In the US, there are rules about collections like this. It used to be that x% had to go to the organization it was being collected for. Somewhere in the past few years, instead of getting percentages, I'd hear numbers like, "We're donating $100,000 of the money collected..." Remember, if people play games like that (and see the post in this thread with the figures that are given), then they're making big money -- maybe even big enough for lobbyists and influencing elected representatives.
If they can't tell me that at least 75% of all collected goes to the named charity, then I don't give them money.
Actually, I don't donate to people who call me. I already give to several groups as it is and research an org before giving them money.
They do meet the conditions of whatever gov. entity oversees them, but they've paid enough to make sure those regulations can be sidestepped.
They're worthless, unless you can prove you don't need any money, and don't care about you unless they can make money from you. When I started my business, I was lucky enough to be referred to someone at a bank by a friend and since I was not asking for a loan, he gave me a lot of information. It turns out if you're asking for a loan, they are quite restricted in what they can say. They cannot legally discourage any small business from applying for a loan, but, and I'm simplifying a great deal here, it boils down to what he told me on our first phone call: banks do not loan money to new businesses anymore unless you have a lot of collateral and the only way to raise money to start a small business now is to either max out your credit cards or use family money. I had to do both, which amounted to me having avaible to me more than I made in a year working as a teacher. It took a while to get things up and running, which meant doing things like letting one credit card payment go this month and hitting it next month. The credit card companies are quite nasty now and will raise your interest rate to about 30% for the least excuse, which made it hard. I started paying down the debt last December and will have it all paid off in less than a year. Still, banks are skeptical about loaning to me, but that's likely because while starting I had such a low income. I've decided I'm not dealing with them anymore. If they won't help when I need it, then I won't let them make money off me when I don't need them. Once all the startup debt is paid down, I'll easily be able to avoid buying on credit.
I talked with the Small Business Administration. There are some good people that can give advice, but it seems the world has changed quickly and these nice people from the goverment who want to help you just can't keep up with the changes. Their loan backing programs are a joke compared to what the banks want. They do have people who can give you some good advice, but don't count on them for any financial help and don't count on banks.
Starting on the nights and weekends is a good idea because you'll need your day job to keep paying the bills. Don't quit the dayjob until your business can generate the same amount of income regularly -- not just one month, but over and over. Ignore the banks and don't deal with them for loans or credit cards. You'll save time that way and won't get caught in the nasty traps banks use to raise interest rates on credit cards.
I don't remember the specifics. I remember being on a do not call list before the main one went live. It could have been a test list or something else. I think there was a voluntary list where marketers didn't have to legally follow it. I do know that earlier this summer, I went to the site that has the list and checked my phone number and it was either not listed any longer or listed as expired. I remember then going through the site to find out why it wasn't on there and that's when I found out about a specified five year limit. I can't see some people cannot accept that I wouldn't remember clearly something I spent 5 minutes on years ago when I signed up and would need to pick and be ugly about it, but the bottom line is that I started getting calls, checked the site and saw my number was listed either no longer included or listed as expired and that's when I found out about he five year limit.
One that should be exempted: I often get calls from policeman or fireman funds. They talk like they're going to do all these wonderful things for those groups. Then I ask them how much of my donation goes to the group. I get puzzled responses. I explain and say, "If I give you $100, how much of it goes to the charity you're supporting?" That always leaves the caller puzzled. Finally some explain that they promise to donate at least $100,000 to the fund. Then I ask if it's local or nationwide. They don't know. They don't even know where I am. I ask if $100,000 for a fund that's nationwide for injured police sounds like much, since that comes to $2,000 per state. They're still puzzled.
If they're still on, wasting all that time with me, I know they're in trouble because that call is driving their average call time way up and the boss doesn't like it. So, in the interest of educating them about charities and to make sure their boss educates them about call time, I keep going. I explain that good charities will give most of what they get to the work they're doing. I deal with some that give something between 75-80% of all they raise to the work they're doing. I explain that true charities, when doing fundraisers, tell people how much of each dollar goes to the charity and how much goes to other costs (like ads or admin). Then I point out that they say they're giving $100,000 to a nationwide fund, but what if they raise over half a million -- who gets the other $400,000? That's a lot of money for someone to make when they imply it's all going to charity.
By then they've either hung up or they're so amazed by what I've said that you can already hear the tone in their voice indicating they just don't believe in their job anymore.
Did you know, though, that your registration on the federal Do Not Call list expires after 5 years? I've posted about it in response to a post farther down, but it's worth mentioning again, where people can see it (no, I'm not doing it for karma whoring). It worked for me until this summer when I started getting some calls again, then I checked the website for the gov. list and found out you have to re-register after 5 years.
That's the one piece of information they never told anyone.
There's another loop hole that most people don't know about and I haven't seen posted here yet.
It expires after 5 years and, believe it or not, it's been around for 5 years.
I had gotten rid of most calls years ago by telling every one to put me on their do not call list. I also got a recording of the "out of order" signal the telco uses and put that on my answering maching, at the start of the tape, and that helped eliminate some calls. If I didn't recognize the number, I'd let the machine get it, and there were some numbers that I used to see show up often but without a message. The telco tone at the start of my tape eliminated some of them. They called once or twice more, got the tone, and stopped showing up. I also know time online is a major issue for marketers, so I'd talk some to death -- keep them on 10-15 minutes and not buy anything. That's way more time then they should spend on the phone even for a sale.
When the do-not-call registry went active, everyone in my family registered all our phone numbers. What few calls I'd still get stopped coming in. Then, a few months ago, I started getting some calls this summer, so I looked up the registry to see if there was a problem and found out that you have to re-register every 5 years to keep your number listed.
If you're getting more calls in the last few months, it's because your registration on the list expired.
Personally, I answer all the survey calls. That way I get to tell them my favorite radio staion and my preferences in movies and other topics they ask about. Considering how few geeks there are out there, I figure it's my way of making sure someone with my tastes gets counted. As for political calls, I can usually spot them on caller ID, so I pick up the phone, then hang up.
You're right. Sometimes something is so obvious that I overlook it. Who could forget The Doctor? But remember, the have no interest in rerunning older stories and the show itself was not a Skiffy "original", it was done by the BBC and picked up later by Skiffy. While, in a sense, that happened with the 1st season of Galactica, Skiffy had ordered the season, so that order was a large part of where the production money came from. "Dead Like Me", as best I know, like "Firefly", has only been shown in re-runs when it was originally produced for another network. Remember, also, that Stargate started on Showtime and moved over to Skiffy after the original contract, along with "The Outer Limits." Don't forget, also, that when they realized Stargate didn't cost as much as Farscape, the killed Farscape in favor of projects like Atlantis.
I refuse to watch "Eureka." It may be a good show, but I've seen just too many shows start on Skiffy and get a short run, like "The Invisible Man," which I expected to be a complet turkey, but turned out to be an interesting take on an old idea.
Skiffy is not about originality, imagination, or anything that sf fans like. It's about exploitation in it's lowest form (oh, almost lowest, except for wrestling and wet t-shirts).
Even NPR had a decent story (with smoe factual errors) on Star Trek today.
Notice that TVLand is celebrating the 40th anniversary, while SciFi does not even give it passing notice. That's one reason the only shows I watch on SciFi are Stargates and Galactica. I avoid the network because they've made it clear they don't care about sf, good sf, tv, or anything but quick ratings. While that may be true with most networks, at least many have a clear enough understanding of their material to "indulge" in it, like the goofy way TVLand promotes its own shows (like their TV landmarks they've done of people like Andy Griffith and Bob Newhart). Networks like that at least seem to be run by people that like the content they work with, while Skiffy seems to be run by computers that simply track ratings and don't care about content or fans.
It's also the way some well respecte groups operate. It's the way the Religous Society of Friends, or Quakers, has been handling their business and making their decisions for close to 400 years and it's worked for them. Granted they aren't a business, but it shows an organization can survive with such an attitude.
You're working with the assumption that the company is always at fault to some degree. It is worth evaluating to see if there is fault within the company, but in my experience, if there is a customer that is so unpleasant that I've decided to fire them, we're dealing with a chronic griper.
Again, speaking as someone with about a decade of experience in residential treatment, sometimes you can take on a customer, do your best to please them, and do nothing wrong, and still have continual complaints from them. Without going into all the background, in short, such people are unhappy with themselves and their own life. Unless they get serious therapy or face a grave crisis, they just don't change. I know I don't want them coming back if they're like that.
My attitude is that any complaints deserve the question, "How could this have been prevented?" Some are simple, like better documentation, or a better interface. Others need an in depth review. There are many cases where you can do your best, but you're dealing with someone who just won't be satisfied. In such a case, the only mistake was taking them on as a customer in the first place.
There are times when the bridge should be burned. It's not often, but it happens.
You're thinking it means even when they're wrong, they're right.
That's not true and if you spend the time needed on customers that complain no matter what you do, you lose a lot of money trying to satisfy someone who will never be happy. That kind of customer is wrong -- wrong for your business, wrong headed, and just plain in need of a decade of therapy.
The customer is not always right. You deal with the ones that you can and the ones that are never happy -- let them go to your competition and be unhappy with them. Some people are just incapable of being satisfied because they have their own problems. You can't help them, you can't fix them. Let someone else waste time and resources on them.
You can take the attitude you're implying, but that means sinking a lot of resources into a losing endeavour and, in the long run, isn't worth the profit on the sale or even the profit on word of mouth because such people will never give you good word of mouth.
Two years ago hurricane Isabel hit and we had no power for 9 days. Much of the city was without power longer. I know a few people that were thankful for cell phones, until they realized they had no place to charge them, since work and home had no power. People would idle their cars in their driveways to charge their cells or to make calls. By some miracle, the only system we could count on through that was the landline. I've also had times where I could not get a signal on the cell in my own home -- and I live in the state capital, not 10 minutes from the capital building itself!
I can understand wanting to ditch a landline, but after surviving one disaster, I'm staying prepared for disasters and emergencies.
This is where my time working in residential treatment in a psych hospital has helped me a lot in running my own business. Reality doesn't matter: people's perception of reality does. In a case like the one described, the customer has decided that the company is inept, or that this one person is inept. He's sure of that. In my experience, both in business, which includes watching other business owners, and in treatment, is that when a person is constantly making claims that are verifiably false, there is no way that you'll convince them you can do a good job. You can replace the equipment with something that goes twice as fast and does twice as much for free. They *may* thank you, but will soon complain because there's something else the new equipment doesn't do. People like that are never happy, and the problem is NOT you, it's them.
You can keep trying to help, which one should do for a while, but if they keep pushing, you're better off offering them a full refund and accepting a return, or just giving them a refund and letting them keep the equipment. Why? Because they're just never going to be happy. There's no point in busting your tail for good word of mouth with a bitter person who is never happy with anything. He'll probably keep telling you how great his last supplier was. Call his last supplier and talk with them and you'll find out that he treated them the same way.
When you get a customer that bad, as Joshua said, "Strange game, Dr. Falken. The only way to win is not to play." Word of mount is great, but when you get a complainer, there is no way to win and the more time you spend on him, the more he'll expect. It's even worse if that kind of person got a good deal in the first place.
I've had customers that, for one reason or another, got our service for a lower price, and if you have a complainer that manages that, they're even worse. They don't appreciate what they're getting because it's cheap to them, and they end up expecting a lot more than what you do for other clients. I don't know about you, but my life is too short to deal with such people. We fire those customers. As for word of mouth, most people know such a person for what he is: a whiner and complainer. Few listen to what they say. The few people that are their friends are probably like them and I'd rather my competition get them as clients. I'd rather they get frustrated employees or a loss in profit from someone like that than us getting that. If people don't appreciate our product and our pricing structure, then they're welcome to try the competition (which, in my case, is made up of bad programmers with no business or people skills, so I don't have too much to worry about).
I'd say that is, within a few years, when this happened to me, as well.
As I said at one point along the way, when you consider how many users there are out there, you'll find that many of them do the same bad things as others. I know I could tell several stories of the stories about the computer not being plugged in or people trying to run it in a place without power. I didn't bring them up because others already had.
Some stories are heard often or retold often because they were not unique in occurance.
What's the issue with them mentioning 5 1/4" floppies? Some of us were thrilled to start using floppies so we could trash the cassette tape interfaces.
As for whether or not they have a basis in fact, I personally have dealt with the wrong size disc issue that I posted, and with power problems. The reason some of these stories are heard so often is that you're dealing with, literally, millions of people using computers and you will see the mistakes repeated often, especially the most obvious ones.
I never, however, have had to deal with any client thinking the CD-ROM drive drawer was a coffee cup holder.
The people in the store were pretty sympathetic with me as I was having such a hard time dealing with her.
After I quit teaching, I worked at Egghead for a few months while deciding what to do next. Then they were closing the stores, so the store was crowded with all the people in there after work for one of the first days of reduced prices. I was up near the register, which, in this store, was easily visible to the entire store and dealing with a difficult customer on the other end. We could not do refunds anymore (since the store was closing) and, like you, the store could hear me. It started with a few people nearby listening in, then it seemed to spread and I realized almost everyone in the store was listening in and could tell I was dealing with an irate customer. The teaching I had left was teaching emotionally disturbed kids, so I had a lot of experience handling irrational people, and also in not letting them push me around.
I kept calm and had a flat (not patronizing voice), which is what I think started catching people's attention. It was almost like a Bob Newhart phone call where you can tell exactly what the other person is saying from your end of the phone. Toward the end, the people near me could hear the idiot woman screaming over the phone since she was so loud I had to keep the earpiece a ways from my ear. Finally, when there was nothing more I could do, and the woman was screaming, and I had tried hard to help her get a program working and she refused to work with me, I finally said, "Well, if it's not working, then there's nothing more I can do unless you want to try my suggestions," and there followed a long string of profanity that people near me could her. At this point I realized I only had my job for a few weeks, the manager not only liked me, but counted on me finishing out the closing time, so the few weeks I had left were secure AND we were really didn't have to kiss up to customers any more, so I said, "Ma'am, think you for shopping and calling Egghead. It has been a pleasure working with an enthuiastic, calm, and cooperative person like you. Please shop here again. Thank you very much," and calmly hung up.
I got a HUGE round of applause from all the customers in the store. If I were a performer, the applause was enough I would have had to do an ovation.
Never heard from the angry customer again, either.
How about finding a 5 1/4" disc in a 3 1/2" drive? The client said he didn't have the bigger drive, so he figured if he folded the disc over and shoved it in.
Oh, and then I had to explain that the extremely important data on this disc he just folded was likely no longer in existence.
I doubt Steve Jobs would have been the one to get upset about thing being closed off, since very little of the actual innovation, creative, and design work ever was his. I can see Steve Wozniak getting ticked off about it, but I imagine he'd hack away anyway.
Jobs may be great at pushing the designers to do more, but he was NOT the one who did most of the hacking. He even exploded when Woz asked if he could help with the Apple's analog port.
My thought was not just about betting against never, but that the companies involved in this have millions of dollars at stake. I'm sure they've studied the issue from every angle they can think of. If I were them, and had checked this out thoroughly enough to feel safe making a huge investment (or asking for one) in it, I'd have already gone through every scenario any of my people could think of.
Which means I'm sure the author is writing with research backing him up, but it is one voice of question compared to many who believe it can be done, and done in the next 15 years. If he were willing to put as much as stake that it can't be done as those who have put a stake in doing it, I might give the article some weight, but as it is, it's just one article and one dissenting view. Unless we see a lot of scientists agreeing, I'll still consider it possible until someone proves it impossible.
And then, as you said, he's betting against never.
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How do you know s/he wasn't? Are people on this site not able to work in such a field?
That's the point: their practices ARE dubious.
In the US, there are rules about collections like this. It used to be that x% had to go to the organization it was being collected for. Somewhere in the past few years, instead of getting percentages, I'd hear numbers like, "We're donating $100,000 of the money collected..." Remember, if people play games like that (and see the post in this thread with the figures that are given), then they're making big money -- maybe even big enough for lobbyists and influencing elected representatives.
If they can't tell me that at least 75% of all collected goes to the named charity, then I don't give them money.
Actually, I don't donate to people who call me. I already give to several groups as it is and research an org before giving them money.
They do meet the conditions of whatever gov. entity oversees them, but they've paid enough to make sure those regulations can be sidestepped.
They're worthless, unless you can prove you don't need any money, and don't care about you unless they can make money from you. When I started my business, I was lucky enough to be referred to someone at a bank by a friend and since I was not asking for a loan, he gave me a lot of information. It turns out if you're asking for a loan, they are quite restricted in what they can say. They cannot legally discourage any small business from applying for a loan, but, and I'm simplifying a great deal here, it boils down to what he told me on our first phone call: banks do not loan money to new businesses anymore unless you have a lot of collateral and the only way to raise money to start a small business now is to either max out your credit cards or use family money. I had to do both, which amounted to me having avaible to me more than I made in a year working as a teacher. It took a while to get things up and running, which meant doing things like letting one credit card payment go this month and hitting it next month. The credit card companies are quite nasty now and will raise your interest rate to about 30% for the least excuse, which made it hard. I started paying down the debt last December and will have it all paid off in less than a year. Still, banks are skeptical about loaning to me, but that's likely because while starting I had such a low income. I've decided I'm not dealing with them anymore. If they won't help when I need it, then I won't let them make money off me when I don't need them. Once all the startup debt is paid down, I'll easily be able to avoid buying on credit.
I talked with the Small Business Administration. There are some good people that can give advice, but it seems the world has changed quickly and these nice people from the goverment who want to help you just can't keep up with the changes. Their loan backing programs are a joke compared to what the banks want. They do have people who can give you some good advice, but don't count on them for any financial help and don't count on banks.
Starting on the nights and weekends is a good idea because you'll need your day job to keep paying the bills. Don't quit the dayjob until your business can generate the same amount of income regularly -- not just one month, but over and over. Ignore the banks and don't deal with them for loans or credit cards. You'll save time that way and won't get caught in the nasty traps banks use to raise interest rates on credit cards.
I don't remember the specifics. I remember being on a do not call list before the main one went live. It could have been a test list or something else. I think there was a voluntary list where marketers didn't have to legally follow it. I do know that earlier this summer, I went to the site that has the list and checked my phone number and it was either not listed any longer or listed as expired. I remember then going through the site to find out why it wasn't on there and that's when I found out about a specified five year limit. I can't see some people cannot accept that I wouldn't remember clearly something I spent 5 minutes on years ago when I signed up and would need to pick and be ugly about it, but the bottom line is that I started getting calls, checked the site and saw my number was listed either no longer included or listed as expired and that's when I found out about he five year limit.
But it's still double the cost of the computers China, in the previous story posted, is going to sell computers for.
I should have included there was an earlier version, for testing or something, and that's when I signed up.
Oh, I used to teach math. I can also write well, too. Guess that's better than your abilities.
I think that's when it beceame official. I remember signing up earlier, either for testing or an earlier form.
One that should be exempted: I often get calls from policeman or fireman funds. They talk like they're going to do all these wonderful things for those groups. Then I ask them how much of my donation goes to the group. I get puzzled responses. I explain and say, "If I give you $100, how much of it goes to the charity you're supporting?" That always leaves the caller puzzled. Finally some explain that they promise to donate at least $100,000 to the fund. Then I ask if it's local or nationwide. They don't know. They don't even know where I am. I ask if $100,000 for a fund that's nationwide for injured police sounds like much, since that comes to $2,000 per state. They're still puzzled.
If they're still on, wasting all that time with me, I know they're in trouble because that call is driving their average call time way up and the boss doesn't like it. So, in the interest of educating them about charities and to make sure their boss educates them about call time, I keep going. I explain that good charities will give most of what they get to the work they're doing. I deal with some that give something between 75-80% of all they raise to the work they're doing. I explain that true charities, when doing fundraisers, tell people how much of each dollar goes to the charity and how much goes to other costs (like ads or admin). Then I point out that they say they're giving $100,000 to a nationwide fund, but what if they raise over half a million -- who gets the other $400,000? That's a lot of money for someone to make when they imply it's all going to charity.
By then they've either hung up or they're so amazed by what I've said that you can already hear the tone in their voice indicating they just don't believe in their job anymore.
Did you know, though, that your registration on the federal Do Not Call list expires after 5 years? I've posted about it in response to a post farther down, but it's worth mentioning again, where people can see it (no, I'm not doing it for karma whoring). It worked for me until this summer when I started getting some calls again, then I checked the website for the gov. list and found out you have to re-register after 5 years.
That's the one piece of information they never told anyone.
There's another loop hole that most people don't know about and I haven't seen posted here yet.
It expires after 5 years and, believe it or not, it's been around for 5 years.
I had gotten rid of most calls years ago by telling every one to put me on their do not call list. I also got a recording of the "out of order" signal the telco uses and put that on my answering maching, at the start of the tape, and that helped eliminate some calls. If I didn't recognize the number, I'd let the machine get it, and there were some numbers that I used to see show up often but without a message. The telco tone at the start of my tape eliminated some of them. They called once or twice more, got the tone, and stopped showing up. I also know time online is a major issue for marketers, so I'd talk some to death -- keep them on 10-15 minutes and not buy anything. That's way more time then they should spend on the phone even for a sale.
When the do-not-call registry went active, everyone in my family registered all our phone numbers. What few calls I'd still get stopped coming in. Then, a few months ago, I started getting some calls this summer, so I looked up the registry to see if there was a problem and found out that you have to re-register every 5 years to keep your number listed.
If you're getting more calls in the last few months, it's because your registration on the list expired.
Personally, I answer all the survey calls. That way I get to tell them my favorite radio staion and my preferences in movies and other topics they ask about. Considering how few geeks there are out there, I figure it's my way of making sure someone with my tastes gets counted. As for political calls, I can usually spot them on caller ID, so I pick up the phone, then hang up.
You're right. Sometimes something is so obvious that I overlook it. Who could forget The Doctor? But remember, the have no interest in rerunning older stories and the show itself was not a Skiffy "original", it was done by the BBC and picked up later by Skiffy. While, in a sense, that happened with the 1st season of Galactica, Skiffy had ordered the season, so that order was a large part of where the production money came from. "Dead Like Me", as best I know, like "Firefly", has only been shown in re-runs when it was originally produced for another network. Remember, also, that Stargate started on Showtime and moved over to Skiffy after the original contract, along with "The Outer Limits." Don't forget, also, that when they realized Stargate didn't cost as much as Farscape, the killed Farscape in favor of projects like Atlantis.
I refuse to watch "Eureka." It may be a good show, but I've seen just too many shows start on Skiffy and get a short run, like "The Invisible Man," which I expected to be a complet turkey, but turned out to be an interesting take on an old idea.
Skiffy is not about originality, imagination, or anything that sf fans like. It's about exploitation in it's lowest form (oh, almost lowest, except for wrestling and wet t-shirts).
Even NPR had a decent story (with smoe factual errors) on Star Trek today.
Notice that TVLand is celebrating the 40th anniversary, while SciFi does not even give it passing notice. That's one reason the only shows I watch on SciFi are Stargates and Galactica. I avoid the network because they've made it clear they don't care about sf, good sf, tv, or anything but quick ratings. While that may be true with most networks, at least many have a clear enough understanding of their material to "indulge" in it, like the goofy way TVLand promotes its own shows (like their TV landmarks they've done of people like Andy Griffith and Bob Newhart). Networks like that at least seem to be run by people that like the content they work with, while Skiffy seems to be run by computers that simply track ratings and don't care about content or fans.
But they could probably top 350 MPH if they'd ditch the CB antenna and Yosemite Sam "Back Off" mudflaps.
Maybe so, but I doubt they could have still not jumped into the 8th dimension and driven through a mountain.
At least not without the oscillation overthruster.
It's also the way some well respecte groups operate. It's the way the Religous Society of Friends, or Quakers, has been handling their business and making their decisions for close to 400 years and it's worked for them. Granted they aren't a business, but it shows an organization can survive with such an attitude.
You're working with the assumption that the company is always at fault to some degree. It is worth evaluating to see if there is fault within the company, but in my experience, if there is a customer that is so unpleasant that I've decided to fire them, we're dealing with a chronic griper.
Again, speaking as someone with about a decade of experience in residential treatment, sometimes you can take on a customer, do your best to please them, and do nothing wrong, and still have continual complaints from them. Without going into all the background, in short, such people are unhappy with themselves and their own life. Unless they get serious therapy or face a grave crisis, they just don't change. I know I don't want them coming back if they're like that.
My attitude is that any complaints deserve the question, "How could this have been prevented?" Some are simple, like better documentation, or a better interface. Others need an in depth review. There are many cases where you can do your best, but you're dealing with someone who just won't be satisfied. In such a case, the only mistake was taking them on as a customer in the first place.
There are times when the bridge should be burned. It's not often, but it happens.
It does.
You're thinking it means even when they're wrong, they're right.
That's not true and if you spend the time needed on customers that complain no matter what you do, you lose a lot of money trying to satisfy someone who will never be happy. That kind of customer is wrong -- wrong for your business, wrong headed, and just plain in need of a decade of therapy.
The customer is not always right. You deal with the ones that you can and the ones that are never happy -- let them go to your competition and be unhappy with them. Some people are just incapable of being satisfied because they have their own problems. You can't help them, you can't fix them. Let someone else waste time and resources on them.
You can take the attitude you're implying, but that means sinking a lot of resources into a losing endeavour and, in the long run, isn't worth the profit on the sale or even the profit on word of mouth because such people will never give you good word of mouth.
Two years ago hurricane Isabel hit and we had no power for 9 days. Much of the city was without power longer. I know a few people that were thankful for cell phones, until they realized they had no place to charge them, since work and home had no power. People would idle their cars in their driveways to charge their cells or to make calls. By some miracle, the only system we could count on through that was the landline. I've also had times where I could not get a signal on the cell in my own home -- and I live in the state capital, not 10 minutes from the capital building itself!
I can understand wanting to ditch a landline, but after surviving one disaster, I'm staying prepared for disasters and emergencies.
This is where my time working in residential treatment in a psych hospital has helped me a lot in running my own business. Reality doesn't matter: people's perception of reality does. In a case like the one described, the customer has decided that the company is inept, or that this one person is inept. He's sure of that. In my experience, both in business, which includes watching other business owners, and in treatment, is that when a person is constantly making claims that are verifiably false, there is no way that you'll convince them you can do a good job. You can replace the equipment with something that goes twice as fast and does twice as much for free. They *may* thank you, but will soon complain because there's something else the new equipment doesn't do. People like that are never happy, and the problem is NOT you, it's them.
You can keep trying to help, which one should do for a while, but if they keep pushing, you're better off offering them a full refund and accepting a return, or just giving them a refund and letting them keep the equipment. Why? Because they're just never going to be happy. There's no point in busting your tail for good word of mouth with a bitter person who is never happy with anything. He'll probably keep telling you how great his last supplier was. Call his last supplier and talk with them and you'll find out that he treated them the same way.
When you get a customer that bad, as Joshua said, "Strange game, Dr. Falken. The only way to win is not to play." Word of mount is great, but when you get a complainer, there is no way to win and the more time you spend on him, the more he'll expect. It's even worse if that kind of person got a good deal in the first place.
I've had customers that, for one reason or another, got our service for a lower price, and if you have a complainer that manages that, they're even worse. They don't appreciate what they're getting because it's cheap to them, and they end up expecting a lot more than what you do for other clients. I don't know about you, but my life is too short to deal with such people. We fire those customers. As for word of mouth, most people know such a person for what he is: a whiner and complainer. Few listen to what they say. The few people that are their friends are probably like them and I'd rather my competition get them as clients. I'd rather they get frustrated employees or a loss in profit from someone like that than us getting that. If people don't appreciate our product and our pricing structure, then they're welcome to try the competition (which, in my case, is made up of bad programmers with no business or people skills, so I don't have too much to worry about).
I'd say that is, within a few years, when this happened to me, as well.
As I said at one point along the way, when you consider how many users there are out there, you'll find that many of them do the same bad things as others. I know I could tell several stories of the stories about the computer not being plugged in or people trying to run it in a place without power. I didn't bring them up because others already had.
Some stories are heard often or retold often because they were not unique in occurance.
What's the issue with them mentioning 5 1/4" floppies? Some of us were thrilled to start using floppies so we could trash the cassette tape interfaces.
As for whether or not they have a basis in fact, I personally have dealt with the wrong size disc issue that I posted, and with power problems. The reason some of these stories are heard so often is that you're dealing with, literally, millions of people using computers and you will see the mistakes repeated often, especially the most obvious ones.
I never, however, have had to deal with any client thinking the CD-ROM drive drawer was a coffee cup holder.
The people in the store were pretty sympathetic with me as I was having such a hard time dealing with her.
After I quit teaching, I worked at Egghead for a few months while deciding what to do next. Then they were closing the stores, so the store was crowded with all the people in there after work for one of the first days of reduced prices. I was up near the register, which, in this store, was easily visible to the entire store and dealing with a difficult customer on the other end. We could not do refunds anymore (since the store was closing) and, like you, the store could hear me. It started with a few people nearby listening in, then it seemed to spread and I realized almost everyone in the store was listening in and could tell I was dealing with an irate customer. The teaching I had left was teaching emotionally disturbed kids, so I had a lot of experience handling irrational people, and also in not letting them push me around.
I kept calm and had a flat (not patronizing voice), which is what I think started catching people's attention. It was almost like a Bob Newhart phone call where you can tell exactly what the other person is saying from your end of the phone. Toward the end, the people near me could hear the idiot woman screaming over the phone since she was so loud I had to keep the earpiece a ways from my ear. Finally, when there was nothing more I could do, and the woman was screaming, and I had tried hard to help her get a program working and she refused to work with me, I finally said, "Well, if it's not working, then there's nothing more I can do unless you want to try my suggestions," and there followed a long string of profanity that people near me could her. At this point I realized I only had my job for a few weeks, the manager not only liked me, but counted on me finishing out the closing time, so the few weeks I had left were secure AND we were really didn't have to kiss up to customers any more, so I said, "Ma'am, think you for shopping and calling Egghead. It has been a pleasure working with an enthuiastic, calm, and cooperative person like you. Please shop here again. Thank you very much," and calmly hung up.
I got a HUGE round of applause from all the customers in the store. If I were a performer, the applause was enough I would have had to do an ovation.
Never heard from the angry customer again, either.
How about finding a 5 1/4" disc in a 3 1/2" drive? The client said he didn't have the bigger drive, so he figured if he folded the disc over and shoved it in.
Oh, and then I had to explain that the extremely important data on this disc he just folded was likely no longer in existence.
I doubt Steve Jobs would have been the one to get upset about thing being closed off, since very little of the actual innovation, creative, and design work ever was his. I can see Steve Wozniak getting ticked off about it, but I imagine he'd hack away anyway.
Jobs may be great at pushing the designers to do more, but he was NOT the one who did most of the hacking. He even exploded when Woz asked if he could help with the Apple's analog port.
My thought was not just about betting against never, but that the companies involved in this have millions of dollars at stake. I'm sure they've studied the issue from every angle they can think of. If I were them, and had checked this out thoroughly enough to feel safe making a huge investment (or asking for one) in it, I'd have already gone through every scenario any of my people could think of.
Which means I'm sure the author is writing with research backing him up, but it is one voice of question compared to many who believe it can be done, and done in the next 15 years. If he were willing to put as much as stake that it can't be done as those who have put a stake in doing it, I might give the article some weight, but as it is, it's just one article and one dissenting view. Unless we see a lot of scientists agreeing, I'll still consider it possible until someone proves it impossible.
And then, as you said, he's betting against never.
And that one step ahead means to know not to believe everything you read on /. before those you work with ever discover the site.