#heweb09 Disaster Fun!

I was lucky enough to be following someone on Twitter who was actually attending #heweb09, and consequently putting out some of the best tweets too!

I first noticed a bunch of snarky tweets, which are always intriguing, and then I noticed the hashtag and decided to check it out. I was very amused to find, in real time, a conversation going on about a really shitty ass keynote speaker! The comments painted a picture of him in my mind, despite the fact I couldn't see him, but then someone streamed it live! I got a few chuckles and was amazed at how this new phenomenon was happening. It wasn't just people tweeting about live shit on TV, or some lame crap like that, nor a stadium of tweeters, it was a conference type room with a bunch of intelligent people meeting to learn, and a majority of them were all feeling the same things and the ability to share it quietly with others there.

Akin to passing notes in class, people would discuss how they'd love to leave, but opposed to notes, anyone in the world could read them! The talk started to pick up more and more, and then the bigwigs noticed, showed up and left comments about lynch mobs and how social media doesn't give us the right to heckle others, blah blah, but all in all if someone wants to put themselves out there, they have to be prepared for the consequences, if it wasn't on twitter, it would have been on everyone's blogs the next day anyways!

I did find a follow up blog here, and it actually mentions something I did to have fun after seeing the following tweet:
I saw this and thought damn, wouldn't this be a fun real time social experiment! I rushed to the nearest website I could remember, cafepress.com, made a store, and booted up paint.NET and make a picture, uploaded it onto a shirt, and put it on sale!


The ability to add to a real time joke from thousands of miles away intrigued me! I was watching the fun anyways, so why not try and participate and see what happens?

I was initially scared people would think I'm some sort of scammer/spammer/opportunist, but I wasn't doing this trying to sell shirts, I just wanted to see some people laugh, and show the power of how quickly some joke of a Keynote at a Higher Education Web conference can turn into a global joke where people can already buy merchandise world wide!

I shared the link with bitly, and you can actually see the stats by going here.
The stats are as follows:
187 Total clicks (at time of writing, 170 were on first day)
8 Tweets (2 were from me, and no one actually retweeted me, but made their own tweets linking to the shirt)
and about 150 of those tweets were in the first hour, and 75ish in the first 5 minutes form what I remember!

Anyways, it was pretty fun to add to something from miles away with only about 5 minutes of input, and it's also pretty cool to see quickly rising click counts in seconds and minutes!

The blog I linked to above had a lot of good points and things learned from the conference. I also like that the comments were all pretty smart, well read, and not the general crap you usually see. I lol at the anonymous comment saying how it was bad, and people were mean and idiots and he's glad to be home, I wonder who wrote that? haha!

Why do large retailers actively try and avoid helping those who want to give them business?

They just never do learn do they? These big companies that try as hard as fucking hell to make it impossible for you to ever complain or get justice done for you? They make it their business to make sure they cannot get your business, and they do it with style.

Who am I talking about today? I'm talking about Dell!
I've originally hated Dell with a passion for years, ever since they sold us a 10lb pile of crap laptop that I have to fix every time I come home and visit my parents. A system so crappy and made with such garbage components, it's mind boggling!

Throughout my entire 5 years at University, people would always ask me for their opinions on computers and laptops, like which to buy, and without a doubt the first thing I'd rant about is how to NEVER EVER buy a Dell computer! They are the bane of families, they sit there, going slower and slower and slower, even after clean installs, which now you can't even do because they don't give you cds and they hide the partitions. I can't even get into how much I despised Dell, as I've tried to wipe them from my memory.

Recently, since I've started my current job, I've grown a bit more of a liking for Dell, due to my boss's love for them, and for the fact that they sell almost every electronic device for cheap with free shipping! I agreed this seemed great, low prices, free shipping, I even bought a number of items from them!

So here I am sitting somewhat happy with Dell, perhaps not their computers, which I still don't trust, and their superscam patented 500 step "milk-you-for-all-you-got" buy a computer online process, not to mention the uberscam Dell Swarm, where they reduce the price of an item to the same price it would be on sale anyways, but only after 1200+ people legally agree to pay for it. The twitter deals were cool when they came out, but after the first month, they were the exact same deals every day and week, it wasn't a deal anymore, it was the normal price, and it wasn't even that great! Dell is great at doing this, and while the Dell Days of Deals has some good stuff, much of it is the leftovers of yesteryear, or the products that actually had horrible reviews and were already overpriced on their site.

So what prodded me to write all this? Well somehow I ended up signing up for paper mail from Dell, brilliant I know, but a few weeks ago I got a coupon with the flyer that said "Save 25% *", and it was valid from September 25 to October 8th 2009. So I checked the site every day and there was a lot I could buy with it, despite the fact that it said small & medium business electronics when clearly half the items there didn't seem business at all (Video Games). I was waiting for them to finally get the camera I want on their site, which they never did, so I decided 25% off is pretty good, I'll find something to buy today, even though there is nothing I really want to buy. I hate to say that, but 25% off with free shipping is a good enough deal that I'd spend money when I don't even immediately need to! Yet good ol' Dell still managed to fuck it up!

You see, I could never actually find where they explained the *, it said nowhere on the tear away coupon where to go to find the information on it. The rest of the flyer looked bare as well. I went to the site they listed for where I could use the coupon, and I could not find mention of it there either. I think it was actually just a vanityURL. So today I try to use the coupon, it's on the last day, or what I assume would be based on every other coupon I've used, and BAM! It doesn't work! So I say, shit, and try it on a few products that have no deals on them just in case. Still get the same answer! So I go to buy a laptop, because unless I'm spending a lot of money on something common, I can't find the instant chat option. I write the long description in of what happened to me to try and initiate the chat, but they must not have liked it and just refreshed the page and cleared the fields. Ok WTF is that? So I write something shorter, and then I get in. I tell them what happened, they ask for my coupon code, I give, they check and say sorry, it expired today at 4am.

Well Shit, that would have been good to know before I waited until the last day to use it. Why didn't that * help me?! I say I was going to spend money, but I won't now without the coupon code, can you give me a new one, or I will spend my money elsewhere. I get a crappy response with no help, and so I give them feedback and leave.

If anyone from Dell ever reads this, here is the conversation trail info:
2:36:09 PM Agent CA Sales Sastry 1286
Session ID: 30975226

----

So what is the bigger point apart from me wanting to spend money and getting denied because they hid the info from me?

It seems that all too many companies make it so goddamn hard for a customer to complain about shitty service, or little things that just went wrong and that prevented us from giving them money that we WANTED to give them! When you try to complain, and cannot find an avenue, you get twice as mad. When you finally find a pseudo way of submitting via a web form, and then when you hit submit and it says, sorry, you didn't fill in all the required fields, when clearly you did, it makes you 10 times as mad! I have a feeling I wrote too long a rant, but it never gave me a message saying shorten my message.

Companies should really post a big red button saying: "If you are mad and want justice, click here to email us!". Yes I know it makes sense to capture the right error into the right email box, but it doesn't mean you are catching everything and usually it means you are turning off a lot of frustrated consumers. What the hell is the point of a coupon if not to attract business, and then for a rep to say sorry, we don't want your business any more?

That's MOTHER-FUCKING-LUDICROUS!

Thank god there are sites like GetSatisfaction who want to help people easily complain, and a lot of smaller companies and web 2.0 sites use it! But the big ones who really need it are the ones who actively avoid it. Victory to them through obfuscation.

And to those who noticed that if you try to get sales support, it only gives you the telephone option, that doesn't work for everyone, I hate using phones when I can use email, and why the fuck would I want to speak with some sleazy sales person with no power, or some ass fuck from the other side of the world who doesn't really give a shit (no offense to the people on the other side of the world)? I want to write out in text form how I'm feeling and what was done wrong, so there is no confusion, there is no disputing or games, and the beauty of an email is that it can be passed up in it's purest form to upper management who can fix things. You cannot do this with a conversation, you cannot properly capture the passion of the person speaking, and what they truly wanted to say.

If they believe or truly have people on the other end of the phone who can help me then they made the mistake of not telling me, because in all my experience, there is NEVER anyone on the other end of the phone who can really help you without a ton of complaining, cajoling, and calling back until you get someone helpful or unless you continue to ask for management. Or you have to ask to be sent to the cancellations department. They should know better in today's world.

Anyways, to end this rant, I really hope that companies will start opening up to their customers and actually give an attempt to listen to them, instead of blindly losing business, left, right and center!

New UW Logos

I guess this new logo is starting to grow on me for it's specific purposes, and I just don't really care any more as the fires have calmed. As long as we still have official seal, this could help differentiate us, and it is definitely risk taking, which I do believe is in the spirit of Waterloo, so whatever, go for it! The whole fiasco is worth its weight in gold to draw attention to our university to increase our brand presence!

They have however started looking for feedback on even newer logos!

Here are the 2 new UW Logos which I saved from the survey I took here. I'd suggest taking the survey to help them out.



I like to think this one makes me think of robots and fast scenes of electronics, motherboards, processors and chips: ie. incredibly nerdy and engineering like. I'm not sure I like the fact that it's hard to make out the E, so I don't immediately see it as Waterloo, but as WAT + RLOO, oh that's an E too.


This one just makes me laugh!

Waterloo: A Sinking Ship!

I think they were probably going for tip of the iceberg, more than meets the eye thing, but I think it can be easily taken the wrong way, as noted above. Or it's a whale beaching!

Zappos DOES NOT EQUAL A Good Example of Customer Service in Social Media

You know, I'm sick and tired of constantly seeing posts about how Zappos is equivalent to great customer service! It seems like it's the only example out there for social media, but I know it's not!

Zappos sure as hell wasn't great for me in terms of Customer Experience; in fact, I do believe that my experience was far much worse than it would have been if I had never know that they were supposed to be synonymous with customer service!

Several months back I was looking for new shoes and I said hey what the hell, the local FootLocker sucks and seems to be staffed by inept kids that leave you waiting for 25 minutes listening to the worst goddamn mutherfucking music ever made while they try to find if your shoes are at another store or when they'll be in stock. It was so aggravating I said to myself, there has to be an easier way to get my shoes, I know exactly what I want, I get the same pair over and over because they are great!

I check out this Zappos thing people are wild about, although I have no idea how online shoes can be that exciting, at least if you are a guy. I check their site, it seemed nice enough, finding my shoes wasn't tough, and hey they were a good price with free shipping and free returns! Wow, these guys are good I thought, so I go to try to buy, but sorry I live in that far off mystical land of Canada that doesn't exist in the same universe as America, let alone the same continent. I'm pissed and yell FAIL. So I look for an alternative, perhaps they have a Canadian site? If they are so great they must!

Lo and Behold! They do! But hey, is this even the same company? The site looks completely different, like it's made from crap and aimed at people who aren't as important or who don't care about looks for functionality like Americans do. Funny how most sites seem to think that when they expand to Canada...

So I look for my shoes, and boy was that fun. 10 minutes later and after looking through every pair of shoes, I couldn't find my basic pair of New Balance running shoes! And WTF is this? $10 to ship on more expensive shoes then they'd be in the states? and $15 return? It even says they are shipping them from the US!!! If that is the case, why don't they just let me use their beautiful site that is fully stocked and pay for the shipping? Why do I have to pick from a lesser more expensive group and still have to pay for shipping? What kind of Bullshit are they running?!

So Anyways, I complain over Twitter making sure to mention Zappos and showing that I was unhappy (I even used a frowny!), and of course I've heard that over 200 of their employees are monitoring twitter. I expected someone to swoop down to my rescue any minute, or to at least appologize for lack of international service.

Several months later I still haven't heard a peep from them. Good customer service my fucking ass! Maybe if I was born under the American Flag I would have gotten some reception, but for a company that is synonymous with social media and great customer service, at least one fucking person could have said "Sorry, we're still working on our Canadian store", or "how can I help you pay us?". Seriously, WTF, high expectations, incredibly low results, seems pretty sad to me, and not even a reply from a Canadian Zappos employee, if they actually have any, or anyone in Canada. Perhaps I only had one tweet, but with the tools available at the time and 200 employees, someone must have saw my tweet.

I'll never use them as an example of Good customer service, just as one that is bad. Are they good because they offer free shipping and returns? Maybe that's it? Well so does well.ca and I know they are nice people who respond to you on twitter! Perhaps it's their culture? What fucking good does their culture do me if they don't help me (200 employees not helping me)? I really hate to say it, but at this point I believe Rogers (...shudder) does a better job of customer service using Social Media. Take that!

Anyways, I've been meaning to get this rant out for a long time, but seeing a recent tweet about zappos = customer service just got me riled up again.

RSS is not dead! It works great with Twitter!

People keep saying that RSS is dead, but I don't believe it, in fact I've never used RSS more than I do now! I found that I started using RSS after I started getting into Twitter. Perhaps that has to do with me having a job in Social Media and using that as an excuse to start using these tools, but suffice to say, I believe that I would miss a lot of information if I didn't use my RSS reader in conjunction with Twitter.

I would consider myself a Twitter power user, with the exception of having it mobile (I'm too cheap, and I'm never far from a computer). I follow a lot of people I deem important who are constantly shooting out valuable blog posts, and it gets to the point where my Firefox grows to 26 tabs open to catch up with all the links I missed before opening Twitter at work. I'm constantly opening bit.lys to get to new blog posts, links, articles, but I do know that if it's something they thought was important enough to write their own blog post about, I won't miss it. I can sometime skip over posts and just check my RSS reader later to catch up on what was said on my own time, without chancing either losing the tab, or forgetting about the link posted in real time.

My RSS is like a backup net, it lets me take some of the real time out of twitter and focus on the things that aren't as potentially important, like the interesting links and articles, as well as conversations. As I start to learn about more interesting people on Twitter, I can keep adding them to my feed reader. Thanks to PostRank I can also filter the crap!

Realtime is only good if you are there all the time, and while I try to be, sometimes I'm just too busy and when I do try to catch up, I get a million links to read at once. I usually try to leave the tabs on FF open to read later, but eventually it starts to slow everything down on my computer.

RSS is a great way to store articles for reading later, especially when some people blog about the important articles I may have missed!

Disney to buy Marvel?!

I can't believe the news I read this morning, Mickey might just join the X-men!

This is huge news, a huge dollar value, and has huge implications for both comic fans and Disney's competitors! Think about Universal Studios and their heavy use of the Marvel universe? How do you stop a competing theme park? Buy the rights to all the characters that some of their current success is based on! What a smooth move!

I really hope they don't dumb down or family orient our favourite comics and characters, and I don't want to see any plush wolverine Mickeys either! The teen and adult oriented universes of some comics don't seem to fit in with Disney in my opinion, but perhaps they want to capture a whole different market as well?

What do you think? Blasphemy?

Gmail Webclips makes me laugh

For some reason I got this in my Gmail Webclips this morning, as I occasionally get the most random, stupid or funny things in there:

Miley Cyrus' IQ Is 75 - MileyCyrus.quiz4iq.com - Take An IQ Test And Find Out If You Are Smarter Than Miley Cyrus.

I laugh, that seems pretty low, and I know it could be complete BS, but I'll look it up anyways, here is what wiki says:

70–84 Borderline Mental Disability

HA, it's probably true