X10 Community Forum
💬General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: jeffdharlan on April 09, 2010, 09:03:48 AM
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I bought the PlanetCam kit from the "Million Dollar Sale" and my XX16A failed. To my surprise, they offered to send me a shipping label at X10's expense. I have read numerous posts on this forum of people grumbling about having to shell out more money to get a functional replacement. Is this a new policy for X10?
:o
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It may depend on the exact situation. They may have an internal memo on that model cameras problems or you caught someone in a good mood.
Next trick is to see if the label ever arrives. I have seen posts where the promised label never arrived.
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It arrived yesterday, going to ship out this weekend/monday. :'
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Too bad the camera didn't work correctly.
Though the free return shipping sounds like it may help somewhat.
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$0.02
A couple months back a forum poster ranted and ranted about X10 not picking up shipping costs. There was problems with his order that he created, but expected X10 to jump through hoops to fix. From the tone of his rants I concluded he had a short fuse and was "always right" even when grossly wrong. I can only imagine the pleasantries of his initial call, let alone all his subsequent calls. After he received little sympathy on this forum he went away.
I believe the first 10 seconds of a customer support call sets the mood, and probably the level of cooperation from the representative. I also suspect maligning the company or product, or brow beating the rep will get a note in your "Permanent Record" so the next time you call the mood is already set or at least influenced at the company end.
Sure I have made customer support calls where I was sure the rep I was speaking to was sitting on a vertical corn cob, and it is hard to continue to be polite when this happens, but in my personal experience that is far from the norm.
Based on the humor of your survey, my guess is your first 10 seconds went well. ;D
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I believe the first 10 seconds of a customer support call sets the mood, and probably the level of cooperation from the representative. I also suspect maligning the company or product, or brow beating the rep will get a note in your "Permanent Record" so the next time you call the mood is already set or at least influenced at the company end.
So true ... I spent the better part of 20 years in 1st, 2nd and 3rd level tech support with internal and external customers. We were trained to always be courteous and respectful when speaking with any customer. Given the technical nature of the products I supported, the old statement that 'the customer is always right' was frequently incorrect. But, even then we were constantly reminded that the customer was always ... the customer. Sometimes it got extremely difficult to remain calm and professional. Our escape mechanisms included, 'I need to escalate this' and 'my shift is over and I need to hand your case off'. Then we would beg a colleague to take over the call with an 'I owe you one for this'.
And there generally is a separate part of each customers account record that remains private and never disclosed to the customer. That's where we would post comments about our experiences with the customer. Most of us tried to keep that record as positive as possible to avoid future complications. But occasionally I would read some real zingers.
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Very hard to be nice if the Customer Service Representative can't speak English or can only go by their preprinted script. Because the company decided to farm it out.
I did Customer Service at times and must say almost everyone I talked to was nice back to me.
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I posted some time in Jan that x10 took back an order they mistakenly sent. They credited my cc and took back the package at their expense.
They were apologetic for the inconvenience and were professional throughout the process.
r,
eagle