[ale] Re: This bites (was Re: [ale] More on Mozilla/Java)

[James P. Kinney III]

On Mon, 2002-03-25 at 05:40, Joseph A Knapka wrote:

> And what's a "happy customer"? One who's so utterly overjoyed
> to use the product that they actually take the time to
> mention it to someone else. It takes a *lot* of joy to make
> a customer that happy, whereas the amount of frustration it
> takes to produce a "pissed-off customer" is fairly small.
> 
> On the other hand, having millions of pissed-off customers
> doesn't seem to be a problem for MicroShaft.
> 

My definition of a happy customer is one who is not pissed off. OK, so
that may be a bit circular. A happy customer feels that they have been
involved in a transaction where they got what they wanted at a price
that is acceptable. That is _still_ nebulous, I know. But quantifying
happiness is not my area :)

I don't know how M$ manages to keep pissing off so many people and stay
in business. It must be the clout they have with their market position. 

Prior to win95, I ran into some DOS problems. I was actually able to get
an engineer on the phone at Microsoft. I explained the problem (I don't
remember what it was, but it was a show stopper for what I was working
on), he couldn't answer it right away as it would involve some research
on his end. He called me back later in the week to update me on the
status. That was good customer service. The direct problem was not
resolved, but he did find a work-around that was sufficient which he
both phoned me about and faxed the details to me as well. 

Later, I had a problem with locking down the user preferences on NT4 for
kiosk use in a classroom setting. I called M$, sat on hold for 4 hours,
was referred to an outside party for that type of support at $175/hour,.
OK, not my money. I submitted the service request on the M$ paid tech
support page and submitted the required P.O. forms as well. No one got
back with me. Ever. I had to call them (remember, I'm paying them
$175/hour) to find out the progress. The end result, they didn't find a
solution and I didn't pay them.

-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and COO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 



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