customer service

today was one of those ninja guidant, nothing-is-getting-in-my-way sort of days.

i am a mac user now apparently. i honestly am not proud of this and do not think i am cool. i hate those stupid commercials about mac vs. PC, i want to vomit every time i enter the apple store and honestly the whole "customer service" thing that apple claims to do infinitely better than its PC brethren is just complete bullshit.

so anyway, i use a macbook these days.

as part of the augmented product offering-- and by this i mean the slate of applications that comes with a newly purchased mac-- apple offers a program called "stickies." basically, its a electronic version of the fabled sticky note.

i love sticky notes.

it is not out of the ordinary for me to forget things from time to time-- rather, more frequently from minute to minute-- and so sticky notes tend to be a damn good friend to me. its no joke when i say that i typically carry one stuck to my wallet every day. otherwise, i usually get too caught up in one task and then totally forget about the other. or i rack my brain trying to think of the one thing that i was supposed to do that day. that being said, it makes complete sense for me to believe in stick notes so much.

and i mean, how can you not? talk about a versatile product. no need to limit yourself with using sticky notes only as a way to write out your 'to-do' list. theres so many more things that they are good for: napkins, tape in a pinch (using only the sticky part), toilet paper, creation of a simple funnel (that can actually filter motor oil in to your engine if need be), bookmark, paper planes... i could go on and on.

anyway, mac's have this utility called stickies where you can treat your eSticky as if it is a 'to-do' list on your computer. and today happened to be one of those ninja-guidant, nothing-is-getting-in-my-way sort of days because i managed to rumble through everything on my sticky.

awesome.

10:22 am - arrive at camera store.

issue: my camera is having symptoms that point to the fact that a particle of some sort is resting on the image sensor. every time i take a picture i get a black spec that shows up in the upper left hand corner of the image.

(this caused me to nearly punch a hole in the dashboard of dear friend steve's mothers beautiful audi sedan the other day. here we were at a monumental viewpoint roughly 10,000 feet up looking out in to olympic national park at the mountains. the sun was setting. this is when i start to take pictures feverishly and i certainly get overly excited. well, this moment was ruined because every photo i took had a black dot in the upper left hand corner. i diagnosed the problem as a piece of dust that was sitting on the image sensor. i would need to visit a camera store. i remained very frustrated as i tried to fix the problem so that i could take some good photos of the mountains)

so today i walked in the camera store. a champion greeted me at the door-- his name was brian and he was dressed in an overly official set of trousers and dress shirt. that was completely irrelevant but oh well. he was asian-- i am guessing from somewhere like indonesia, but this is also completely irrelevant.

i have a horrible attitude when it comes to customer service. i go in to it typically bearing fisticuffs and ready for a 5 round fight with whoever it is that is taking care of me. i have had every piece of electronics that i own break in some way, shape or form (whether my fault of otherwise) and i would say my success rate with having the company stand behind the problem is somewhere in the neighborhood of about .00002%.

yep.

now, this success rate (well, that lack thereoff really) suggests my carelessness.

HOWEVER, i beg to differ. from 2003 onwards, i have chosen to take every precaution with anything expensive-- this involves an awkward carrying case most of the time and always a bit of extra effort because these stupid "cases" are inconvenient to lug around and what not.

just three months ago my previous apple laptop spontaneously combusted (ie the motherboard melted) but there was just no fucking way that apple would stand behind it. i complained up and down the ranks of their employees-- this included an email and phone call in to steve jobs' office. i was eventually talking with one of his executive assistants getting "help" with my problem but i actually got nothing out of the deal. apple would not fix or replace my laptop.

(if you see this steve jobs, i will forever say bad things about your company and customer service no matter how neato my new macbook is).

ANYWAY, events like these are contributing factors in to explaining my sullied opinion of 21st century customer service.

so i walk in to the camera store today not expecting a ton of help. but i would at least go in with a plan. for the 22 minute walk leading up to me entering the door to the camera store, i was conjouring up this plan and how i would approach the situation where i was to require some customer service.

instead of entering the store and bitching that i have a piece of dust lodged upon the image sensor of my nikon d40, i needed to have a plan. typically getting a cleaning of your camera costs about $30 to $40. i was hellbent on not paying this inordinate amount of money because thats about $20 north of my daily budget.

instead of going in and asking for cleaning, i would march in to the store asking to see nikon's latest lens release-- the beautiful new nikor 18-200 VR lens. this puppy has been something of a hot commodity in the USofA and was running a rather hefty price tag of $750.

i would go in and act as if i was going to be purchasing this lens in the next week or so and wanted to do a price comparison.

brian piped in after me standing in the store for roughly 92 seconds, "can i help you with something sir?"

"absolutely, i am going to be purchasing the nikor 18-200 lens this week and would like to do a price comparison."

"certainly. well, we are actually selling this lens for only $750."

"oh wow. bravo! this is the cheapest i have found it. i only have a few other places to check, but that is the cheapest i will likely see it for. please tell me your name so i can come back and talk with you?"

"it is brian. i would be happy to gift wrap it for you when the time is right."

"yes, i will need that. i will be back this week to purchase. thanks and have a good day."

"sure, and just so you know we price match on these lenses."

"oh wow. ok. well i will be seeing you later this week then brian. thanks very much."

i begin to walk out of the store. i open the door to exit the premises and suddenly hault.

"OH! brian! i almost forgot. i am sure you can help me with this. i believe i have a piece of dust lodged on the surface of my d40 image sensor."

"do you have your camera with you?"

the camera is in my backpack but i of course will not reveal this to brian as this would make it look like i actually have a plan.

"it is in my car, give me a few moments to fetch it."

i definitely walked to the camera store and had no car in the parking lot. i walked outdoors and around the corner. i paused to kill some time. i returned with the camera in-hand.

brian piped in, "well... i might be able to remedy the situation. let me have a look, this should be no problem."

brian shows me this trick so that you can open up the shutter all the way and have a full view of the image sensor. what a beautiful piece of image sensory it was-- just a lovely little pale blue'ish gray piece of silicon circuitry that kind of looked like a mirror. brian produced a roundish piece of equipment that most closely resembled the thing that pulls buggars out of infant's nostrils-- looks something like a much smaller turkey baster.

he gave that image sensor a few puffs of air and voila, i was taking particle free photos once again.

success. customer service received as a result of very manipulative behvior.

(it should be noted, however, that my customer service batting average in the state of washington is very promising-- just last week i also got my watch replaced free of charge, no questions asked. i didnt even have a receipt. needless to say, i am wearing a brand new version of my watch today.)

12:01 pm - peanut butter and jelly sandwich in hand.

this was actually on my sticky note. staying with steve has yielded me inordinate amounts of incredibly tasty food that i am reasonably sure i will never be able to re-create. that being said, today i needed to dip back in to roadie roots and have myself a PB&J.

delightful.

12:32 pm - coffee in hand.

while sitting and sipping, items 3 - 9 were just x'ed off of my 'to-do' list in swift fashion as i sequentially talked with the owner of seattle's green tortoise hostel, inquired about the status of a credit payment that is nearing the stages of being late (it wasnt... awesome), sent a few work-related emails and finished off a thank-you note.

thats the kind of ninja swiftness i am talking about. i was pretty pleased with myself.

4:21 pm - i made it just in time to get in line at the post office.

holy cow, there must be a dangerously low amount of post offices in seattle because this was the most crowded a post office i have ever seen. you know these little automatic kiosks that they provide as an alternative to waiting in line? well shit, even that thing had a 45 foot line trailing behind it. i waited. and waited.

i would text message and play road rally racer on my fossil of a cell phone to kill the time.

turns out i managed to get my all-time highest score on road rally racer. jesus, does someone want to inform me that i won the lottery?!

i walked out of the post office and it was pouring rain. in most situations, i would take the opportunity to curse to myself and worry about my laptop getting drenched in my backpack.

nope. not today. i packed my rain coat. i threw that puppy on OVER the backpack and kept chugging.

5:09 pm - turns out there was a felafel shop situated near the post and so i obviously stopped in for a bit of a treat. i havent even seen so much as a greek salad in some of the other towns traversed, so i didnt hesitate to pounce on this opportunity.

that little pita pocket of crushed garbanzo bean delights was just gorgeous. i think i consumed the whole thing in about 49 seconds.

awesome.

5:19 pm - i began walking home-- to steve's house that is.

as i cruised along, i most closely resembled marcus in the movie 'about a boy' when he is walking down the hallway at school with his headphones on mouthing the lyrics to mystikal's 'shake it fast.' he is shouting out "shake ya ass, watch yo'self, show me whatcha workin' with." marcus, of course, was 12 and about as white and british as he could possibly be so it made for something of a humorous scene.

so with some gangsta rap on my ipod to keep things hype it was clear there was only one song to keep things appropos:

ice cube - 'it was a good day'