Posts in the "consumer watch" category - Chris Hardie

I had a nice call this morning from Nick, the local store manager of the OfficeMax in Richmond. I'd recently had some really poor customer service experiences in that store with them and had submitted a narrative of those experiences for their review. I usually don't bother going back to a place after such occurrences - especially not a big box store - but in Richmond they are uniquely suited to sell a few products that I and/or Summersault consume, so I thought it worth at least trying to share...

I called Vectren Energy Delivery (a.k.a. the gas company) the other day with a question about my bill, and was pleasantly surprised by a customer service measure they've implemented. When I had made my way through the phone tree to the point where I start to sit on hold, the system said "we'll call you back within the same period of time you might wait on hold - 47 minutes." Then they let me enter a phone number and record my name. Indeed, about 30 minutes later, I got a call back from an automated...

I sent this letter to Timex, and have not yet received any response. They may well have trashed it, but I think I would like it if I received this kind of specific technical feedback on the products/services I create. Timex Audio Products 135 Essex Avenue Avenel, NJ 07001 September 25, 2004 To Whom It May Concern: Greetings. I am writing with some comments and suggestions about one of your products, specifically the Model T618 Stereo CD Clock Radio with Digital Tuning and Nature...

Well, it's that time of year again, when public radio stations completely abandon any pretense of professionalism and dignity, and begin soliciting their listeners for money. Announcer #1: Well, we're sorry to break in to this news story about critical current events, but we've got a great jello recipe that can be yours for a pledge of just five dollars. Announcer #2: That's right Tom. Unfortunately, the phones are all quiet right now. If we don't get a call in the next few minutes, well,...

My letter of Tuesday, Sep 7th, 8:30 PM: Greetings. For the second time in a month, I recently ordered Papa John's breadsticks and had them delivered with only a Garlic sauce - no pizza sauce or cheese sauce as has been included in the past. Your website indicates that at least the pizza sauce should be included (perhaps you've discontinued the Cheese Sauce?). In any case, I've been fairly disappointed both times, and thought I'd take a moment to note that folks ordering breadsticks and pizza...

Fair warning: this post is pure rant. I have a Sprint PCS phone that I use as my primary, and only, home phone line. There are tons of reasons why I like this arrangement, which I won't go into here, but I've been a loyal, pay-on-time Sprint customer for several years now. Which is why it was maddeningly frustrating to go to make a call today and get a note that my account had been shut off because I was over my spending limit. I went to Sprint's website to see if I could find out how I'd used...

Random rant: In 1970, Intel produced a memory chip, the first, capable of storing 1 kilobyte of data - a couple of paragraphs of text or so. Today, one can obtain memory chips that store many gigabytes of data - enough to hold entire movies, encyclopedias, and more - for mere hundreds of dollars. So, why is it that when I finish pumping gas at a gas station and hit the "RECEIPT YES" button, the piece of crap machine can't store that one simple keystroke in its input buffer long enough that it doesn't...

I went to the Ohio BMV yesterday to get my Indiana driver's license converted to an Ohio driver's license. It went fine, but the "written" test that I had to take was a little bit different than what I remembered from my first time around. For one, the test is now computerized, which, given that I sit in front of a computer for far too many of my waking hours, meant that I picked up on the "subtleties of the interface" quickly. But the other thing I noticed was how obsessed the test creators...