You know what, the internet kind of sucks right now
Posted Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 5:13 pm by Jason CartwrightWho knew that when the internet began that it would be the worldwide phenomenon that it is today.. not many right. Who thought we’d be using it in the way we use it today, same again, not many. Unfortunately the reality of the internet in 2011 is that it kind of sucks right now.
Traditionally developing websites was hard difficult and available only to a select few, but with the commoditisation of the web, businesses and platforms emerged to make it easy enough for average Joe to build his own site.
Shortly after creating a website, Joe wants to make a little cash, so he introduces some advertising to the site. Maybe he does or doesn’t have a success, but the opportunity and potential to make a lot of money takes Joe down a dangerous path. He then goes after every possible opportunity to throw advertising in front of his audience in the hope that they click on an ad and make him some money.
It makes sense right, with a couple of ads, you make a little bit of money, so add more ads and you’ll make more money, right? Maybe Joe is ‘successful’, but the reality is, he just turned his corner of the internet into a virtual dumping group.
Take the site wmpoweruser.com below, apologies for picking on you but this is simply a graphic example of what’s happening across the entire internet right now. The site is completely dominated by advertising leaving almost no room for actual content, you know, the reason a visitor went there in the first place.
- Red – Advertisements
- Orange – Website branding/social sharing
- Green – Actual content
This is like a TV show breaking for ads not every 9 minutes for 2 minutes of ads, but 9 minutes of ads and 2 minutes of content. So my question is, why do we put up with this and why as website creators do we think this is a good solution to financing our operations? It’s a terrible user experience.
Take a look at Apple’s use of retail space compared to most others. Many retail businesses are so packed with products you can barely turn around without knocking something off the shelf. Apple took the minimalist approach and focused on a better user experience in-store, it seems to be paying for them with Microsoft now following suit. Many luxury brands are also doing the same, so lets rethink the way we’re doing the web, because right now, we’re treating our customers like shit.
iPhone 4S not even ordered.. Switching to Telstra after 10 years on Optus could not be harder. This is bullshit customer service.
Posted Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:59 pm by Jason Cartwright
First off, I never swear in posts, so hopefully that gives you a scale of how annoyed I am right now.
After 10 years on Optus, I have had enough. Telstra seriously didn’t need to do much to get my business, but the experience has been an absolute joke. Below is a timeline of my nightmare experience of trying to switch to Telstra. Remember this is an effort to sign a 2 year contract that would net them at least $2,000 on top of the home phone and internet I already pay. As history would evidence, I tend to stick to a carrier once I’m there, so there’s potentially a lot more on offer if they look after me with good customer service.
September 27th – The day Telstra’s expression of interest page went live, I signed up immediately to get the latest news like a good little potential customer.
October 5th – Rose at 3am to watch the iPhone 4S be officially unveiled by Apple.
October 8th – Signed up as soon as Telstra’s pre-order page went live.
October 12th – Went to the local Telstra store in Wodonga, was told I would receive a call on launch day. I made a point of letting them know I’m switching to Telstra after 10 years with Optus.. i.e. Look after me, but got no call. (This from the same store who botched my first attempt to move to Telstra only a few months ago). I was told that my best chance of obtaining an iPhone 4S as soon as possible was using the online pre-orders.
October 13th – I was called by Telstra to confirm my licence details and the order before it could proceed. I enquired if going to the store would be a faster way of landing an iPhone 4S, but was told proceeding with the online pre-order was indeed the fastest way. I was told I was ‘in the first batch’.
October 14th – iPhone 4S goes on sale, during the day I heard from a number of friends that local stores in Albury Wodonga did indeed have stock. At this point, I felt locked into the online process and frustrated that I’d been specifically told twice in the past 2 days that I was indeed using the best method available to secure a device. I avoided rushing to the retail store to vent my frustration as I wanted to avoid another screw-up that could potentially result in signing up to 2 contracts for the iPhone 4S. Since then I’ve read on the Telstra forums that this indeed has happened to a number of Telstra customers.
October 17th – With no communication over the weekend, I enquired about the status of my order today via twitter, then online form as directed. Others had received shipping emails to let them know their phone wasn’t far away, but I had received nothing since the verification call. Tonight I received an email to let me know, not that my phone would reach me soon, but the order hasn’t even been processed.
Dear Jason,
Firstly, it’s great to hear that you will be upgrading your handset with Telstra to the iPhone 4S and would be more than happy to assist further with an update on your order.
I can appreciate your frustrations with the delay that you have experienced in receiving an update on how your order is tracking at the present time and apologise for any inconvenience that this has caused you. I can confirm that we have received your online order and this has been assigned to one of my colleagues to have the order finalised and verified for you. They should be in contact with you very soon to have this order completed correctly in the system allowing the device to be sent out. We have received such a large demand for these handsets that has lead to some delays in processing the orders, but we are trying to have them completed as quickly as possible and not have any errors with these orders as well.
Once again I am sorry for the delay, and if you have not heard anything within 48 hours of this email being received please reply and I will have this escalated to my manager to see what we can have completed to speed up this process.
Best Regards,
Dingo
Social Media Team
www.telstra.com
Business rule number one people, do not make it hard for people to give you money ! Apologising for any inconvenience has become an obnoxious excuse for incompetence. It does not excuse the fact this has been a horrible experience. At this point I’m ready to say forget the whole thing.
Update
I have now cancelled the order.
Update 2
I now have an iPhone 4S on Telstra. Shortly after this post went up, a GM at Telstra reached out to me and appologised profusely for the experience I had. We discussed how they could modify business practices to avoid this type of experience from happening to anyone else. I’m glad my complaints were finally heard and real action is being taken to improve things. As compensation they offered (and I accepted) a 64GB iPhone 4S for the price of the 32GB. The local store in Wodonga also threw in a case.
Dell gets customer service, very very right
Posted Monday, February 15, 2010 at 7:17 pm by Jason CartwrightAfter posting a couple years back about a bad customer service story with Dell, I felt it was important to also write about a good experience I’ve recently had. Blogs are often criticised for simply being a platform to complain, I’d like to disprove that theory now.
Around a year and a half ago I purchased 2x 27” monitors. Recently I’d noticed one of them began flickering. This was more pronounced with a white, or light application background. Using different connections didn’t help, dropping back to a single input didn’t help, neither did grabbing the latest drivers from Nvidia.
Out of options I needed support. Dell support. Using the power of social networking I posted the following tweet.
To which I received the following response.
I sent off the service tag, my name and email address. A couple of hours later I received a call from Dell support. I ran him through the situation, a couple of minutes later, he said, “we’re going to replace it”. 3 days later I had my replacement monitor. I place the broken monitor back in the box, and send it back to Dell, all shipping paid for.
It’s been one of my most pleasant experiences with customer service I’ve ever had. Does this mean that they’ll get it right 100% of the time ? No of course not, what it does show, is that Dell are paying attention to what customers are saying. One of the best examples of a business using social media to help their customers. If you have a problem with a Dell product, consider using twitter.
