The Vent and Rant Thread

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by dsvick

I'm still not buying a Kindle though

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by dsvick

I'm sure there are a few of us. Let us know where you'll be and we'll come get you in a week if we dont hear from you!! We'll trebuchet ourselves over.

It sucks that you have to go. How long do you expect it to last? Will this be the only time? Who's watching the kids?


All of that is true, but Amazon could easily have just said "nope sorry". Judging by the reaction here it looks like most people expected that, so when a company exceeds your expectations I think they deserve a pat on the back. I'm still not buying a Kindle though

I'm hoping to be home the 3rd or 4th of September. same set up as usual for the furkids *sigh*

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I'm hoping to be home the 3rd or 4th of September. same set up as usual for the furkids *sigh*

There goes your harness training again!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I would have thought that this was accidental damage, not normal usage.
According to Amazon's limited one-year warranty that comes with each device ....

Except that when the Kindle first came out, they had a video of it being dropped from about 3 feet (iirc) and it still working. So, you would expect it to survive being dropped off a desk.

I'm not sure if they are using the promo vid any more though.

BOb

[EowynCarter]

Is support from other company that bad, that we go : whooo ! when a company acts in a normal way ?

Seriously, if a devices broke every time they fall off a desk... None would last long, really.

Then if you drop you kindle from second floor and it break, yeah, ok.... there is "accident" and "accident". I expect a minimum solidity from my devices.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

There goes your harness training again!

and a bunch of other stuff *sob*

[recluse]

Like being the only one here who talks to recluse like he is a real human being.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by recluse

Like being the only one here who talks to recluse like he is a real human being.

Hmmm.....referring to oneself in the third party voice...hmm..

[recluse]

Shouldn't you be busy painting an Easter bonnet for your avatar, Kenny?

[kennyc]

Ah-ha, trying to change the topic....he's not fooling anyone.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Is support from other company that bad, that we go : whooo ! when a company acts in a normal way ?

As a general rule, yes. However,

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Seriously, if a devices broke every time they fall off a desk... None would last long, really.

Then if you drop you kindle from second floor and it break, yeah, ok.... there is "accident" and "accident". I expect a minimum solidity from my devices.

I seem to remember a time where we took care to make sure things didn't fall off of desks unless we could afford to replace them. We're now in a world of disposable technology and companies know it...I had a little Timex Sinclair 1000 computer when I was a kid; didn't do much with its 2K of memory compared to today of course but I treated it like it would explode if I dropped it. And if anything happened to the family Atari 2600, there would have been hell to pay. Today, people might as well throw their cell phones out a car window for all they care about them. I sometimes even give Shel grief about taking better care of things, parroting my parents' famous "we're not made of money" line.

Manufacturers brought prices down by offshoring, and they know that if you wanted something badly enough in the first place, you'll be back for another one if something happens to the first one so, like every other manufacturing concern, they have no vested interest in making their products bulletproof.

I'm sorry Tom's Kindle died, and equally happy Amazon offered to replace it, but yes, that is what I would call "above and beyond". In addition, does Amazon require the original to be sent back? If so, they will most likely fix it and sell it as refurbished, so don't look for any altruism there.

[WT Sharpe]

My first K2 survived quite a bit of knocks, including being dropped on a cement floor and being accidentally slung about 20 feet across an asphalt parking lot before finally being killed off with a drop to the floor. That time, I didn't contact Amazon because of all the scars it had sustained at my clumsy hand, but simple ordered a new one.

And, yes, after the new one arrives, they want the old one back. I still consider their response to be above and beyond, especially since I made it clear in both an e-mail and a verbal conversation that it had fallen from a desk.

Amazon customer service rocks!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

Manufacturers brought prices down by offshoring, and they know that if you wanted something badly enough in the first place, you'll be back for another one if something happens to the first one so, like every other manufacturing concern, they have no vested interest in making their products bulletproof.

Offshoring isn't the problem. Pretty much everything is offshored these days. Everyone wants to reduce costs, so manufacturing moves to where it can be done cheaper.

Merely having devices made offshore doesn't mean poor quality. The Asian manufacturers are perfectly capable of building quality devices. The problem is that quality costs, and people don't want to pay for it.

If your purchase decision is ultimately determined by lowest price, well, you get what you pay for...

I'm sorry Tom's Kindle died, and equally happy Amazon offered to replace it, but yes, that is what I would call "above and beyond". In addition, does Amazon require the original to be sent back? If so, they will most likely fix it and sell it as refurbished, so don't look for any altruism there.

Amazon is customer centric. They're a catalog retailer. In any business, 80% of your incremental revenue comes from doing more business with your existing customers, so it behooves you to keep your customers happy so they'll come back. This is especially critical in retail, where the customer has lots of choices about where to buy.

So no surprise Amazon is doing something like replacing a failing Kindle. It keeps a customer happy, and is good PR for them, as the happy customer is likely to tell his friends about the good service, and maybe some of them who aren't Amazon customers will become one.

For Amazon, this is all enlightened self interest.
______
Dennis

[WT Sharpe]

All I know is I haven't been so pleased with a company's customer service since the days when CompUSA was still a brick and morter store. I once bought a Sidekick phone from them along with the extended service agreement (which I normally avoid). Within a month, I returned to the store with an obviously severely damaged phone. When the man at the service counter asked what happened, I told him, "The instructions didn't mention that you weren't suppose to park them under forktrucks. It dropped out of my pocket and it was run over by one." The customer rep laughed, and replaced the unit with no further questions at no charge.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Offshoring isn't the problem. Pretty much everything is offshored these days. Everyone wants to reduce costs, so manufacturing moves to where it can be done cheaper.

Merely having devices made offshore doesn't mean poor quality. The Asian manufacturers are perfectly capable of building quality devices. The problem is that quality costs, and people don't want to pay for it.

No no no, I'm sorry if you (or anyone else) got the impression that this was a protectionist rant because that's not what I meant. Of course everything is offshored these days, it's the only way to stay competitive price-wise (I expect a backlash any minute now but that's a story for another day). Prices still came down in the tech field pretty much across the board as a result of China getting the manufacturing aspect of the business; these same gadgets we as a society have started taking for granted would have cost a mint before offshoring became the rule and not the exception (and might have stayed that way depending on precisely where the offshoring ended up). My dad had a cell phone in the family car (back when cell phones couldn't leave the car) when he was a rep for a long-defunct company in the mid-'80s and costs were sky-high, in the thousands of US$. Even as recently as a few years ago, cell phone carriers wanted hundreds of dollars for a deposit unless you had a credit rating north of 700. Then of course offshoring, economies of scale, blah-de-blah-blah, we all know how the rest goes. Prices came down and that explains the majority of the personal-device market proliferation; we don't have a squillion cell phones in the U.S. because they built more but because they cost the consumer less (at least up-front). As a result of prices coming down, however, demand has come up, and production has ramped up accordingly. Probability dictates that there will be more manufacturing problems as a result but you're right: the public won't tolerate a higher price unless they get what they perceive to be a better deal. That better deal is usually an order of magnitude more than the increase in price would reflect, which brings me back to my original point: We expect the retailer/manufacturer to be liable for everything today, even if we do it. If you and I each buy the same hard drive and mine dies right after the warranty runs out, does that mean the retailer/manufacturer is at fault? If that's the case, I see capitalism taking a big hit in courtrooms all over the country. Sure, it's nice when a company takes one for the team and give you a new one, but that's up to the retailer; if you've already gotten what you paid for, you don't get to expect a do-over.

The problem isn't always the product; many times, it's us.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If your purchase decision is ultimately determined by lowest price, well, you get what you pay for...

Everyone has a price. If Brand X is slightly more than Brand Y but the difference is in product name only, we'll consider Brand X. If it's twice as high, probably not. Furthermore, it all hinges on what we as individuals perceive as necessity versus discretionary, or as I like to say: Need a car, want a Corvette. Mac desktops are a good example: Somewhere between 10% - 15% of the desktop market thought they were paying for something better, and technically they may have been right, but were they "right" enough to justify a 50% price difference? The hardware is the same, the OS is mostly open-source. You and I can do (and have done) that for not only less than an Apple but less than anything at Wal-Mart. We got more (to us, anyway) but paid less. So no, it should never be just about price, unless price is the only difference.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Amazon is customer centric. They're a catalog retailer. In any business, 80% of your incremental revenue comes from doing more business with your existing customers, so it behooves you to keep your customers happy so they'll come back. This is especially critical in retail, where the customer has lots of choices about where to buy.

So no surprise Amazon is doing something like replacing a failing Kindle. It keeps a customer happy, and is good PR for them, as the happy customer is likely to tell his friends about the good service, and maybe some of them who aren't Amazon customers will become one.

For Amazon, this is all enlightened self interest.

Completely agreed. In addition, like I said they'll most likely get the defective Kindle back, fix it, and sell it as a refurb, which would be something like a 90% profit margin.