Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 48

Below is the text of Ed Colligan's post to the PC Mag's Second Look at the Visor. Why didn't they/him see it fit to send this to the VisorCentral site??? We have had the same exact gripe forever but ... !



Ed Colligan: Acknowledgement from Handspring
10.23.1999

On behalf of Handspring I'd like to acknowledge the problems we are having with our ordering process and address the issues some of you have faced in your attempts to place orders and check the status of your shipments. While the vast majority of our orders have been delivered without incident, we are aware of and take full responsibility for the frustrations our customers are experiencing, and we are one hundred percent focused on rectifying the situation.

We realize that some of you have experienced long hold times, missing confirmations and long waiting periods for your Visor shipments. We have more than doubled our customer service staff to help eliminate hold times, improve response time to customer e-mails and prevent disconnects in the hold queue. If we need to add more support representatives, we will. Additional training is under way to see that our representatives are equipped with correct and consistent answers to your questions.

There have been some cases where credit cards were authorized (not charged) for multiple orders when only a single order was placed. All such authorizations have been identified and will be immediately corrected. We are also rearchitecting our web store to handle greater volume. We hope to get this back up soon to provide a quality browsing and shopping experience.

Every member of our organization is aware of these issues and we realize the importance of building customer loyalty through quality products, service and support. It is our goal to build an excellent customer service organization and we have quite honestly failed to achieve this with our current rollout. We recognize the challenge we're faced with to establish a new level of service and we plan to meet that challenge with a thorough commitment to serving the needs of our customers.

We will strive to deliver great improvements in the coming weeks. In the meantime we thank you for your patience, enthusiasm and continued support for Handspring.

Ed Colligan
Vice President, Marketing and Sales
Handspring, Inc.


The link is http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/secondlooks/index.html

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 121

Actually Ed why do you still have a job?

Nearly 100% (OK 50%) of early orders were screwed up in some way or another, and people *have* been over*charged* on their credit cards. So stop BSing us!

Why aren't you at least upgrading us to express shipping for those early orders that were hosed up? I got a "Sure we can do that for just a few more dollars from your pocket to ours."

And since you know how lame the stylus is, why not toss a decent one or two in with each screwed up order?

Since you didn't offer it up front without each one of us having to beg seperately, I suggest everyone call the 888 number once again and voice their request. They are asking for their nightmare to continue one customer at a time. Let's give it to them.

[This message has been edited by reganc (edited 10-24-1999).]

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Rio Rancho, NM, USA
Posts: 129

Wait a minute, folks!

Where is the estimate of 100% of the orders being screwed up coming from. With the exception of the tax issue, I don't think that we're even close to 100% of the phone orders being screwed up.

My orders were 1000 and 1003. I ordered on 9/15, so I think that we can guess-timate that HS received 1000 orders a day (which I think is low). If the population of VC is set to an imaginary high of 1000, I don't think we represent more then 1% of the population of Visor orderers.

While I was part of the 'Cmon, Handspring, talk to us!' group, I have no complaints about my order. It was delivered on-time. Heck, the worst part of the process is that HS looked to be so open to customers at the beginning that we ASSUMED that we could get immediate responses from them. If they had looked a little less professional on their website, I don't think folks would have been half as rabid.

Now, I emphathize with those folks who have had genuine problems. The overbilling, lost orders, and inability to check online for order status is a serious PIA. Heck, I've got a second order that I placed online that I can't change because the phone CSR's can't get access to it.

Has HS screwed up? YES
Has HS screwed up BADLY? Yep
Has HS screwed up to the point that we deserve stuff? Not in my opinion.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 121

OK 100% was an exaggeration, but the chance that you call and find your order is screwed up in one way or another is about 50/50. It does seem that even most people who got their Visors already are fighting a standard mysterious credit card overcharge of $20 or more.

I would think there should be many more people posting that they called and their order was at least listed correctly in the database even if the order wasn't shipped yet

Handspring should've posted a message on their front page right after their order database crashed saying: "We are experiencing technical problems with orders and are not taking any new orders until Nov 1st since that is the date of projected availability. Those who placed orders by phone on these dates _______ please call us to ensure your order is correct."

Failure to do this when they knew there were serious problems could leave them liable to a class action suit.

The official Handspring line was that they couldn't even sent e-mail messages to those on their list because it would have drained resources from getting the problem fixed. The reality is that it *wouldn't* have drained resources, or else just would have taken resources away from October order-taking.

They made a conscious decision to take and ship October orders before getting September orders strait. There is now a backlog and shortage for those Sept orders that have been found and corrected. Those early orders are now on their second phase of "wait and see."

This is not an error. This was their full intention. In order to get the most October sales they could despite their initial failures they overloaded the call center. It has led to a second forseeable failure of immense proportions.

Even as this latest fiasco hits them their "solution" is to continue to take orders (toll-free), and make early customers spend money on desperate calls that are repeatedly disconnected because operators are taking new orders. And to top it off they keep shipping Oct orders, leading to color Visor shortages for September customers.

[This message has been edited by reganc (edited 10-24-1999).]