it up tomorrow.
  • The final stupidity of the "system" is that when we got there the package was (a) not for us, but the previous tenants of the house; and (b) contained a part for some equipment that they had needed urgently! Fortunatel;y they live close by so i accepted it and delivered it to them.
  • To complete the stupidity of this company http://www.tnt.com/country/en_au.html I sent them an email with a few suggestions for improvement. It wasn't happy, but not a flamer either. No response.

Part 2

I ordered an MP3 player from B&H photo video on 9th Avenue in Manahattan. They were their usual fantastic seleves. (I did say there would be bouquets as well as brickbats in this post).

It was to be delivered - at a cost of $US40 to me - by UPS. UPS's idea of delivery was to pass it to Australia Post in Canberra rather than to me. This meant I had to go to Queanbeyan PO, 2 days after UPS said it had been delivered and pick it up. These courier companies could not lie straight in bed if nailed down. They are all SCUM!!

I took pleasure in passing the above views on to B&H - including the word "kvetch" to show sympatico with their ethnicity - suggesting they do not pay the UPS bill for this non-event! My comments were apparently noted: perhaps I should have put more Yiddish in there to achieve a definite "we are not going to pay this already"?

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