October 15th, 2005 by Matt
Three months into my tablet PC experience, just as I have become attached to – even dependent upon – my Toshiba M200 tablet, it has happened. The screen on my M200 broke.
After following Tracy Hooten’s terrible experience with Toshiba (see here, here, and here; you can keep reading previous posts for the complete history of her issue) when her new M200’s screen cracked, I was anticipating a horrible time dealing with customer service issues and long delays in getting everything fixed. However, my experience has been much more positive than Tracy’s, though not perfect.
It started last Wednesday night. Everything on the tablet was working fine during the day at work. Then, when I turned it on that evening, the screen images were distorted, had shadows and there were some vertical lines, even when the screen was black. I found out that my company had purchased on-site support for the few M200’s that they bought, so I called up Toshiba the next day. My tablet is now fixed, one week later, though not without some bumps in the road. I’ll chronicle the experience with a time line below:
Continue reading ‘My Decent Tablet PC Customer Service Experience with Toshiba’
October 6th, 2005 by Matt
Even though my side of the closet is fairly clean, my lovely wife still has an issue with the old computer, monitor and printer sitting under my shirts. And, so do I. However, I don’t want to simply toss it in the trash can. I’ve come to understand that the silicone and other electronics aren’t necessarily the best thing to through into our ground and let sit for hundreds of years.
I’ve heard of computer recycling programs, but I don’t know of any programs or how to go about recycling my computer. We recycle our plastics, steel and glass that our city service will pick up, but I haven’t seen any computer recycling places where I live in Dallas, TX. How do I find a place to recycle my computer? Will it cost me anything? While I’m at it, I should recycle the broken DVD player, wireless phone and old VCR that I’ve been keeping in the garage until I could dispose of them properly. What’s the next step?
Continue reading ‘How to Recycle My Old Computer - I Want to Know’
October 3rd, 2005 by Matt
Last year’s merger of Cingular and AT&T Wireless created the nation’s largest wireless operator – the new Cingular presently has about 42 million customers. One of the issues that was plaguing AT&T Wireless (or AWS) was its reputation for bad customer service. I had first-hand experience as a subscriber, and my parents also suffered through several long and ultimately ineffective phone conversations to customer support to try resolve some issues with their account. My parents are now Sprint customers, and even though my company did a lot of business with AWS, and still does do business with Cingular, I can’t say I blame them. (My company does business with all the wireless carriers anyway).
Well, the big Cingular mother ship hasn’t yet solved all the customer service issues, it seems.
Katherine Stone writes about her recent troubling customer service experience with the new Cingular in her great blog, Decent Marketing. Her story is a great (or terrible, depending on your perspective) example of how companies can easily lose sight of their customers’ experience with their products and services.
Katherine has great perspectives on the way business interact with potential customers via marketing and customer service, and always offers some interesting insights – not to mention personal stories like this one. I highly recommend checking out her blog:
decentmarketing.typepad.com/weblog/.
October 2nd, 2005 by Matt
Children can communicate some of the most profound, poignant and provocative thoughts and ideas with just a few of their short words and phrases placed in just the right context.
Yesterday, a Friday afternoon, I came home early from work so I could be home when my oldest two children got home from school. My youngest, age 4, was already there since he’s not yet in kindergarten.
I just wanted to spend some quantity time with them, and they were fairly tired after school. They didn’t have any homework and we decided just to watch a tv show – Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends on Noggin, a very nice commercial-free tv channel aimed at pre-schoolers, available on digital cable and satellite.
We were about 15 minutes into the show and I was asking some questions to my kids to try to stimulate their minds a bit while watching (what do you think about this show, what is that animal’s name, etc.).
All of a sudden, Kevin, my six year old son, said “Something’s wrong – their daddy is never with them. He just stays home.”
Me: “Is that strange?”
Kevin: “Yeah”
Wow. I didn’t say anything else to Kevin, but just took a minute to reflect on this short but profound conversation. The fact that a dad would just stay home and not be integrated into his children’s activities didn’t make sense to his six year old experience-driven world-view. With that simple observation, in the context of me asking some simple factual questions about an animated story of a spider and her family, Kevin let me know the place I have in his life – basically that I’m significantly involved with his life.
As I thought more, I was reminded that there are so many choices that I have with regard to how I interact with my children. I don’t always make the best choice, but each choice that I make builds one more little piece into the structure of my children’s lives. I am so thankful that Kevin knows I am a significant part of his, and even more thankful and humbled that he told me so.