Thursday 16 April 2009

Depressing news this morning ...

Picked up the paper this morning and the news was so depressing I feel like ... cancelling the paper:

S&R is closing - this will mean something to the locals.

Somebody built a house, telling the builders, pool installer, heating contractor they had won the lottery - guess what: no money - how come my creditors always ask for proof that I can pay? I hate it when they do that! Maybe I'll order my new Carver and tell them ...

And I guess pirates are not a good role model for children anymore.

And - this age of entitlement!! An ad company used an image of Woody Allen on a billboard - without asking him - and now is arguing in court that he has no cause for action because his reputation is 'no good anyway'. What?????? You screwed up by not asking him (misguided sense of entitlement??!!) - pay up! You're pirates!!

Tuesday 7 April 2009

The SERVICE in Customer Service

Here's a 'good news' customer service story. When's the last time you heard one of those? They happen, but we don't tend to write about them. Here's the story -

Before we headed out on our cruise with our new Acer Netbook, we decided it would be a good idea to have a lock to secure it (hotel, stateroom, even on our own boat). I found a Kensington combination cable/lock on eBay for a reasonable price and, although they always seem to charge too much for shipping, I ordered it. It arrived very quickly and we followed the instructions to reset the combination from the default (0,0,0) to our own. Checked it out - worked fine - packed it away with the netbook for our trip.

When we arrived, I noticed that the lever which you flip to reset the combination had flipped itself and the numbers had changed. The short version - simply carrying the lock in the laptop case had changed the combination and there's no way of guessing what the new one is (you math people know how many combinations are possible with three wheels with 10 digits each). That's why they call it a security device!!

We contacted Kensington and they suggested contacting a locksmith - seems pretty expensive to reset a lock which can obviously reset itself again. A quick Google, and it was apparent that others have had this problem. An email to Kensington, suggesting that they were in some way responsible for serving their customers who had purchased a lock with an obvious design flaw, brought the following response: give us your mailing address and we will send you a new Kensington lock (the newer model which can't reset itself!!). Arrived today - works great - THANK YOU, KENSINGTON!! That's the way customer service should serve customers.

Wednesday 1 April 2009

Congratulations, Tanith and Ben

We're delighted that Tanith and Ben won the silver medal in Ice Dancing at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Los Angeles, CA last week. We didn't get to Worlds this year, but we watched every moment breathlessly. While figure skating fans around the world moaned about the lack of coverage, we in Canada (blessed by the CBC) were able to watch every skater in every discipline both online and on Bold TV. Watching on CBC is the next best thing to being there - you even get to watch the Zamboni - we get a coffee during the flood and pretend we've popped out to Timmy's for a break. We remember when we used to have to wait for a phone call from the arena to hear results - that wasn't all that many years ago. Congratulations, Tanith and Ben - we're so proud of you!

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Gananoque, Ontario, Canada