Registered: Mar 2000
Location: Mundelein, Illinois, USA
Posts: 25

My Visor's digitizer failed. I was pleasantly surprised that the hold time for technical support and later for customer service was negligible, and my RMA was issued quickly and painlessly.

That was Tuesday. I still have no idea when my replacement unit will ship. I use my Visor constantly at work, and they still won't tell me when it will ship. I've asked on the phone and gotten different answers each time, and I've asked via email and gotten a response that had an unresponsive answer in it ("usually within seven working days").

I've been (until it stopped working) thrilled with my Visor, and I like it a lot better than the Palm units I had before. I'm really looking forward to the GPS module and the wireless Internet module. But I can't imagine that I'd ever give Handspring another dime after the way that they have treated me on this warranty issue.

When I cracked the screen on my PalmPilot Professional, 3Com had the replacement unit to me the next day. Why can't Handspring at least tell me when the darn thing will ship?

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Michael A. Atkinson
<[email protected]>

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 1571

Chaos:

All replacements are now being shipped within about 3 - 5 business days. I am surprise that Handspring CS didn't tell you that. Its possible that they might be backed up at the moment (ie no replacements to send out). Let us know when you receive it.

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: Mundelein, Illinois, USA
Posts: 25

I received my replacement yesterday. It seems fine.

While I'm not particularly pleased with five working days being required to receive my replacement unit, it's not totally unbearable. It's worse than 3Com/Palm, but it's understandable.

It really bothers me that I never knew when they were going to ship it until Friday. They said something different in each email and telephone call.

What's completely inexcusable is that I'm convinced that I would still be Visor-less with no knowledge of a delivery date if I hadn't kept up with the phone calls and with the email.

But what makes it absolutely certain that I will never do business with Handspring again is how they dealt with it. They would not let me speak to a supervisor when I asked, and when I emailed asking for a supervisor to call me (leaving my cellphone number) it never happened.

If Handspring cared about my business, they'd have called me back. If they had clue number one about how to deal with people, they wouldn't tell their staff that customers may not be connected to supervisors.


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Michael A. Atkinson
<[email protected]>

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: McLean, VA USA
Posts: 216

Chaos,

For what it's worth, and I am by NO means defending this business model, there are a lot of call centers that hve policies that prevent the operators from connecting a customer to a supervisor. My wife worked for one of the credit card division call centers for Capital One and they were NOT allowed to connect a customer to a supervisor. The most they could do was take the customer info and pass it on to a supervisor for them to call (which I believe they never did).

Personally, though, I am in aggreement that a customer should be allowed to speak directly to supervisors. That's what they get paid the big bucks for.



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Have Visor Will Travel!

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 1571

visor empowered:

I have to disagree with you. Contrary to popular belief, a call center's supervisor is not hired to take calls, that is what the agents were hired to do. A supervisors job is more administrative than anything else. If supervisors were to talk to every single customer that wants to speak to one, they would never get the work that they were hired to do, done. In chaos's case, I have no idea how a supervisor would give him a date hiw order is going to be shipped when an agent can't. I figure if the supervisor had a date for him then the agent would have the date as well.

Just my 2 cents.

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: Mundelein, Illinois, USA
Posts: 25

I used to run a support organization. Anybody who was asked for a supervisor had exactly two things they could say:

"Please hold a moment, let me see if s/he is in."

"I'm sorry, s/he isn't in right now. My supervisor's name is <name>, his/her extension is X, and may I take a message for him/her?"

I had several legitimate complaints with Handspring, not least among them that I was being given the runaround on a ship date.

You might think it's okay to be told that company policy forbids the agent from transferring you to a supervisor, and you might think it's okay to receive no reply when you ask one to call you in email. I do not. I will not do business with any company that won't let me escalate a problem when a problem presents itself.

No company is without problems. But how a company deals with its problems is another matter. If, as a customer, I'm not important enough to speak to somebody about the problem I have, then I'll bring my business elsewhere.

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Michael A. Atkinson
<[email protected]>

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: McLean, VA USA
Posts: 216

yardie,

I was speaking about call centers in general, not Handspring specifically. And yes there are things that a supervisor can do that agents cannot. Such as remove interest/penalty charges, approve credit limit increases, etc. It depends on the company. Again, I restate that I am not defending that type business model.

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Have Visor Will Travel!