If I am going to be involved in an online store I want to make certain that it doesn’t suck in any way. In fact I want to have happier customers than all the other vendors. So here is your opportunity to rant about poor shopping experiences either online or offline. The scope is wide open, moan about anything, store layout, product information, pricing, customer service, support, returns, product quality, delivery times etc.
This isn’t just about your experience with the webbook from Carphone Warehouse (in fact I would rather steer clear of that subject) it covers any laptop purchase, and any online purchase (laptop or otherwise).
I will do a followup post capturing all the really great ideas you have seen, or would like to see, but for now I want a stream of vitriol about things bad vendors do that good vendors should avoid.
So far, I have been quite fortunate with online purchases, but I have had one bad experience on eBay when a seller did not send the goods and would not reply to emails. (PayPal refunded my money.) I also had a bad time with a trader on Amazon marketplace who sold faulty goods and then wrongly denied all responsibility under trading standards law. (In that case, the manufacturer resolved the problem.)
I have also had some frustrating arguments with courier companies who will only deliver to my home address and who insist on making repeated attempts to deliver to my house even after being told that there would be nobody in. One firm refused to deliver to my office, and would not transfer the parcel to their local depot (a mile from my house) so I could collect it. (I had to drive miles to another depot to get the parcel.)
Poor service and bad after-sales service would always stop me dealing again with the company concerned.
Just to explain the point about poor service above – I rang an IT company for advice before buying, and left a voicemail message (the “helpline” was permanently on answerphone). My call was not returned (not even to say “sorry we can’t help”) so they lost a good sale.
I also bought an expensive pair of earphones for my iPod, and had a query about them after buying. I sent an email to the manufacturer – again no reply (not even to say “sorry we don’t have any information about this”).
To summaries, my experience of bad vendors is that they don’t reply to genuine enquiries, they don’t accept responsibility for after-sales problems and they use unhelpful courier services.
I hope I don’t sound like a serial complainer – as indicated in the post above, most suppliers have been great to deal with, and I’ll give some details in the follow-up post that you have promised.
I think it’s fairly safe to say that Alan is covering webbook after sales support very well already! Lol.
He is and I doubt anyone would fault it, but will the customers who buy the webbook through said website be sent here for aftercare?
Being in the front line so to speak (I’m a CPW Branch Manager), I’ve had a lot of experience in all areas of the webbook, from trying to educate my colleagues to use Ubuntu, to the customers, even to myself!! And then to the problems and aftercare, which having limited knowledge in the first place was below par (speaking as a company average, and from my opinion).
From what i’ve learned in sales the best method of keeping a customer happy is simple:
1) Find out what the customer NEEDS, not always just what they want, then present them with the full picture (warts and all) and help the customer make an informed decision. In terms of selling the webbook through a website, I think there should also be something around the OS on there as Ubuntu makes the webbook, so epople need to know about it, and in great detail.
2) Aftercare will determine if they buy your product again, so needs to be better than the original sale in most cases. But diverting people to a website for their own lessons won’t please many “average” customer who “work 9-5 and then have 2 kids a dog and a horse”. etc… The phone support also needs to be knowledgable, patient, take the Geek appraoch in teaching poeple “how to use” and not simply fix and finally be Uk based.
Keeping someone happy with something their not used to is hard, and people are impatient from our fast lifestyle and reluctance to learn something new..
DIGRESSION: URGENT QUERY RE SECURITY UPDATES
Hi Alan (and everyone)
Apologies for posting another query about Automatic Updates under this heading, but I would be very grateful for some advice! In some documentation about Ubuntu Repositories which I read the other day, it mentioned the importance of Security Updates. I happened to notice that there was no tick in the field marked ‘Important Security Updates’ on my webbook (in System > Admin > Software Sources > Updates), only in the field ‘Recommended Updates’. So this evening – after a few days away from my webbook – the first thing I did was to put a tick in that box. I then ran ’sudo apt-get update’ and immediately afterwards a a red downward arrow with a white exclamation mark appeared instead of the usual orange sun. It says there are 29 updates to install, but I am wary of doing so until I am sure that I am doing the right thing. Can anyone advise?
That checkbox should be ticked I think. For what its worth I have a red arrow at the moment on my laptop, I just kicked off the update. Updates are almost always a good thing so the more the merrier, especially security updates.
In a word – Dell.
There website is stupidly complex, and seems to change my order every time, so i have to go back and change it back.
When I want to buy a laptop, i want a nice simple layout, with a clear price (including delivery etc)
if i want to make changes it should be easy to do, but it should come with a decent default spec.
Sorry about the rant – i’ll cool off now
Phil
I have it ticked, and also have a white arrow and exclamation mark type-thing in my taskbar.
But, tonight, my webbook is being naughty:
E: Could not get lock /var/cache/apt/archives/lock – open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the download directory
If somebody could be so kind as to translate that first line into human, I’d be most grateful!
eBuyer are one of the worst companies I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. Although the have a good range of products, good prices and delivery terms, their customer service absolutely sucks. I have never been able to talk to a real person. They go out of their way to hide behind electronic, asynchronous messaging systems. There are no phone numbers or even email details available, and only a postal address.
I do not use them any more at all. Trying to get a query answered is just a nightmare and ends up making me more annoyed just out of frustration. When it works they are OK, but when there is an issue, any issue, it is painful in the extreme.
Mr Angry.
Re DIGRESSION: SECURITY UPDATES
Thanks for your prompt reply, Alan.
There does seem to be some very contradictory information out there about Ubuntu Security Updates. In the community documentation about Repositories, it says:
“Important Security Updates (hardy-security)”. Patches for security vulnerabilities in Ubuntu packages. They are managed by the Ubuntu Security Team and are designed to change the behavior of the package as little as possible — in fact, the minimum required to resolve the security problem. As a result, they tend to be very low-risk to apply and all users are urged to apply security updates.
“Recommended Updates (hardy-updates)”. Updates for serious bugs in Ubuntu packaging that do not affect the security of the system.
However, after I had posted my query last night I read the following rather ominous passage in a (downloadable) Ubuntu Study Guide:
“As strange as it may sound, some administrators don’t install all security updates….The security updates you install depend on the services you need…
New kernels can be especially difficult for some….Certain databases may be certified to a certain kernel version….Specialised drivers may be available for only for certain kernels…
Ubuntu Security Notices (USN) are designed to help the administrator understand if a security update is needed…”
I would be very interested to know what you make of that, Alan.
Makes perfect sense, and in fact is relevant to the webbook. The VIA drivers only work on certain kernel versions so the kernel update broke them, this is why binary drivers are a bad thing (even if they look pretty when they work). Corporate administrators keeping servers running tend to be rather paranoid about any change to the system that might have side effects.
Alan, do I take that to mean that if I use my webbook in a fairly straightforward manner, I do NOT need to worry about such dire warnings, and can go ahead and install all the ‘important security updates’ that are offered, in line with your initial advice and that of the Ubuntu help pages?
“Important security updates: These are obviously the only ones you will have to enable if your computer is connected to the Internet, in order to keep you secure. Enabling this is smart. Even if you don’t connect to the Internet, it won’t hurt. “
I just want to be absolutely sure I am doing the right thing before I click on that red arrow and install these security updates!!
Unless you are using your webbook as the server for an ecommerce system (which only a crazy person would consider – but I am tempted) then you don’t need to worry at all.
Agreeing with Alan completely.
And, oooh, now there’s a thought! Seriously though, I’d look a bit daft pointing to the webbook and claiming it to be a server capable of running online business. Whether it technically can is a different matter, but it’s what it looks like – size matters to system admins!
Well it depends on the business really. In some contexts a webbook would be a really great server, perhaps for a remote office with no local IT support. They can stick it in a drawer, feed it power and internet (or use wireless) and forget about it. If you need to do some work on it you can connect remotely, or open the drawer and it has it’s own screen and keyboard. If it is really messed up you can stick a new one in the post. Or just post the hard drive which anyone can replace.
Hi All
For my rea job,I work as a systems admin, and yeah, for servers, safely tucked behind a firewall, once a server is up and running, and is running an application, be it an Oracle database, MySQL database, and the application is running as it should, we then don’t touch the server in case an upgrade causes the application to break. It tends to be an all or nothing upgrade including hardware, with lot’s of testing etc, before making it a production server. Now, for desktops/laptops, yep tend to keep them right upto date, hence I’m sat here with a fully updated ‘INTREPID’ webbook, an Edubuntu (based on INTREPID) on a PC, and Fedora 10 on a couple, PC’s/laptop, both at home and at work.
Cheers
PS,I think I just waffled on a bit there, sorry.