Slashdot Mirror
What Happened To Palm?
Ian Lamont writes "Palm's fourth quarter results came out a few days ago, and they were not pretty: Palm reported losses of 40 cents per share, for a quarterly loss of $43.4 million. It's the fourth straight quarter of losses, and it's clear that the company is not faring well in the rapidly evolving smartphone market. The Treo line is lagging after seven years, and while the Centro has done well, it's not well enough to compete with the likes of the iPhone 3G and RIM's surging BlackBerry line. New competition is on the horizon, with developers and manufacturers working on the Google Android platform and the recent news that Symbian is being open-sourced. What happened to Palm? What can the company do to effectively compete in the mobile market, and turn its fortunes around?"
I know we're talking Palm here, but my girlfriend's laptop (IMB/Lenovo) has been in for repairs for over a month now. Send it out May 19. Was expecting a pretty quick turnaround. After all, Dell replaced my motherboard and got me my laptop back in about 2 days (overnight DHL both ways, they paid.)
Not so fast. Literally. The box was overnight DHL. Nice. Good start. We sent it out. After about a week, we called. "We don't have the part." Ok, fine... we'll wait. What else can we do?
Another week later, they tell us, "Oh, we just ordered the part that she needs." Hello? You're kidding, right?
Well, it's been over a month now, and I'm still not sure why we haven't received the laptop. Right now, I'd be ecstatic if they offered us the money back. I'd take it and run. Customer disservice at its finest. My gf was supposed to be able to talk to a manager (as if that would do any good), but as her call was being transferred, it got disconnected. Huh. Funny how that works. Finally, a manager did call her (a few weeks later) and told her that if it takes "much longer" they'll just send her the laptop (unrepair) and send someone to repair it. How is that going to be any faster???
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
I'm sorry, feel free to mod me down for this since it's OT, but:
"I bought my Palm T|X, direct from Palm, within 24 hours of when they first became available."
"So, 48 hours pass"
"So I wait. Five days pass."
"So the next morning, I call them again"
"I ordered it overnight."
Yes, bad customer service etc. But for fracks sake, relax. If you don't get your phone within no time at all, so what? Phones will only make your life more hectic. Go look at some nice flowers instead. Go out to the countryside and meet some nice horses! Have a nice cup of tea with your neighbour! Relax. Your post makes me feel happy about quitting my job so that I get more time to relax and do stuff I want to do, but at the same time I feel really bad about people like you who are obvously suffering from the 0-day lifestyle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement (or something, I'm not associalted with them, I just think it's really wrong to get worked up about a gizmo that doesn't arrive right this minute!!!111 (and also: absolutely no offense intended)