Customer Logic (website edition!)

[mjr]

It could be worse...the boats could have been named after sunken vessels...

[Cooper]

Well we do call our non-motorized boats 'adventure boats.' We claim that it's for people /looking/ for an adventure, but in private, we say it's because the canoe had a hole in it for 2 years, so once you're on these boats, you'll /have/ an adventure.

Note: We didn't rent the canoe during that time. In employee-based stupidity, I wasn't going to rent it until it was fixed, and they weren't going to fix it until it was rented.

[Ashaela]

Situation: Vendor adds a new processing fee for online payments.
Solution 1: Put an advisory on the Reg form and on the Reg FAQ page.
Result: Nobody reads the FAQ page, and they all manage to skim through the form without reading anything. Cue angry phone calls.

Solution 2: Make the advisory on the Reg form compulsory (you cannot complete it without checking that you've read and understand the fee) and send a receipt by email after completion explaining the fee 'discrepancy'.
Result: They still don't read anything, check the box that says they understand it anyway, and then get an email with the full charge as a Complete Surprise. Cue angry phone calls insisting that there is no check box and our system is broken.

Solution 3: Log in with someone's actual information, fake the reg process through to the attestation, print out the page exactly as it appears to the registrant and disperse copies to everyone in the call center.
Result: Well.... They haven't stopped complaining, but at least we feel vindicated being able to recite back exactly what the caller agreed to. Cue angy phone calls insisting they never agreed to the fee becase "my office manager does it for me."

[Cia]

I'd like to rent the "Paddlefish" please.

[An Haddock]

Not so much doe to customer logic, but more due to their ignorance and/or being misinformed.

I have a little speech I give to customers when they purchase a laptop from us. Well, a list, really of what to do and what not to do.


1. Do not have your laptop sitting on a soft surface (pillow, mattress, couch cushion) because it blocks the vents and the hot air has nowhere to go. I had at least one customer do this and come back complaining because she had fried her CPU

2. You can't rent, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark from Blockbuster and copy it with your DVD burner. Legality aside, professionally-made DVD's have copyright protection built into them. I don't care what you do with your equipment. Hack the Pentagon for all I care. But the DVD burner has that physical limitation to it. (unless you have very specific, hard-to-find software that I shan't mention here)

3. Don't walk around with the AC adapter plugged in the back and don't put it in your laptop bag plugged in, either. Every time you do and the plug gets hit or is struck against a door frame, desk edge, etc. it increases the chances that your power port will be damaged.

4. Don't install every single thing you see. Just because your Java update is offering the Ask toolbar doesn't mean you have to put it in. Slow down, uncheck what you don't want/need and then install the update. All that extra software in your computer is going to slow you down and then you'll wonder why it wasn't as good as when you first got it.

[Geek King]

4. Don't install every single thing you see. Just because your Java update is offering the Ask toolbar doesn't mean you have to put it in. Slow down, uncheck what you don't want/need and then install the update. All that extra software in your computer is going to slow you down and then you'll wonder why it wasn't as good as when you first got it.

This. I don't even know how many slow computers I've fixed by turning off all the crapware that preloads on startup.

[EricKei]

This. I don't even know how many slow computers I've fixed by turning off all the crapware that preloads on startup.

Did that for a comp in my brother's office a few weeks back. that, ALONE, brought her up from "5 minutes to load Windows and 10 to load QuickBooks" to 2 minutes each. Not bad for a 10-year-old computer with less tham 880 megs of RAM I would have dug deeper, but it was due to be replaced with a modern machine, which it recently was. Now that user has the fastest comp in the office, and I've already got SpyBot and the like set up on there to cut down on the crapware and ads, and she actually listens to me when it comes to what not to install (read: everything)

Cue angy phone calls insisting they never agreed to the fee becase "my office manager does it for me."

Doesn't matter. The OM is their proxy; what he agrees to, the custy is are bound by. If there was anything he should not have agreed to, HIS bosses need to prevent it.

[Ashaela]

Doesn't matter. The OM is their proxy; what he agrees to, the custy is are bound by. If there was anything he should not have agreed to, HIS bosses need to prevent it.

That plus, the office manager is technically committing fraud by completing the registration, as part of it requires attesting to "I am the person herein named and I affirm that all the information is correct to the best of my knowledge." So it's kinda like.... do you want to look like the kind of idiot that agrees to things he hasn't read, or do you want to look like the kind of idiot that requires his employees to lie for him on legal documents?

[mikoyan29]

Haha, no, it's a little fishing boat. We named all our pontoons after fish on the lake, though we soon ran out of fish, so now we have a "bass" "largemouth" and "smallmouth" which are two variations of bass. And we have the unfortunately named Crappie (pronounced Croppie).

We deliberately picked the crappiest boat for that, so when people mispronounced it, they were still fairly accurate. XP

The jetskiis are named after flying insects. The non-motorized boats are named after water-animals, like turtles and swans.

We probably would have stuck with fish variations, but again, ran out of fish.

But do you have the smelt?

[mikoyan29]

Having gone Muskie fishing, I can safely say that there's next to nothing more exhilarating than hauling a Pike that weighs over 100 pounds and is as long as I am tall (over 6') out of the water, unhooking it with some strong pliers and chainmail gloves, Taking a picture, and relasing it so it can chow down on adult ducks.

It's a damned terrifying beastie up close, and being one of the largest freshwater predator fish means you treat that fucker with respect.

If I ever became a super villian, my fish tank would have pike, muskies and sturgeon (not sure of the dangerousness of sturgeons but they look cool...sooo)....

[AccountingDrone]

It could be worse...the boats could have been named after sunken vessels...

The submarine base in New London names the roads after no longer active submarines, and they also post the casualty number ...

{Next time I am on base, I will sneak a picture of one of the signs. I personally think that working in a building on Trepang Street <98 casualties> [or however many there were on the Baleo class version] is pretty creepy.}