Customer Service is a Zombieland

I haven't blogged in a LONG time. I've been considering embedding a Blogger account in the site, and also redoing the look and feel but haven't had time.

Things that have happened since the last time I blogged. Well, I'm married. Thanks to eHarmony I met a great girl. We honeymooned in the Western Caribbean, awesome time on a Carnival Cruise on Carnival Valor. We were supposed to go on a Mexican Riviera cruise, but the swine flu put a damper on that when they rerouted Carnival Splendor to Canada (we wanted Sun and Fun!). Carnival did a great job switching us over and their customer service was awesome.

Since then though I've had some customer service experiences which have been nightmares. Things which just won't go away. It's like Zombieland in customer service at some places it seems.

Number 1. American Airlines

They promised me vouchers for the flights to LA we couldn't use due to the changes to our honeymoon related to the swine flu. Well, been six months, I've called back over and over and they haven't helped. I spoke to someone at corporate who seemed competent, and promised to email them to me but they never arrived, and weren't blocked by any Spam filters. Further inquiries, no response, no help. In short, American Airlines doesn't care about their customers, or at least me as a customer.

Number 2. Verizon Wireless

For six months I've been dealing with the fallout from a rep in May telling me they wouldn't charge me an ETF (early termination fee) if I left early. In July when I decided to leave, they told me the rep had misled me, but they would make it right and waive the fee. For three months now they have billed it to me, I call, they correct it, then they re bill me. Each rep is different, some are helpful, some are neutral, but the issue never gets resolved. I get angry, go through stress and anxiety, and they just don't seem to care. Every time they tell me not to worry, it's taken care of and I won't be billed again, I get billed again. There seems to be no way to resolve the issue in a manner which is satisfactory, it's like nobody there cares as well. It's like they don't want there to even be the possibility I might want to be their customer again in the future.

I'm not sure what is happening to customer service in this country. It used to be that the customer was always right, but these days the customer is always wrong. The customer isn't appreciated, the customer is reviled almost. To me, as a customer, it is very sad to see things grow so dim and dire. With the economy in such sad shape, you'd think companies would be working hard to impress and make their customers happy. But it seems every store I go into is short staffed, not anyone to help, or there are only two registers open (Wal-mart) and 8 carts in each line, or equipment is broken (Valero gas pumps anyone?), or something, or something.

Zombieland

There are two places I've been that haven't been that way. One is O'Reilly's Auto parts can you say service? Fast? for an oil filter and oil so I could service one of our vehicles. The other, Regal Cinemas Breckenridge, great customer service and staff, and the funniest movie I've seen in years. Zombieland. That movie has me thinking that Zombie movies appeal to everyone so much because there are no bills to pay, no customer service to deal with. Yeah, you gotta survive the zombies, but it's a self-service world, the customer is always right, and even if the zombies catch you they don't ever charge you an ETF.

Posting in the wind...

I haven't posted an entry in a while. This will be SHORT.

• Considering redoing the blog, new template, focusing on my art and perhaps selling drawings, paintings, etc... if I decide to.
• Am wanting to trade my kayaks for an aluminum alloy canoe
• Still working on getting the garden ready for spring
• Love the warm weather we've been having
• Watching gas prices stabilize as the economy tanks
• Depressed by all the layoffs in Arkansas by Target, Walmart, Alltel, Molex, etc... you name it, it's very sad to see jobs leaving the area so quickly and so many of my friends being out of work
• Deleted my MySpace profile, focusing on Facebook for Social and LinkedIn for professional
• Frankly got tired of the lame layouts on MySpace, and like the consistent interface on Facebook more
• Filed my taxes and got my refunds back already

That's about it. I'll try and post more often, these lulls seem to happen when I get super busy, and that's how things have been for the last few months.

Technology = Fail!

I might as well rant some more about technology issues.

• Thingamablog freaked out on me, I spent 10 minutes trying to publish a blog entry. Had to reboot my PC to get it to work today.
• Bulleting in Thingamablog is also acting wonky tonight!
• A friend's home PC blew up, and I had to walk them through on the phone how to fix their bios settings for it to work.
• Cell phone issues (already covered) - I have to point out though, that from my past knowledge of the cell industry Text Messaging is unreliable. A call is better really. Why? They use excess bandwidth and capacity to deliver text messages (cell providers). If the network is full, or there is a bottleneck the voice calls typically get routed and text messaging gets the short end of the stick.
• Pidgin, it's an Open Source IM client. Well, looks like Yahoo changed something, because it doesn't work with Yahoo IM anymore. I updated it, but no luck. So I downloaded YIM, and it was a good thing I did the expert install because it planned to SPAM my machine something fierce. Replace Google as my search choice, add toolbars to my browsers, that kind of stuff. I hope the Pidgin development team releases a patch soon.
• The Vulcan has some sort of SLOW leak at the rear drive shaft. So I gotta take it in and have it serviced I think, and have that fixed.
• The truck is due for a oil, V-belt, and transmission fluid change.
• Oh a bright note, I noticed my Chickens and Hens are actually spreading through their flowerbed. But then again, they don't run on electricity or gasoline do they?

mrbun.com is NOT for sale

I've owned the domain mrbun.com since 1997. I originally registered it for a comic strip, and as a personal website. It's been a place to post my art, to post a journal, photos for friends, images for e-bay, photoshop entries for fark.com, etc... It's my personal website, and one I am quite attached to.

Imagine my shock today when I get an e-mail from rbtech.biz which appears to be a company which does website design in South East Asia. They sent me a message asking me to sell them my domain. They didn't e-mail me using my feedback form, they e-mailed me directly with the form's address. Normally I delete any messages which show up that bypass the form (my spam filter does it by default anyway). I am assuming their client, which appears to be a bakery in Malaysia, is searching for a domain.

Anyway, the message is below, along with my response.

Windy City Reflections

The last time I traveled for work was Dallas, Texas for MapInfo training earlier this year. At the time I was fairly miserable traveling alone. The class was very small, only 3 people (including myself) and the other two students were local. That left me with nobody to hang out with or go out with, and I thought of looking up or contacting my friend Jason in Dallas, but I didn't get around to it. I was lonely because I missed Marie terribly, I'd always hated being away from her because I loved her so much.

This last week I went to Chicago, Illinois for a Web Content Management Conference. It was snowing when the plane landed at Chicago, Midway and I took the CTA Orange Line to State/Lake. I walked to my hotel for a half mile (across the river) in the snow. I checked in, dried off, and went to dinner and to Macy's and bought some christmas ornaments. The next day I went to the conference. It was very good, all about Wiki's, Blogs, Social networking and how they can be used internally and externally in a corporate environment. I went out to dinner with a friend from the conference, Dan, and then we went to Hooter's for a couple of beers and to the ESPN Zone for a short time. I flew out the next day, the skies were clear.

This time I didn't have anyone to miss, anyone back home waiting for me to hug me when I got off the plane. It was a lot different than ever before. When I went to Disney earlier this year, it made me sad. This time, I was just null, there wasn't any sadness nor any happiness about it. It was just life.

I bought a book for my trip, The Book of Lost Things. It's very good, I highly recommend it. I finished it yesterday (Sorry Courtney!).

Test

My webhost (Canaca.com) upgraded me to a new server today for free... This is a test!

Stylesheet

I changed the stylesheet for the site a bit, to make the fonts and layout more consistent between IE and Mozilla.

Fixing up the Blog

Okay, it took some massaging... but I FINALLY got the Thingamablog configured the way I want it.

I thought it was great initially, and when I tested it with Firefox it looked great.

Since I don't use IE, I never tested it with that. Well, I check the page and it didn't look good with IE at all.

So I spent about an hour or two recoding some things to show things the way I wanted it.

mrbun.com

Well, as anyone who read recent entries knows my life has gone through a lot of low spots this year.

In order to be able to post more often, and update the site more often I have finally switched to using Thingamablog. This takes my site in a different direction and will make it easier to maintain.

I've kept the original header and look and feel for consistency since the original site is now just a link off the main header menu. I'm keeping the old site for archival purposes as some of my entries about my bikes have proven to be useful to fellow motorcyclists... and I do not want to try and erase the past because Marie decided she wanted to be single and we went through a divorce this year.

She and I agreed to remain friends, and we still are. It's still hard for me to look back at photos, think about past memories, and know that there won't be anymore made with her and that our lives as husband and wife are over.

I've moved on, and accept it as reality and know that there will be more memories and that life goes on.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be posting more often here.

You can also check out some blog entries on myspace.com. I have a page there at http://myspace.com/misterbun

Blogware Testing

This is a test entry using Thingamablog. Disregard! :-)

If you're looking for the Old Site please use the Site Archive link from the header menu.