Month: October 2008

Dell’s New Nightmare Return Process

Dell sells a lot of products, and I figured that since nearly everyone reading this site has probably ordered from Dell at one time or another, it was worth sharing this story with you. I’ve also posted this story to Dell’s IdeaStorm, so if you have an account there, please go promote my suggestion.

So what’s the issue? Dell’s new return process (RMA) is horrible. It’s beyond horrible: it’s so frustrating it makes me not want to purchase a Dell product again. The way it used to work? You’d call customer service, talk to an agent, and they’d issue an RMA via email. Pretty fast and simple, with only the occasional frustration of having to deal with an agent who tries to talk you out of returning the product.

The way it works now? I phoned Dell customer service on October 23rd, asking for an RMA on an Inspiron Mini 9. I was told that my request would be passed on to the sales agent who processed my order, and he’d phone me back. What? I have to wait for a phone call from a sales guy to return the product? Not surprisingly, a full week passed and I didn’t receive a phone call – sales guys sell things after all. I phoned customer service again on the 28th of October, asking again for the RMA – this time, they emailed the sales guy again and told me they CC’d his manager. Two more days go by, and still no phone call from the sales guy.

On the 30th I call customer service again, and this time they give me his extension so I can phone him directly. I do, leaving him a message with all the details. No call back. On the 31st I phone him again, and after a few hours he phones me back – it’s now been 8 days since he was supposed to contact me. He tells me he’ll pass my return information to the returns department and I should expect a call from them within a week.

Dell’s goal seems to be to make it nearly impossible for customers to return products, thus boosting their bottom line by reducing the money lost on returns. I’ve easily wasted two hours of my time with all the phone calls I’ve made, and at the time of this writing I’m still waiting to hear back from the returns department.

It simply staggers the imagination that Dell considers this process acceptable. I will now have to think very hard about whether or not it’s worth ordering another Dell product in the future – they’ve created a nightmare return process that I never want to go through again.

Dell, go back to the old way of doing returns – the new system is a disaster!

Moving Virtual PC 2007 Files from Documents Folder

I installed Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 the other day, and it helpfully gives you the option of where you want to store the virtual hard drive for the virtual machine you’re creating. I put it on my D: drive, which is a pair of 500 GB Western Digital drives in a RAID 1 array. I expected all the changes I made to that virtual machine to be kept inside the virtual hard drive. Not quite! Virtual PC 2007 creates a folder inside the documents folder called My Virtual Machines, then inside that it creates a sub-folder with the name of your virtual machine. And inside that sub-folder, it stores all of the files that it creates for disk undo changes. In my case, after only a week, it was 2 GB of files in total. Because I use FolderShare to sync my documents folder across all my PCs and laptops, this was 2 GB worth of files that were useless everywhere but the computer that was running the virtual machine.

I scoured through all the program settings, and couldn’t find any option that controlled where these files are stored. Ugg. The good news? I was able to move the virtual machine files out of my documents folder and into the same folder as the virtual machine hard drive on my D: drive and everything worked seamlessly – it didn’t even prompt me asking where the files went. I made a slight change to the virtual machine, saved the changes, and watched as the change was comitted to the folder on the D: drive.

So, if you’re curious about whether or not you can move Virtual PC 2007 files out of the Documents Folder, yes you can!

The Importance of Setting Office Hours

I saw this interesting post over on Digital Nomads and I thought it was worth highlighting for anyone that works outside a normal office – although there may be lessons here for people that work in regular offices as well. I try to stick to a 9 AM to 5 PM work schedule, although there are some evenings when I’ll devote myself to writing or catching up on email. In order to minimize my online presence though, I’ll usually sign myself out of my IM client, and shut down Outlook (unless I’m playing email catch-up). And even though I’ve had the ability to use push email for years, I instead configure my Windows Mobile smartphone to check email every two hours during the day, and every four hours over the weekend. I also will happily ignore the email chime when it goes off. I never want to become one of those sad people who are trained like dogs to reach for their phone whenever they hear the email chime. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with one of those people? You’re talking, or they’re talking, and everything comes to a screeching halt as they have to check and see what email came in. Things have gotten completely out of control, and office workers need to take back control over their lives by working only within working hours. Ok, rant over. 🙂

George Lucas Heckled on Spike’s Scream 2008 Awards

I was watching the Spike TV 2008 Scream awards, and near the end, at the 1 hour 56 minute and 30 second mark, some guy in the crowd, within earshot of the microphone that Lucas was speaking from, yelled out “You haven’t been cool since the ’80s!”. Wow. It’s one thing to express your opinion about someone else, but it’s quite another to do so as a heckler from the crowd at an event where he’s being honoured. I doubt he made it back to his car alive – I’m sure one of those Storm Troopers gave him a little re-education on respecting the creator of the Star Wars universe.

Public Relations Stuck in the ’90s

One of the things I hate seeing in my day job are companies who’s concept of public relations and product announcements are stuck in the mentality of a previous decade. Case in point: there’s a company, who shall remain un-named, that launched a couple of new products, but only in the European market. They decided not to tell me about the products, even though they’re right up my alley, because I’m based on North America. The concept of regional product announcements is a quaint idea from a bygone era. The Internet has obliterated the idea that information is relevant only to a certain group of people living in a geographic era. Public relations and marketing people need to grasp that the Internet is global, and it’s changed the way product launches work.

This also applies to all those companies I meet at CES who look at my press badge and see “Canada” then don’t want to talk to me. Do these people believe that the Internet is some sort of temporary fad?

Movies Worth Renting: Max Payne

Never having played the Max Payne games, or knowing anything about them, I went into this movie purely based on the strength of the movie trailer, which I thought looked cool. All those dark angel-type-creatures, and the dialogue (“The devil is building his army…”) gave me the impression that this movie would have a Constantine vibe to it. I don’t want to ruin the movie for anyone, but let’s just say that the trailer gave me a false impression and as a result I was kind of disappointed in the movie. It wasn’t bad by any means, but in my opinion it wasn’t worth seeing in the movie theatre – it’s more of a $5 investment than a $25+ investment.

Word Web Site Design Ever?

There are some things word can’t express, and this is one of them. Go on, look, I dare you. Like what you see? Evidently you can hire this guy and he’ll bring his, uh, creative skills to bear. Isn’t that like paying someone to hit you with a car? Why would you do that? Thanks to Ed Hansberry for putting this plague into my head. 😉 Want even more fun? Check out these sites.

Geek Heaven: Sideshow Collectibles

One word: wow. If I ever have an extra $2000 sitting around that I don’t know what to do with, I could easily find things to spend it on at Sideshow Collectibles. The Iron Man figurine pictured above is “only” $174, but the ultra-cool life-sized Iron Man bust is $699. They have amazing items from all genres: comics, fantasy, TV shows, movies, and a lot more. I mean, seriously, who wouldn’t want a replica of Thor’s hammer?!? Must…put…credit…card…away.