Registered: Sep 1999
Location:
Posts: 21

Speaking about good customer service... my cousin bought a DELL laptop early this past summer. He was extrememly satisfied with product... but it started to really annoy him that there was one defect pixel. Now most people would say... that's normal... and can't really do anything about it. And it is. But you know, it was just in one of those places that's just too much... and it died a white pixel instead of black.

So... he called customer service... didn't know what to be expecting. What did they do? They OVERNIGHTED a BRAND NEW laptop computer to him via FedEX, and just asked him to call FedEX when he was ready to have the other one picked up and sent back at his convenience.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Plantersville, TX, USA
Posts: 109

I cannot tell you how good Dell has been to me... I have called customer servive for tech support at least 20 times since I got the machine and never had to wait more than 10 min for a friendly techie to walk me through whatever it was I messed up...

While cleaning my mouse, I botched it... they mailed me a new one, no questions asked...

When lighting struck my DirecPC satellite (don't get me started on Hughes support... laugh), they sent a tech to my house to do what they could...which was replace the motherboard and components even though this wasn't under warranty...

Anyway, being that this is in the General Visor category... I do think that the Customer Service at Handspring -is- getting better...

One CSR named Kahi (pronounced Kay-eye) was very courteous to me when I called last night. The person that took my order (Canadian Accent) had gotten my info down all wrong (or the person that entered it might have) and well Kahi checked to make sure it wasn't himself that took the order in the first place because he 'understood my frustration'...

He also told me it isn't even funny the pile of 'fix orders' they have but that he and many others have worked super-long hours to try and get a hold on this thing and his personal opinion was that Handspring did not anticipate the amount of orders when choosing a call center (and added that the number of orders as opposed to what they were estimating was -phenominal-)

Zen

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 84

Zen,

I actually work in the same building as the DirectPC guys...aswell as the DirectTV people. Just out of curiosity how much do you pay per month for DPC and how fast is the connection?

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Pittsford,NY,USA
Posts: 223

The interesting thing about this story is that when Dell first started, they had a horrible reputation for service. The original company name when Michael Dell started the company was "PCs Limited" (or something like that) and I can remember a bunch of Compuserve users driving to the HQ just to get some satisfaction for all the problems. Needless to say, Dell has learned their lesson and now has a very good reputation for service.

Will Handspring be able to turn there reputation around? Time will tell. The product is great, hopefully they will also get a handle on the Sales/Support/Service part.


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-Eric
VisorCentral Staff