Hi, I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but here's a short story about customer service...
Once, in a very grey past, I bought a copy of OS/2, and with it came a card that entitled me to two years worth of free updates. I duly send it back to IBM and it was met with silence. Eventually, just a few short months before the end of the two-year period, I called IBM. First IBM UK, who turned out to be clueless, and then IBM in the US. I was handed from one clueless person to the next, until, after about half a dozen not very cheap calls across the pond I had enough. I wrote a letter, and I wrote it directly to the big boss, Sam Palmisano. Just a few days(!) later I got a call from an executive assistant of the CEO of IBM UK, asking me to explain what had happened. I did do so, I think I even send her a scanned copy of my "Proof of entitlement". She told me that she would (try to) sort things out. Another few days passed, and then I got a call from someone in the US. I told him the same story, he apologized and told me that he would do his best to help me and lo and behold, about three weeks later the postman knocked on the door and handed me a (huge for the contents) box with all updates for OS/2 that had been made available over those last two years. Another example of IBM listening to its customers? Take a look at page 381 (PDF: 466) of the PL/I V4R2 Programming guide, <http://publibfp.boulder.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/i1191451.pdf> One of the paragraphs on that page reads: <quote> If you do have code that uses BASED structures with REFER and which the compiler flags with this message, you may be able to get better performance by passing the structure to a subroutine that declares a corresponding structure with * extents. This will cause the structure to be mapped once at the CALL statement, but there will no further remappings when it is accessed in the called subroutine. </quote> I still have the email to Peter Elderon in which I suggested he might want to add the above, as using this trick can save enormous amounts of CPU time. (It's now slightly less required due to the generation, provided some restrictions are met, of in-line of code to access such structures) In fact since 2006 sent reports of many bugs in PL/I directly to Peter Elderon and he not only acknowledged them, but also fixed them, despite the fact that I never followed official rules for the submission of APARs... Bravo, IBM! Now, I've had similar experiences with Virgin Mobile - called their customer service about a billing problem and for weeks I was shifted around endlessly between clueless idiots. In this case the problem was solved within days by writing a letter to Sir Richard Branson. Bravo, Virgin! I can give more examples of great customer service, but how about a company that really doesn't seem to care? In February 2004 I bought an HP Pavilion PC. It wasn't cheap, but it was one of the first from a mainline manufacturer to come with an Athlon 64. About 15 months later, out of warranty, it suddenly died. I wrote to HP UK, but "Sorry you will have to pay to get it repaired". Fortunately, just about a week later someone offered an equivalent motherboard on eBay (by that time a local PC guy had determined that the problem could only be the motherboard), for about one fifth of the HP repair cost. Bought it, and the PC worked again, for just over a year or so. Then some capacitors popped their tops. Got another mobo from eBay, and the same thing happened again, twice. Re-capped the last mobo, only to see more capacitors pop, the last time in October last year. Fed up, and without being able to get a replacement from eBay, I wrote a letter to HP's new CEO, Meg Whitman. Result: Zilch, noppes, rien du tout. I've never had a reply. Some Googling about popped capacitors turned out hundreds of hits, and there seemed to be a genuine problem with industrial espionage gone awry in the early 2000's, according to one website DELL spent around USD 300 million to recall and replace motherboards. Needlessly to say, when I bought a new PC for myself at the beginning of this year, and a new notebook for my wife, I stayed away as far as possible from HP. I don't know if my experience was an exception, but even if it was, that is no way to treat your customers! HP, you suck, and if anyone connected to HP reads this, please tell your big boss to have a look at this, <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html> and maybe start treating your customers like they should be treated! -- Robert AH Prins [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
