It was one of those deals you can’t turn down. With how digital everything in my world has become, there is no such thing as enough hard disc space. In addition to the 150GB in my MacBook Pro I carry a 400GB portable and the iMac on my desk at home has 250GB internal and—until recently—five external drives sitting behind it (and that does not count the 2TB network drive just filled with music).
But there it was staring at me from the Fry’s ad in the local paper. A 2TB external that would allow me to cut those five drive downs to three with a bunch more storage at a very attractive sub-$200 price.
So away I went to the electronics behemoth. (For those of you without one, Fry’s is the electronics addict’s dream/nightmare. About the size of your typical Wal-Mart but stuffed with everything from soldering guns to camcorders, from motherboards to big screen TVs.) And I was proud to leave with only about $30 worth of stuff in addition to the hard drive and the three-year “instant exchange warranty.” I know, extended warranties are a racket, but the cost on this one and the promise that if the drive went tits up I could just walk in and exchange it convinced me. Stupid move…
Got it home and it sat in the box for two weeks until I had time to hook it up, partition it and transfer the info from the other drives. It was a little louder than I would have liked but otherwise appeared fine. After about a week, my wife asked what that ‘whining” sound coming from the office/studio was and I attributed it to the too-loud fan. After a few days I actually listened to it and realized it HAD gotten louder. And a quick look at the desktop showed no icons for the drive. Tried all of the usual stuff and could not even get the drive spin all the way up once it had been turned off. In short, it was dead.
Back I went, and I will spare you the details, but after an hour I left again with no drive, a credit to the Amex account that I had used to buy the drive and had already paid off, a headache and a serious need to hurt the manager. The kicker had come when they said that they would exchange the drive, but that the extended warranty would be void as it had been “used.” When I asked for an explanation, they spent 10 minutes looking through the fine print of the contract and finally told me it fell under the heading of “motherboards and memory” and that the “warranty” on those items only allowed for a single exchange in the time allowed.
Today, I have a new drive that I paid substantially less for, a three year instant exchange that is really good for three years even if the drive fails more than once, and an apology from management. But getting there meant researching the company online, getting the name of the CEO and headquarters address and sending a registered letter outlining the situation.
So why am I telling you this? First if you get shitty service don’t settle for some minimum wage “customer service” drone on the phone. Go to the top. Works every time, and I have done it with UPS, Chrysler, Maytag etc. And that applies to the folks who sell gear in our industry. If your direct contact can’t get it done, go straight to corporate. Everyone else exists solely to make you give up and go away. Second, take it as a parable for the kind of customer service your company offers.
No, the customer is not always right. But it pays to make him or her think they are. In the example above, Fry’s had to expend an hour with three different managers, a letter that had to be dealt with at the highest level of the company, a phone call from the store manager, and they made $100 less than they would have if they had just exchanged the bad drive. And, while I can’t say I will never go back to Fry’s (too big a gadget junkie for that), I’ll only go as a last resort or if they have a price that no one else can get close to.
When something goes wrong on a gig—even something that is not your fault (after all, Fry’s did not make the bad drive, Maxtor did), do you try to find a way for someone else to take the fall, or do you go out of your way to make the customer happy? I guarantee I can look at your ratio of repeat customers and give you an answer without knowing anything else about your business.
