« links for 2008-05-02 | Main | In case you might be looking for a pool for a bbq. »
Customer Support is Key
I have written about it in the past and will maintain my opinion in the future: 'customer support is key'.
Customer Support makes all the difference. We've arrived in an era where most products are good, some better than others.
Really bullsh*t stuff has been left in the past (unless you decide to buy a Z-brand in a Kruidvat or so..).
When you buy a kitchen at Ikea, Kvik, Kplus, or even the more expensive Siematic: all of them are 'not bad' kitchens.
Your opinion about them will be made by the service delivered: was the kitchen delivered in time, was is placed well, did the brand keep up its promises, and more over, when something went wrong, was the service still ok?
It's something that happened to me with Lacie the other day: I abandoned on a Iomega drive because of its tremendous noise (good product, just too much noise) and bought a Lacie instead. A silent thing, running like a horse. And beautiful (they do have beautiful cases). Another older Lacie is connected to our Airport Extreme, backing up the portables. Although its firewire port broke off, the usb is doing the job, so I never bothered to bring it back.
But then the Lacie Mini started doing weird stuff. And I hate HD's doing weird stuff.
A fast backup was made, and a support ticket filled in on Wednesday evening (just before holidays)
And there it is: this morning, before 10, there was already an answer, saying that probably the drive was still OK (according to my description of the failure), adding it might be the power supply. So they already(!) sent a new power supply.
Finishing by 'if this solves the problem, you can keep the supply, otherwise, just come back to us and we'll try to solve it'.
Wow..
(I bothered to check if the guy was right, so I connected the power supply of the other Lacie, and indeed: all started up without a hassle)
I have been looking during the past days for an alternative disk RAID1.
Today I decided it probably will become a Lacie again.
A raid system, that is, because, how much I love their fast reply, one never wants to loose any(!) data, no service support in the world can change that..
Posted on May 5, 2008
Digg this | 
Add to Delicious | Technorati reactions | Permalink | 
Comments (2)
Comments
Great customer support, I'll give you that. However, the sceptic in me thinks the company has been familiar with this problem for some time but just 'wait' for people to start having problems so they can help them out when it occurs. That same sceptic in me thinks they probably back-ordered a bunch of extra power supplies just for that, which would be cheapier than admitting there are problems with all power supplies and replacing them.
Posted by Robin Wauters | May 5, 2008 1:01 PMNevertheless...
Can tell you it makes a hell of a difference.
We brought our vacuumcleaner back for the second time at krefel.
Only after 3 times they are willing to give (a bit) of money back, although the salesperson personally admitted 'there are many people returning this device'
Hoover (the brand) resends the bloody thing saying we didn't clean it well.
It's a vacuum cleaner for god's sake.
We had to invest another 15 euro in the 150 euro 'hoover without a bag'.
After we brought it back the first time we found out there are 3 filters that have to be changed each 6 months. (Nobody informed us upon buying)
And although we already changed that filter (after 3 months use only) upon their advice nothing changed. Nobody gave us the 15 euro back.
We (and our cleaning lady) are waiting now for 3rd week without news.
Will it be fixed?
Will we get money back? And if so, how much..
I already decided they can have it the third time and I'll buy a 70 euro Kärcher thing WITH bag, and a lot less sorrows.
Posted by ine | May 5, 2008 1:10 PM