Thankful Thursday

This morning I'd like to offer up two shout-outs.

1. Pentagon Post Office

I recently visited the post office in the Pentagon for the first time. It's inside the Metro entrance off to the right hand side (in the E ring / back to back with the Hall of Heroes). When I first walked in the door, my heart sank a little because of the number of people in line and the fact that there was only one lady working the counter.

Little did I know... If you look up the word "efficiency" in the dictionary, you will see a picture of Ms. F. C. Manning. Okay, so we've all met some customer service type people who are efficient but generally achieve that efficiency through some level of sacrifice to professionalism, courtesy, or manners. When it came my turn to step up to the counter, I was very pleasantly surprised. Ms. Manning was the epitome of professionalism, courtesy, and good manners in addition to processing your business efficiently and getting you out the door.

Thank you, Ms. Manning. You're awesome!

2. Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES)

I bought a pair of Oakley sunglasses at the Bolling AFB Post Exchange ("PX") back in June. Recently, one of the arms broke off. It's well within the 1-year warranty period. Unfortunately, I never filled out the warranty card and didn't save the receipt. Even though I can find the transaction on my credit card statement and I have the original box with the price sticker on it, Oakley customer service said that wasn't good enough and I needed a receipt from the store. If not, then I'd have to pay $50 for the repair.

I said to myself, "Self, why not try contacting the PX to see if they can get you a copy of the receipt?"

From the AAFES website, I sent an email with details of the date, time, last four digits of my credit card number, and transaction amount from my credit card statement. I didn't really have any expectation they would be able to help me out, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

Low and behold, I got a phone call from Ms. Kathy Williams at AAFES, and within a matter of moments, she emailed me a copy of the receipt. She was extremely kind, courteous, and helpful.

Thank you Ms. Williams!

Dear Chipotle

If you've ever taken any sort of Psychology 101 class, then you've heard the "nature versus nurture debate." You could argue until you're blue in the face over whether we are the way we are due to genetics (nature) or due to the way your parents raised you (nurture). Personally, I think it's a mix of both.

In this particular instance, who knows if there is some genetic predisposition involved, but I certainly learned this through observation at a young age.

I can remember waaaaay back... I know I was either in first or second grade because we were in Chula Vista (San Diego suburbs) riding in our old sky-blue station-wagon, so it had to be before we moved to San Pedro at the beginning of 3rd grade. My dad drove us into a Long John Silver drive-through to get some dinner. I don't remember why we were out so late or exactly what time it was. I just remember the guy on the drive-through speaker saying, "I'll be right with you."

Then we sat.

And we waited.

It seemed like an eternity to a 7 year old, but it was probably only a few minutes. When my dad's patience had been exhausted, he honked the horn and said, "Hellooooo?"

The response from the drive-through speaker?

"Sorry, man, we're closed."

Dude.

Everyone in my family ducked for cover because we thought my dad's head was gonna explode. There were steam plumes shooting out both of his ears as he threw the car into gear and peeled out of the Long John Silver parking lot.

Ya know what?

We NEVER went back to Long John Silver. Lord help the business that pissed my dad off like that, because our family would not set one foot in that establishment EVER again. Indeed, about twenty-five years later when I set foot in a Long John Silver for the first time since that fateful night in our old blue station wagon, I felt guilty... like I was being disobedient and challenging my dad's authority to visit a place he had declared off limits.

That's the earliest and most vivid example that comes to my mind, but it's a classic tale of how I learned to never give a business a second chance once they've pissed me off.

Fast forward thirty years.

Now, in the age of the internet, most business websites offer a very quick and easy means of providing feedback. As a result, I usually don't shun a business based on one experience. Most businesses will thank you for your feedback on their website and ask you to please give them a second chance.

That being said, I have news for the management of Chipotle.

Dear Chipotle, YOU LOST A CUSTOMER.

For those of you who know me, this will come as quite a shock. I LOVE Chipotle and eat there on a regular basis. Scrolling back through my Facebook posts, you will see regular status updates about getting my Chipotle fix. Chipotle was one of my reasons for wanting to move back to Virginia from Hawaii.

On 11 January 2010, I stopped at Chipotle here in Ashburn to grab some dinner after a late night at work. I ordered my burrito. I handed the cashier, Jose Antonio, my debit card. He rang it up. He handed me a receipt. I walked out the door.

Before I even got to my car, Jose chased me down in the parking lot and said that my card was turned down and I needed to come back in and pay. I said no, I have a receipt right here, see? He insisted that it didn't go through and he needed to swipe my card again. I went back into the store with him and let him swipe my card again.

I now have two receipts - order #441 and #442, receipt #10344 and #10345, one at 8:07 p.m. and one at 8:08 p.m., and both for $8.51. When I got home, my online banking showed that, sure-enough, Chipotle had charged me twice for my dinner.
Strike 1 Chipotle.

So I picked up the phone and called the Ashburn Chipotle. While annoyed, I figured it would be a quick fix for them to look at the receipts and refund one. The guy who answered the phone wasn't Jose, but yelled something to Jose off in the background. He flipped through the receipts and said he couldn't find anything matching my order. I told him the receipt numbers for crying out loud! He started jibber-jabbering away at Jose in the background, and then he hung up on me.
Strike 2 Chipotle.

Alright, I could not get the store to admit and fix their mistake, so I submitted a complaint on the Chipotle.com website citing the receipt numbers, order numbers, times, amounts, server name, and everything. I did this the same night - 11 January. I expected to hear some sort of apology from Chipotle within a day or two.

Two weeks later...

Not. A. Peep.

Yes, I even checked my email's spam folder to make sure it didn't get filtered out as junk mail. No response from Chipotle whatsoever.
Strike 3 Chipotle.

I called my bank and placed a fraud report on one of the two charges from Chipotle. My bank immediately refunded one of the two $8.51 charges. Thumbs-up for USAA.

It's not like $8.51 is some huge or significant sum of money.

It's the principle of the matter.

I tried to tell Chipotle about the error three times: when it happened at the store, via phone when I got home and confirmed they charged me twice on my online banking, and via the corporate website. The initial mistake doesn't bother me so much as the inability to get Chipotle to fix the mistake and that I had to go through my bank to get my money back.

So there you have it, Chipotle. While I have been tempted several times in the past couple of weeks to go back, I have intentionally NOT gone to Chipotle since then.

I wonder what sort of guilt my sons will feel the next time they walk into a Chipotle 25 years from now?

A swing and a miss...

This is a follow up to my previous post on our new Epson printer.

My biggest (only?) complaint about our previous HP All-in-One was that when the ink was out, it ceased to function as a scanner or fax machine. Since a few years have passed and All-in-One printer/fax/copy/scanner machines like this have been around a while, I thought to myself, "Self, SURELY they have evolved to overcome such silly obstacles."

Self...

I hate to tell you this... but you were WRONG.

We've owned this new Epson WorkForce 600 printer for 3 months and have NOT done a lot of fancy color printing on it. Nevertheless, the yellow ink cartridge just ran out.

ALLLLLL STOOOOOOOP!!!!!

[cue sound effect of Engine Order Telegraph - RING! RING!]
"Maneuvering, Conn, Stop the Shaft."

Do NOT pass GO, do NOT collect $200, go directly to jail! printer-hell. The lack of YELLOW ink prevented doing ANYTHING else.

Wanna print something in black and white like your Blockbuster free rental coupons that expire today?

Too bad.

Wanna scan a check that you need deposited to your bank account pronto?

Tough.

Wanna fax an important counter-offer to your realtor 6,000 miles away?

Better call the wah-mbulance.

That empty yellow ink cartridge brings the printer to its knees.

I was pretty disappointed, but sadly not all that surprised. As long as Epson is making and selling the ink cartridges, it makes sense business-wise for an empty ink cartridge to be just as crippling as removing the electricity. It forces you to buy more ink from them instead of just living without that color.

But it's a sleazy business practice if you ask me.

Even so, I decided to write to Epson to express my disappointment. In my email, I offered two suggestions to improve their product. First, a short term mitigation would be to put a slip of paper in the printer boxes or user manuals that warns customers that the device will cease to function if you run out of any individual ink cartridge. Recommend to the customers that they should always have a spare of EVERY ink cartridge (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow) so that they won't have any important scanning or faxing held up by the lack of an ink cartridge. Second, as a long-term fix, I recommended updating the firmware in the printers so that it would allow scanning or faxing to override the "out of ink" error.

Much to my surprise, an Epson customer service representative called me last night.

Why did she call?

That's an excellent question. Let's see if you can guess. The Epson rep called me to...

A) thank me for being a supporter of Epson and writing nice things about them in at least two past blog posts.
B) apologize for the inconvenience that was caused by their poor systems engineering.
C) thank me for my recommendations to make their product better.
D) offer to send me a free yellow ink cartridge to show their appreciation for my loyalty and continued positive blogging.
E) all of the above.

Go ahead, talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a moment to consider just how awesome was Epson's response to my complaint. Think you know the answer? Ready? Good. I'm sorry to say it was a trick question. I should have offered you an option F) None of the Above, because I have absolutely no friggin' CLUE why the lady called me. She didn't thank me for my feedback, didn't apologize for the inconvenience, and didn't offer me anything short of a little didly and a lot of squat.

Not like I really would have expected her to offer me anything, mind you. The only thing I wish she would have said is that I am absolutely RIGHT (that you should be able to scan or fax even if you're out of ink or print black-and-white when you're out of color ink) and offer me some assurance that they would upgrade the firmware.

Nope. None of that. She very matter-of-factly stated that they will not be making any changes to the printer firmware and she just wanted to let me know.

Um... Gee... Thanks... I guess. Why bother calling and wasting my time?

I suppose I give Epson some credit for making an appearance that they care and acknowledge that they actually READ my email. The phone call response was about as effective as the infamous, "duly noted," response in the Navy. They could have given me THAT lip service via an automated return email and save money on the salary of the phone representative.

Still not happy

Overall, I do like USAA and have used many of their insurance and banking services for many years.

This blog post deals specifically with the USAA Mortgage service. You may recall my tirade against USAA Mortgage back in August 2008. It was during that episode that I learned USAA used to farm out their mortgage services, but had recently brought it in-house, "in order to provide better customer service."

A year later, I continue to have doubts about the quality of the USAA mortgage customer service. First, there was another comment I received on that post in August 2009.

Then, we had some very good friends of ours go through a very difficult house sale with USAA. I write this blog post on their behalf because (a) their story is another data point on the quality of USAA Mortgage customer service and (b) because they don't have a blog. They gave me permission to post their story here, and they have reviewed what I have written to make sure I got the facts straight.

Our friends are active duty Navy and were stationed in Florida. They bought a house there in 2005. They were very happy with their house there and would have loved to just stay there. Unfortunately, the Navy had other plans for them. They received orders to transfer to the DC area this summer, and they had to sell their house.

They were very happy they found a buyer for their house, but unfortunately, it was a short-sale. They had to sell the house for $80k less than what they owed on the house, so USAA had to approve the short-sale.

So let me ask you a question. If you were in the same circumstances, how long do you think it should take the bank to say "yes" or "no" and either approve or disapprove the short-sale?


17 minutes?


17 hours?


17 days?


17 weeks?


Let me ask the question one other way. Put yourself in the BUYER's shoes. If you put an offer on a house, how long would YOU be willing to wait for the bank to approve the sale before you give up, withdraw your offer and look for another house?

It took 17 WEEKS for USAA to make a decision on the sale of their house. Our friends were understandably worried that the buyer was going to give up and back out on the deal.

Now, in USAA's defense, I know they're taking a loss here and it's NOT a good deal for them by any means. I can understand reluctance on the part of USAA. Maybe it is prudent to stall a little bit and see if another buyer shows up and offers to pay more. ...but 17 WEEKS?!?!

There's another complaint about USAA's customer service in this case that just really bothers me though. Several times during those long 17 weeks, my friends called USAA to ask for the status of approving the sale. The customer service representative on the phone would offer the standard pleasant greeting and ask for their member number and password to access their account. When the account information came up on the representative's computer screen, there would be a sudden, "oh!" shift in attitude. As soon as they saw "short-sale pending" on the account, the customer service representatives proceeded to INSULT my friends by asking in a condescending tone, "Would you like to make a payment today?"

Our friends response? "Uhhh, NO, I DON'T want to make a payment. I'm NOT BEHIND on my payments, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I pay my mortgage on time every month, and I would continue to do so if the Navy wasn't forcing us to MOVE."

I'm disappointed in you, USAA. On the insurance and banking side of the house, you have always treated customers such as me with the utmost respect and courtesy. That's why I've been a loyal USAA customer for so many years. It sounds to me like your mortgage service is still falling short of the mark.

My friends were already under enough stress and pressure having to deal with the PCS move (with the freeze the Navy put on PCS orders affecting them, too) and the short-sale. USAA is supposed to be a company that caters to the military, so you would think they would understand the concept of PCS moves and not insult their customers who are fully up-to-date on their mortgage payments but have to short-sell their house due to military orders.

On a positive note, USAA DID approve the short-sale, and our friends are very thankful for that. They are very happy that everything worked out fine in the end. It was just disappointing the stress that USAA added to the situation along the way.

New Poll: What to do about the deck cleaning company?

Alright, I'm gonna toss this one out to the peanut gallery and ask for your inputs how to proceed.

Our deck was in need of cleaning and sealing. I called around a few places and got a few estimates.

I called one business to schedule an appointment for the cleaning and sealing. The secretary on the phone said I could sign up for Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday the following week (the week after Memorial Day).

The company said they would remove a barbecue grill, a table, and four chairs from the deck, and anything else above and beyond that would have to be removed before they arrived. I knew I had another commitment on Tuesday night and wouldn't be able to clear the deck off that night, so I did not want Wednesday. I asked for a Thursday appointment so I could clear the deck off Wednesday evening.

This was all done over the phone. No email or other written contract was provided to document the agreement.

For two reasons that aren't really pertinent to the matter at hand, I decided I needed to cancel the appointment. Since Monday was Memorial Day, I couldn't get ahold of the company then. I was very concerned to get in touch with them first thing Tuesday morning to get my job OFF their schedule for the week.

Tuesday I called the company, gave them my name and address and said I would like to cancel my appointment for Thursday. The secretary on the phone searched their records and said she could find no appointment for me on their agenda.

Uhhhh... okay. Well, I guess this whole telephone reservation thing didn't work out with them and I don't have anything to worry about then.

Wednesday afternoon, my phone rang at work, and my very confused wife reported she just got home to find all the stuff had been moved off our deck and it looked like someone had cleaned our deck, and there was an invoice from the company hanging on the front door.

I called the deck cleaning company and left a message there, and I sent the owner an email expressing my concern that his company (a) wasn't supposed to do any work until Thursday, and (b) wasn't supposed to do any work PERIOD because I called to cancel the day before. The owner very quickly responded to my email via BlackBerry and said he would look into it.

That was the last I heard from the company for a couple of weeks.

...Then I received the bill in the mail for the deck cleaning.

I tried calling again and left a message again. I emailed again and said I didn't think I should be charged for unauthorized work.

The owner claims they maintain a log of all phone calls and have no record of me calling on Tuesday. He said he asked each of his 3 staff members if any of them remember me calling, and they all said no. Since he has no record of me calling to cancel, he said the charge for the deck cleaning stands.

So am I totally out to lunch here?

I think the company made four errors:

Error #1) They scheduled the appointment for the wrong day. I asked for Thursday, and they put it on their schedule for Wednesday.

Error #2) They didn't follow up with any sort of email or written form of contract to confirm the scheduled date the work was to be performed.

Error #3) When I called to cancel the appointment, the lady didn't see my name on the Thursday schedule, so she couldn't cancel it. This is error-carried-forward from Error #1 and 2 above. If I had something in writing with a job order number on it, then I could have referenced that when I called to cancel.

Error #4) When the deck cleaners arrived at our house and found a LOT more than just a barbecue grill, table, and four chairs on the deck, they didn't stop to ask if this was okay. I had: barbecue grill, patio table, 6 patio chairs, kid's picnic table, an end table, two large potted plants, two hanging baskets with plants in them, two metal hanging hooks for the plants, four tiki torches, and a tupperware bin with a bunch of kids toys in it. This would have been a great opportunity for the company to call and say, "Hey, we're here to do the work on your deck, but you didn't clear the deck off in accordance with your part of the (verbal, not written anywhere) agreement. Would you like for us to remove the additional items for an additional fee?" Then we could have said, "No! Stop! Do NOT pass go! Do NOT collect $200!" (literally) "You are NOT authorized to do work on our house!"

The owner continues to insist that he has meticulous records of incoming phone calls and claims that I never called, so therefore I owe him for the deck cleaning that was done.

So, dear peanut gallery, what say you? What's my next move?

Before reading any farther, please give it a moment of thought and jot down what you would do. I don't want your opinion to be biased based on my personal thoughts to follow.

(Intermission - Click on the "Post a Comment" link and tell me what you think.)

Here are my thoughts and ideas on potential courses of action:

- Don't pay him. Blow it off. I don't think blowing it off is a good idea. My concern with doing that is my continued efforts to get my credit score back up to normal, and what if he submits this to a collection agency and it adds another negative bullet on my credit report. Plus, the bill says they will start charging interest on past-due balances over 30 days old, so he's just going to claim that I owe him more and more money over time.

- Don't pay him. Tell him I refuse to pay and that I will file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau if he continues to harass me for payment of work that was not authorized. This could still result in him sending something to a collection agency and negatively impacting my credit score.

- Offer him a choice / ultimatum. Tell him I will pay him, but if I do, it will come with a complaint to the BBB and a negative-press campaign against his company on the internet via websites like Yelp and my blog. ("Watch out! He's got a blog!!!") Alternatively, if he waives the deck-cleaning fee, then I will agree not to file any public complaints on BBB, Yelp, or anywhere else. (Is that considered blackmail?)

- Pay him for the work performed, and post my comments about his business on BBB, Yelp, my blog (i.e. add the name of the company to this here blog post).

- Pay him for the work performed and call it a done deal. They did DO the work, the economy isn't doing so well, and it's not like I don't have the money to pay it - it's just the principle of the matter.

P.S. Don't let this information sway your input one way or the other, but interestingly enough, when I went to the BBB website, I discovered this company has a grade of "C-" due to:

Reasons for this rating include:
• Number of complaints filed against business
• Number of complaints filed against business that were unresolved
• Length of time business has taken to resolve complaint(s)

Hmmm... Note to self: Next time, look up the BBB rating BEFORE scheduling the business to do the work.

Wiipairs Follow Up

Okay, so disregard my previous praise for Nintendo customer service.

As you surely already know, my wife is much smarter than I am, and she didn't understand why we had to PAY to have the Wii Balance Board fixed since it's less than a year old.

So I looked up the Wii Balance Board user manual (click for PDF file) to read what the warranty said. On page 12, it says...

"HARDWARE WARRANTY
Nintendo of America Inc. ("Nintendo") warrants to the original purchaser that the hardware product shall be free from defects in material and workmanship for twelve (12) months from the date of purchase. If a defect covered by this warranty occurs during this warranty period, Nintendo will repair or replace the defective hardware product or component, free of charge."

I said to myself, "Self, how long have we really had the Wii Balance Board? I think your Lovely Wife is right and it has been less than a year." I checked my blog, and sure enough, LW bought it on 22 May 2008. So we were absolutely within the 12 month warranty on the hardware and should not have to pay for the repairs, right???

I called Nintendo customer service back to point out the error. The customer service representative claimed that the Wii Balance Board is an "accessory" not "hardware," and the warranty on page 12 goes on to state...

"GAME & ACCESSORY WARRANTY
Nintendo warrants to the original purchaser that the product (games and accessories) shall be free from defects in material and workmanship for a period of three (3) months from the date of purchase..."

I threw the BS flag on that.

This is the user manual for THE WII BALANCE BOARD. What other HARDWARE came with the WII BALANCE BOARD???

NONE!

The WII BALANCE BOARD IS THE HARDWARE!!!

Saying that the Wii Balance Board falls under the accessory clause of the Wii Balance Board User Manual is like saying the Will Balance Board is an accessory to itself. Where's the beef I mean, hardware?

An accessory to the Wii Balance Board would be the silicone cover or the rechargable battery pack my wife bought for it. If Nintendo didn't want to give a 12 month warranty with the balance board itself, then they shouldn't have printed that in the HARDWARE section of the manual for the BALANCE BOARD.

The customer service rep said that it is a standard warranty blurb they print in all their manuals and the intent was the 12 month "hardware" warranty was on the Wii CONSOLE. I said then they should WRITE that in the warranty because I consider the balance board to be "hardware," especially when this is the Wii Balance Board Manual I'm reading, not a a Wii Console manual.

When I spoke with the customer service rep's supervisor, the supervisor pointed out a sentence on page 1 of the user manual, "Please carefully and completely read the Wii™ Operations Manual - System Setup before using this accessory." (emphasis mine) and declared therefore it is clearly an accessory. He stood his ground based on that sentence on page 1 and insisted the Balance Board is obviously an accessory and therefore only has a 3 month warranty.

I don't think I'm totally crazy here folks. It just doesn't pass the "average Joe" / common sense test in my mind.

In fact, I challenge Nintendo to do a study of random people on the street.

I challenge Nintento to walk up to a hundred random people on the street, hand them the Wii Balance Board User Manual, and ask them, "How long is the warranty on the Wii Balance Board?" I bet MOST if not all of them will flip to the warranty on page 12, read it, and say, "It's hardware, so the warranty is for 12 months." (Oh, and no fair asking 100 "random" people on the Nintendo campus or at a law school where they nitpick stupid stuff like this.)

For a single data point, I approached one of my coworkers in the office this afternoon. I handed him a print out of the manual. Without telling him why I was asking, I asked him how long he thought the warranty was good for on the Wii Balance Board. He flipped through to the warranty section, he read it, and he said, "it says the hardware is covered for 12 months."

What do you think? Am I crazy?

Yes, yes, I said myself up above that this is nitpicky stupid stuff. That's why I stopped arguing with the guy on the phone - I wasn't getting anywhere with him. It feels good to vent though.

Wiipairs

So our Wii Balance Board died.

Normally when you power it up and step onto the board, there's a big green blob that shows up on the screen - normally somewhere in the center of the screen depending on your center of balance. Well, the green blob was showing up ALL the way on the RIGHT edge of the screen.

I called Nintendo.

First, I was impressed with how easy it was to get a human being on the phone.

Second, I was impressed that said human being spoke English and was both friendly and competent. She walked me through a simple diagnostic test on the Wii that showed one of the left side sensors in the board had gone bad.

Third, I give Nintendo a thumbs-up for turnaround time. I dropped the broken balance board off at the postal annex last Friday afternoon. Today, exactly one week later, we received a new-in-the-box replacement balance board with a note saying they confirmed my board was broken.

Overall, I give gave Nintendo Customer Service 4 1 out of 5 stars.
Pretty good, but they didn't go the extra mile, and they didn't honor the warranty on the Wii Balance Board. (Text in red updated 5/4/2009, click the link to read the follow-up.)

What do I mean by the extra mile?

The places that I would give 5 stars for going the extra mile (3Com, Garmin, Dish Network) earned it by immediately shipping me a replacement unit (not necessarily brand new - more likely a refurbished unit). It got me back in business sooner, and it made the shipping a lot easier.

Consider:

Option A: Me or my wife having to go to a Mailboxes Etc or UPS or FEDEX store to get the Wii Balance Board packaged up, send it in, wait for Nintendo to receive it, repair or replace it, and ship it back to me.

Option B: Nintendo ships me a replacement unit. I open the box, take out the replacement, put the broken one in the box, slap the prepaid return shipping label that was in the box, and hand it back to the FEDEX delivery guy.

Yyyyyeah... I much prefer Option B.

Workout Tunes

To start off on a positive note, I really like the new radio station they've been playing in the PAC Annex (Pentagon Athletic Center Annex in Crystal City). "Fresh" 94.7 FM reminds me of Mix 98.5 that LW and I used to listen to in Boston in the late 90's. You can listen online, too (just click on the "listen live" button on the webpage linked above). To give me some variety in the office, I have been alternating between KLOVE, WGTS, and Fresh 94.7.

So, you might be asking yourself, "Self, why did he have to listen to the music chosen by the guy working the counter at the gym? What happened to that new superwhamodyne BlackBerry Storm he bought?"

Well, funny you should ask.

It decided it didn't like making sounds. It preferred life as a decidedly MUTE BlackBerry. It wouldn't play music, and it wouldn't even play any sounds when I received an email or a phone call.

I tried calling my cell phone - nada, zip, nothing. Looking at the screen, you can see the call coming in, but not a peep from the speaker.

I tried cycling the power on and off and tested it again. Nope, still nothing.

So tonight after I got the boys in bed, I called Verizon Wireless customer service. After waiting on hold for like fifteen minutes, a very friendly and helpful customer service representative resuscitated my poor BlackBerry.

I feel pretty stupid though.

Anybody else have this problem? Are you ready for instructions how to fix it?

Step 1. Do NOT turn the power off.

Step 2. With the power ON, remove the battery cover.

Step 3. Remember, DON'T turn the power off.

Step 5. With the power ON, remove the battery.

Aside: My wife has been making fun of me because I have to tap my BlackBerry on something hard to get the battery to pop out, and she can just pull hers in and out with ease. So tonight while I was on the phone with the customer service guy and I started tapping my phone on the end table to get the battery out, she said, "Give it to me." I handed it to her... she pulled... she prodded... she shook... and then she started tapping the BlackBerry on the end table to get the battery out. I don't feel so stupid anymore. :-)

Step 6. This is a stealth step. I say that because the Verizon wireless guy won't tell you to do it, but just assumes that you did it, wait a minute or so, and ask if it's done booting up yet. Step 6: Put the battery back in.

Step 7. Wait for what seems like an eternity for the BlackBerry to reboot and do its internal software checks.

Step 8. Rejoice and do a happy dance because your BlackBerry is resurrected and will now ring when there's a phone call, chime when there's an email, and even play music for you at the gym (if you're nice to it).

Funny thing, the Verizon guy on the phone told me that other BlackBerry Storm users have found that periodically removing the battery WHILE THE POWER IS ON and then reinserting the battery will help reduce the frequency of lock-ups. Now why didn't I think of that??? I should remove the battery from my phone more often - as if that's totally normal?

I guess the practical lesson I should learn from this is to remove the battery from my phone as I walk from the bus stop to the PAC Annex so that it will be done booting up and ready to play music for me by the time I am ready to work out.

On a positive note, he said to expect a BlackBerry Storm software upgrade in the next couple of weeks that is supposed to dramatically improve the Storm's performance and stop it from locking up so much.

P.S. There is NO NEED for any comments from you devoted Apple / Mac people in the peanut gallery. I just know I'm gonna take a, "You should've bought an iPhone or an iPod," comment on this post. Thbbbbt! :-P

Customer Service Ups and Downs

Two shout outs for customer service this week:

First, there was Verizon.

We were supposed to have our home telephone service set up on Oct 1st. Well... Oct 1st came and went and we had no telephone service. My wife called them on Friday to ask what the heck. The customer service rep on the phone said that our service was scheduled to be connected on Oct 1st 2009. LW was understandably exasperated and said, "Uh, NO it wasn't." The guy on the phone got all snooty and rude with her and said, "Well do you want me to help you or not lady?" Nice. So we had to place a new work order to get it hooked up on Monday. Go suck an egg, Verizon!

On the other hand, there was Dell.

The backspace key on my keyboard stopped working. I went to the Dell support website and entered a live chat session with Dell technical support. They walked me through popping off the backspace key and reseating it to see if it would work. It didn't take long at all, and when it didn't work, the rep wrote, "Okay, I'm going to send you a new keyboard." That was Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday about lunchtime, I had a package on my front porch with a new keyboard and easy to follow instructions on how to replace it. AWESOME! I installed it and it worked like a champ. A real live human being called me the next day to make sure I received the keyboard and was able to install it okay and ask if I needed any help.

Two thumbs up for Dell customer service!

My only gripe about Dell (and a very minor gripe at that) is that I received two automated computer phone calls advising me on the shipping status of my repair part... AFTER I had already received the part. You'd think maybe if the DHL tracking service showed the part was already delivered then you wouldn't need to call the customer and tell them their repair part shipped.