All I want is …

July 21, 2008

… to find a company that believes in offering good customer service.  I’m growing so tired of the lackluster customer service.  I am a user of many services, and it’s getting to the point where I think it’s time to cut all or most of them off.  It’s become absurd.  I don’t expect them to be perfect, but when they make a mistake, I want to see them actively working to correct the problem, not relying on me to follow behind them with a whip to get it done.

Comcast — My issues with Comcast are well documented.  I finally got to the point where I cut two thirds of my service with them off completely.  If I could I would have cancelled it all totally, but I’m not quite willing to go without TV all together, and unfortunately, they have a monopoly on my address.  It took basically throwing a temper tantrum here on my blog to get anything at all done with them.

Apple & AT&T — Apple should be very, very ashamed to be listed side by side with AT&T.  However they’re the ones that went into an agreement with them for providing the iPhone, so they’re equally accountable.  Every one of us where I work has an iPhone.  All of us have service issues.  At home (a rather well-populated area of a large city) it’s easy for me to slip into no service, unless I properly stand on my head, pat my stomache and juggle, it’s difficult for me to get a signal.  I commonly have lesser signal if one at all then my friends do from other providers.  “More bars in more places” ?  There’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one.

Apple — Yep, once again, it’s time to list them.  MobileMe … what a crock.  It’s been nothing but trouble since they launched it.  I signed up for a trial account and was never able to login to the web interface for it.  It kept telling me invalid username or password … despite the fact that I could connect to my iDisk and IMAP into my email account (meaning I had the correct username and password).  Their email support has yet to respond to my 3 emails, and I’ve only been able to catch them on chat once.  They’ve now billed my credit card for roughly $115 … for those of you unaware, that’s not even the correct price for the MobileMe service.  They no longer have the email form up on their support website.  There’s only a link for Chat support, and it’s only available during certain hours.  Apple is supposed to be better then this.  They’re supposed to be one of those companies that represents “all I want.”

Verizon — /sigh.  They provide my DSL service.  No HUGE complaints here, although I am rather upset with the fact they’ve lied to me.  Upon the time of my first bill, I received an email saying they’d tried to charge my credit card on file and were unable to and they wanted me to login to make a payment.  The credit card is a debit card to one of my checking accounts.  It had plenty of money.  I figured maybe they had messed up when recording my credit card information during sign up, so I logged into my account and made a one time payment.  The next morning I received an email from my bank saying they had charged my card (the original one) for the exact same amount.  They double-billed me.  I called in … and of course I got India.  They asked me to fax in proof of payment for the one time payment, which I did immediately.  They told me I would receive a refund to my credit card.  I’ve never received the credit they promised.  I also confirmed with them that I wanted a refund to my credit card, not a credit to my account.  They confirmed this for me.  Guess what’s happened?  They put a credit on my account.  So instead of me getting to earn interest on the money, they’re getting to.  I can’t seem to convince anyone in India why I find this to be a problem.  My bank won’t do anything for me because they said technically I gave them permission to charge my account.  There’s a Verizon office down the street from me, but at this exact moment, I don’t have it in me to walk in and have a come-to-<insert deity here> talk with them in person.

I just don’t understand why companies have such a hard time with customer service.  They’re constantly getting away with things that if I did at my job, would result in immediate termination.

How did we get here?

Corporations are acting like they can just steamroll their bread-and-butter, the consumers.

They want access to do EFT’s directly from our bank accounts.  Ok, if they let me EFT their account, I’ll consider allowing them to do it to my account.

They are able to threaten our “permanent record” (AKA credit report) for not paying them … even if they aren’t providing their service as promised.  Tell you what, I’ll consider that fair if I can report them for not providing services as promised and have it make a financial impact on their business for up to 7 years.

If there’s a problem with our account, they can and will call us at all hours of the day or night.  Yet if we need something from them we need to call Mon-Fri between 9a-5p, or talk to someone who’s English is barely a second language.

Why are they supposed to be trustworthy with our financial information, but the idea of a consumer having their service providers financial information would be considered crazy-talk in our current paradigm.  In my opinion, it is obvious we need a paradigm shift.  The corporations have proven, crystal clear, that they cannot be trusted.

Again, how did we get here?  It’s absurd what we’re putting up with.

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Phone service changes

June 16, 2008

So I’ve decided to give Skype a good try-out after canceling my Comcast landline and so far I’m pretty happy with things. I’ve tried the service before, and it was satisfactory, but the costs on it are getting hard to turn away from now.

I’m not entirely sure why I’ve become so infatuated with saving money in every way possible, but I have, and one of the ways to do that is to go towards pay-as-you-go type services where it makes sense. Skype appears that it will cost me roughly $6/mo + $.02/minute. That’s really not too bad. If I get to where I’m spending over $2.95/mo in phone calls, I can sign up for a subscription for unlimited domestic calling. That means $9/mo for unlimited calling which isn’t too shabby.

After reading some reviews and whatnot I settled on the phone pictured, it’s the Netgear SPH200D. I was able to pick it up on-sale at Best Buy. It’s not a full-on WiFi VOIP phone, as it uses a base station (excluding it from being mobile), but it does perform well from my very limited testing so far. I’ll have to update if I think about it later after having had more of a chance to use the phone. So far I called my cell phone so that I could hear for myself the sound quality and I called my mom (she always gets to be the guinea pig for my new devices). The voicemail was clear. I called the phones directly and took turns holding one to my ear while speaking into the other. I could hear no abnormal hesitation between my speaking into one and being heard in the other. My testing partner (aka: Mom) said I sounded clear and she wasn’t hearing any hesitation between us conversing.

Of course there are downsides to using Skype, but I find them acceptable. For instance, I can’t dial 911 from it, or if the power goes out I can’t use it, or obviously if my internet service goes down, I can’t use it either. Actually, if I had a landline, the particular phone I chose can connect to that as well, and whenever you place a call, you can choose whether you want it to go out over your landline or over SkypeOut. I also have a cell phone to cover 911. Not perfect as, to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t display an address with Enhanced 911, but considering all the years I’ve gone with pretty much only a cell phone as my phone, I think that’s ok.

You might be asking why I’m even trying to have a landline if I’ve made the jump to solely using a cell phone for so long. Well, in my previous residence, I had a lot of trouble getting a signal on my cell phone, largely because of where my apartment was in the building. I was hoping that issue would be resolved once I moved, but that’s unfortunately not the case. I’m typically riding one signal bar on my iPhone with AT&T at home. It’s become quite frustrating really. But I’m finding ways to work around it. My family all calls me on my GrandCentral number now, and my friends are finally starting to switch over (you change your phonebook yet Jeremy? Hmm!? That’s right, I’m calling you out). This allows me to pick up on whatever phone happens to work best at the moment, whether that’s my office line, cell, or now my Skype line.

Anyhow, if you don’t have my GrandCentral number (the one that rings all my phones), get in touch with me so I can give it to you. The iPhone may be going away one day, meaning that number won’t be available anymore.

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More on Apple & the iPhone

July 7, 2007

Just wanted to comment on two blog posts/articles I just read. The first is from All Things Digital and can be found here. Basically the article is a somewhat condemning look at the iPhone. He comments a lot about traveling with the iPhone internationally and also about the keyboard, etc. Some of the stuff he talks about I don’t really know enough about to attempt a rebuttal, but a fair amount of it is either inaccurate or lacking information to the point that it makes me wonder if I can trust what he says on the things I don’t know much about. Two quick examples are him giving the keyboard a hard time in portrait mode. This is pretty subjective, so I’d urge anyone to try it for themselves. I also have found that mine is truly getting better as time goes on, so I wonder how much time he really spent with the phone and how actively he used it. Another part is he leads the reader to believe that when you need the battery replaced, you will have to go without a phone for a few days while Apple replaces it, however, they already have a policy in place that says they will supply you with a loaner iPhone while your battery gets replaced (the loaner will take your SIM card and will sync up all your information as soon as you sync with iTunes).

Now, if you want to give them a hard time about something, I would jump over to this post from Robert Scoble about Apple’s lack of presence at the iPhone developers conference. I think that Scoble is right on in his assessment. It’s amazing that the developers voluntarily organized and are participating in this conference, with no support or even presence from Apple. Apple is losing in two very big ways on this one. The first of which, as Scoble mentions, is that the developers are having to do all of the leg work. They obviously want to build for the platform and help it succeed, but as in 1989, Apple is doing nothing to assist them. The second part they’re missing out on, which Scoble doesn’t touch on, is that by them not participating the developers are going to do whatever they please, and Apple has no opportunity to help guide them in a consistent and unified direction.

The developers are going to find a way to do whatever they want. Apple is missing out. By making it this hard, there is going to be growing resentment in the developer community towards Apple, so as I see it one of two things will happen. Either the developers will strong-arm their way through and make the iPhone do what they want it to, completely bypassing Apple’s desires/wishes/vision for the product (thus destroying a lot of what people like about Apple), or a competitor will rise which makes development easy, and the developers will stop focusing on the iPhone and instead move to the product that doesn’t require them to fight in order to develop for it. Admittedly, it will be hard, and most likely take awhile for a competitor to hope to replace the iPhone, but if Apple thinks it’s not possible, they just need to look back at 1989.

I guess there is a third option, which is Apple deciding to release development tools for the iPhone and releasing a method to develop for it in other ways then just web and Ajax. I hope this happens, but as of right now, I see no signs of it going this route. For the record in case you don’t know me, I am a web developer that is familiar and comfortable with Ajax. To me, a web developer saying they need to do more, is a statement that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

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iPhone keyboard

July 5, 2007

The iPhone keyboard is growing on me slowly. I’m able to type with two thumbs in landscape mode and I’m pretty close to it in portrait mode as well. In fact, I’m typing this entry on my iPhone and its not that painful really. I certainly wouldn’t want to write a long entry on it but I can’t think of many mobile devices that I would want to do that on.

Earlier I commented on hoping that blogs and websites don’t start releasing special themes especially for the iPhone. I still agree with that for the most part, but I would like to add a little to the thought — web applications do need to try to offer special interfaces, at least for core functions. Like a good interface for adding a post to WordPress would be nice, and applications like meebo are definitely going to need to tweak their interface if they want to service iPhone users. The key problem in both of those examples is that the input fields are almost impossible to see when the keyboard comes up. Having to close the keyboard and re-center the screen just isn’t going to cut it. I don’t mean to single out these apps though, all web apps are going to have this issue for the most part, and it’s quite possible they and other apps will decide its not worth it to refactor their interface for the iPhone and other small mobile devices (although I imagine some  won’t be able to ignore it).

Unrelated to the keyboard, another item i just realized while writing this entry is also the inability to scroll within an element of a page (like the input area for writing a post in WP or the inability to scroll up into chat history on meebo but some of that is a shortcoming on the part of Safari on the iPhone).

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Ta-da List for iPhone

July 2, 2007

So, I don’t really keep it to myself that I’m not a fan of 37Signals.  However, they did just do something pretty cool.  They released Ta-da List for the iPhone.  One thing the iPhone doesn’t have is a to-do list.  It doesn’t import tasks from iCalendar either.  I do think this is a win-win of sorts.  37Signals released a special version of a fairly simple product that works well on the iPhone, and in exchange they hopefully get some users making use of their service both via the iPhone and through the web interface.  They did a good job of making the interface iPhone-ish.

Anyhow, good job 37Signals.

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Some further thoughts on the iPhone

July 1, 2007

This is a continuation of my review of the iPhone from earlier.

  • I was able to get an adapter to let my iPhone work with my current FM Transmitter setup in my car. It cost me $10. On the way home from the store I plugged it in and started playing music and it’s just as nice as using my real iPod to listen to music in my car. Then I navigated to the phone and made a phone call. This is very cool, and something I’ve wanted for awhile. Throughout the navigation to making the call, my music kept playing, then when I initiated the call, the music paused and I heard ringing through my car speakers. It basically turned my cars sound system into a speakerphone. So basically, the iPhone replaces those expensive bluetooth car phone kits that you can get which tie into your cars sound system (at least somewhat).
  • On a similar note as the above comment, the integration with the phone and the iPod continues when listening over the headphones. If a call comes in, the music pauses and there’s a microphone on the headphone wire, so you can start talking. You just give the microphone a little squeeze to answer the call, and another squeeze to end. If you’re just listening to music you also squeeze the mic to pause and restart the music. So simple, yet so smart.
  • It desperately needs iChat or some sort of AIM/GTalk/Etc. chat client. I know some folks that are complaining about the keyboard might find this idea horrible, but I wouldn’t be wanting to use it for long conversations, just enough to let me pop online and have a quick IM conversation with someone. You might be wondering why I can’t just do this with SMS, but believe it or not, I am sometimes in places that have WiFi but no cell signal (with how my apartment is situated in the building, my bedroom is one of these places).
  • It would be nice if there was at least some game on the device to kill time with. I liked BrickBreaker on my BlackBerry for this, and I usually put Tetris or something on most other phones I’ve owned. I think something like BrickBreaker would work on the iPhone too, you could just drag your finger back and forth to bounce the ball. The interface is already there for it.
  • The keyboard is nice, but I’m sticking behind what I said in my earlier post. If you’re proficient on a thumb-style keyboard, you’re going to be slower on the iPhone keyboard. I’ve become pretty fast with it, but in an Apple keyboard demo video, they show a guy do it with two thumbs and he flies through writing an email. So I opened notepad and for quite awhile just rambled on, typing out my thoughts, using two thumbs. It was dropping keypresses like crazy. It wasn’t an issue of it being innaccurate or me fat-fingering words, it just wouldn’t register some of my keypresses. So the software never even got the opportunity to try to correct my spelling (which it is actually VERY good at when I just type with my index finger). When using just my one finger, I’ve already gotten to where I rarely have to correct it, and I actually have faith in it correcting me. I might see a type-o I’ve made, but I’ll continue on spelling the word because 99% of the time, it’s going to realize what I meant to type and fix it for me.
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iPhone

June 30, 2007

iPhoneSo I purchased an iPhone yesterday. All things considered, I ended up pretty lucky in getting it. I was going by the AT&T store anyhow to meet someone that wanted to buy my Blackjack (which I decomissioned a little over a month ago). Anyhow, the line had started forming, and the store was closed until 6pm when the iPhone’s went on sale. I got there around 5:45 or so. So I decided to go ahead and wait in line since I needed to get in the store to get to the guy wanting to buy my Blackjack. I only had to wait in line for about 30 minutes total. When I got in, I took a quick look and decided to go ahead and purchase the 8GB model.

I’ve been playing with it ever since and for the most part, I am very pleased with it. I don’t quite buy into the whole “this is going to change the way everyone thinks about mobile phones.” Sorry, but it’s a VERY nice phone/ipod/browser in my opinion. I don’t think that we’re going to suddenly see a flurry of providers sending people home to activate their phones or anything like that. I was lucky in that my phone activated instantly, unlike some other reports I’ve read of people waiting for a few hours for activation (my guess is AT&T/Apple got swamped with activation requests).

Some of the features I’ll comment on:

  • Keyboard: It’s definitely nice, and a LOT better then I expected. I am able to comfortably use it for typing URL’s, SMS, and brief emails. So I am impressed … but … it is not going to replace physical “thumb” QWERTY keyboards. If you are proficient (and by proficient I mean you type with both thumbs and can look away from the keyboard without making massive mistakes) with a thumb keyboard, you will be slower at data entry on this. What they say about “trusting” it is true. You need to just type away and let it figure it out, it is extremely smart. But typing with one finger is just slower then going with both thumbs, no doubt about it.
  • Browser: This is definitely something that sets it aside from any other mobile device. Having a real browser on the phone is so nice. You can comfortably read websites like CNN, blogs, etc. I actually hope that bloggers/sites do NOT try to release special iPhone themes for their sites. It would be an injustice to the browser on the iPhone. I was out with friends last night and folks started having various side conversations and I started playing around with it and before I knew it, I had cleared out my unread items in Google Reader. It was completely comfortable to do. My eyes didn’t feel strained and navigation was nearly flawless.
  • Phone: It’s a pretty good phone. The sound quality is decent, getting the keypad up and working with it is easy enough. iTunes sync’s all of your contacts over from your Address Book on your Mac, so I was able to easily have all of my contacts available.
  • SMS: It uses the “conversation” style txt messaging, sort of like BlackBerry’s. So you can easily carry on txt conversations with multiple people and not get totally lost in the conversations (I txt a lot, so this is great to find out).
  • Google Maps: As many people have already said, this is quite possibly better then Google Maps itself. It is actually one of the applications I’ve been using to show off the iPhone to friends and none of them have not said “Wow” and left their jaw open after seeing it.
  • WiFi: It reliably picks up my secured home network, so in the apartment I can easily browse, taking advantage of my broadband speeds. If I’m out and it senses a network, it asks me if I’d like to join it instead of using EDGE.
  • EDGE: I really haven’t had problems with the speed. It’s not as fast as browsing at home on my computer over broadband, but I would not call it painful by any means. I wouldn’t have expected it to be as fast as my home computer browsing either.
  • Voicemail: This is really nice. When a voicemail is left for you, it evidently gets downloaded to your phone or something along those lines. You can just click listen and the voicemail instantly starts playing. There’s no need to dial in to voicemail.

Anyhow, I’ll try to do a follow up post after I’ve had some more time to play with it some more as I did with the Blackjack. I will mention a nitpick I just found out this morning however …

I went to get in my car, where I have a setup for an FM transmitter that I use with my regular iPod. It’s not one of the iTrip things that relies on sitting flush against the top of the iPod. My transmitter basically plugs in like a set of headphones would. I’m not sure if part of the plug is too fat to let the pin go far enough in or what, but regardless, I couldn’t get it to play music with my FM transmitter, instead it defaulted to playing with the iPhone’s built-in speaker, which is obviously unacceptable for listening to music in your car. So it looks like I will be looking for some other means of playing music in my car if I don’t want to carry my regular iPod.

Anyhow, that’s all for now. And yes, Pat, I know I’m a lamer.

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