Category Archives: Satisfactory outcomes

Discussions that led to a acceptable resolution

Eaton 5E 850i UPS: belated sign of life; avoid

Accounts, Australia, Bad experiences, Consumer Electronics, Satisfactory outcomes, Tedious processes

tl;dr: If you’re looking for a functional UPS, avoid the Eaton 5E series. And if you want customer service, avoid Eaton.

In an attempt to make my network infrastructure more resilient, I decided to get an uninterruptible power supply, to keep the Wi-Fi on during power cuts. After some comparisons, I settled for the Eaton 5E 850i. It was a mistake.

UPDATE (2022-12-08): After a phone call, and another follow-up message, I finally got the support escalated to a product manager, who was quick to confirm that, indeed, the UPS was defective. It took another follow-up email to get a replacement actually sent to me. Fortunately, this time, it was detected.

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Buying shoes online – don’t do it to yourself

Accounts, Australia, Bad experiences, Clothes, Good experiences, Letters, Online services, Satisfactory outcomes,

I have been banned from buying shoes online by the resident Frenchman. Why? Because I have had to return 5 pairs over the years, because they NEVER EVER FIT. And then I end up paying extra for postage and more recently, experience anxiety because I worry that they won’t fit.

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Games Paradise: Heaven or Hell?

Accounts, Australia, Bad experiences, Satisfactory outcomes

Thinking of ordering a game from Games Paradise instead of trekking into the city to pick it up? Don’t do it to yourself.

I ordered a game from there the other week, due to my laziness to go into the city. For a week my order status sat on “processing” so I rang the customer service line to check. The girl assured me that I would receive the game by Thursday (four days from the day I was calling). I said that it was ok, and continued to play the waiting game.

The following Monday arrived, the order status was still on “processing” so I rang and cancelled my order. The girl on the phone was apologetic, and almost relieved that I wasn’t cranky and agreed to refund me straight away. The money arrived back in my account within 3 days, though, I do wish they had managed to send the game to me in that time.

I’ve got a trip coming up to the US shortly, where I can buy it for $35 – $15 cheaper than here. I’ll just wait a few weeks.

Woolworths: Fishy, but Promptly Corrected

Australia, Groceries, Letters, Satisfactory outcomes

Dear sir or madam,

Please check your “fresh” fish.

At the end of a long day, and having the rest of the needed ingredients, I decided that I fancied home-made sushi. All that was missing was a couple of nice salmon fillets.

I went to the fresh seafood section of my local Woolworths, at Wolli Creek, and was served by a very amiable clerk who selected for me two fillets of what appeared to be the best salmon on display (or at least, the most expensive).

Back home, as I was readying the fillets to be assembled into tasty bite-sized rice delicacies, I noticed an unusually strong fishy smell emanating from the freshly-bought fish. A further taste-test confirmed my suspicions: both fillets, though labelled as fresh in the store, were clearly past their due date.

Beyond the $12.99 paid for the 400-odd grams of fish, I let you imagine my deception, contemplating a fish-less sushi meal, which was only saved with a random steak and a quickly created teriaki sauce.

A reply email came the next day.

Dear O.

At Woolworths Supermarkets we have a huge selection of brands you know and trust.

The quality and integrity of our products is of utmost importance to us and if you are not completely satisfied, we will cheerfully refund the purchase price and exchange the item as part of our Fresh and Free Guarantee.

Please take your item packaging back Salmon Portions Sknd Boned Fresh x2 which you purchased for $12.99 to your local store and the customer service team will be more than happy to look after you. This way we can investigate the batch for future reference, If you have any further queries please feel free to contact Juliana the store manager on (02) 8035 9281 to discuss the matter further.

If you no longer have your receipt of purchase, please take this letter with you as proof of purchase.

We appreciate your feedback and we thank you for shopping at Woolworths.

Yours faithfully,

Werner
Woolworths Customer Service Team

And indeed, next time I went to Woolworths, the attendant happily offered a refund. The easiest was to add this as a discount on other purchases, so I bought a few needed items. They also offered to replace the fish itself at no cost, but the sushi opportunity was past, so I didn’t get it.

I’d hope to see such very decent customer service more often.

Getting scammed into buying freely available software, and how to work out from there

Accounts, Australia, Bad experiences, Letters, Netherlands, Online services, Satisfactory outcomes, Scams, Tedious processes, ,

There are heaps of freely available applications out there. There also is an insane amount of fraudsters willing to scam peole into giving good money out for nothing more. In short, do NOT pay anything for iTunes, FrostWire, or any similar application before before at least checking whether or not they are available for free from their publishers’ website. Same goes for free music/movie/download “memberships” without knowing what exactly you are buying. When one realises they’ve fallen victim to this type of scams, it’s usually too late, but sometimes, it’s worth persevering and trying to get a refund.

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Why I won’t use VistaPrint’s services again

Accounts, Bad experiences, France, Letters, Online services, Satisfactory outcomes, Tedious processes,

French summary: La raison pour laquelle je n’aurai plus recours aux services de VistaPrint (France). Le 28 août, j’ai commandé l’impression d’un grand autocollant. Avant de la soumettre, j’avais consciencieusement calulé les marges et édité mon modèle en conséquence afin que le résultat imprimé soit de la taille désirée. Expédition le 1er septembre, tout allait encore bien. Une mauvaise surprise m’attend cependant à la réception le 3. Les marges ne correspondent pas à celles que j’avais demandées (et pourtant vérifiées sur leur aperçu avant validation). S’en suit un mois et demi à tenter de naviguer dans les méandres de leur service client, ce qui revient à déchiffrer du HTML dans le texte (leur logiciel envoie des mails avec du HTML dans des parties en text/plain), à envoyer toutes les demandes au moins deux fois et à résumer l’ensemble du problème dans chaque email pour combler les lacunes de leur processus de suivi client afin d’obtenir une réimpression ou, à défaut, un remboursement. J’ai finalement obtenu un avoir d’une partie du prix de mon impression. Il a cependant été si difficile de l’obtenir que j’avais déjà résolu que cet achat serait le dernier. Aprés encore quelques emails dans la même kafkaïenne incompréhension, j’ai enfin, et à la décharge de la compagnie, obtenu un remboursement complet sur mon compte. Aprés 36 courriels ! Suite à la conclusion de cette affaire, je me suis récement vu proposées d’autres réductions en guise d’excuse. Correct, mais un peu tard. Je voulais juste mon autocollant, moi…

On the 28th of august, I ordered a sticker printout on the French VistaPrint. Before finalizing the order, I carefully checked the margins so that the printout would be exactly the size I needed it to be. Shipped on the first of september, I received it on the third. I eagerly openned the box only to find a wrong-sized horribly pixellated sticker, not fit at all for my use. Following is a month and a half of trying to communicate with customer service. This mainly consisted of manually scouting their HTML tags-ridden plain text emails for information and sending all messages in duplicates to account for their lack of proper issue tracking. I first wanted a reprint, then couldn’t be bothered and asked for a full refund. I first got a voucher for part of the price I paid, which wasn’t satisfying as I already resolved that this order would be my last transaction with them. In their defense, ending a Kafkaesque exchange of about 36 emails, I enventually received a full refund on my bank account. More recently, they een offered me some coupons as an appology. Just a bit too late. And all I wanted was a nice sticker…

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