Here’s a customer experience I hope you never get to personally be involved with.

One of our printers is a Hewlett Packard DesignJet 130 NR — a 24-inch (600mm) wide-format printer. It stopped working for us on 10 October.

After a call to HP, we were initially told that such a printer is really a “throw-away” item — that no parts are available and we may as well just replace the whole printer. Hmmm, after spending nearly $5,000 on the original printer, I’d be hoping at least parts would be available. After a bit of urging, we were put onto AWA to assist.

Our options were to pay $60 for AWA to look at the printer at their location (difficult for us to move a wide-format printer and get it to South Melbourne), or $220 for a tech to visit us. We chose the latter for convenience.

However, the tech was pretty much clueless and really couldn’t diagnose the problem — either it was a $130 part to be replaced called the “rear cleanout assembly”, or perhaps the printer section needed to be replaced ($820). But he wasn’t very sure.

We got verbal assurance from AWA that we could try the part, and if that didn’t solve the problem, we could return it for a refund. So on that basis we ordered.

By the time the part arrived (25 October), it was nearly time for us to head interstate for a planned trip. We attempted to try to fit the replacement part quickly before we went away when we got some spare time, but it was different to our own printer’s existing part (it seemed to lack pieces that accounted for our roll feeder). So we couldn’t even install it to see if it helped.

In the mad rush to going away, we left it until we returned. On our return, we were able to borrow the part from someone else with an identical printer, but it didn’t fix our problem. So the part AWA had supplied us — despite not even fitting our printer — wasn’t useful and we wanted to return it.

By this stage it was 20 November. AWA finally told us today, 29 November that despite the part not even being suitable, and despite their verbal assurance it could be returned, that we should have done that within 7 days.

The only told us this 5 weeks AFTER receiving the part.

So we’ve paid $350 ($220 for a useless tech visit and $130 for the wrong part) and they won’t refund or accept the part for return (despite a verbal assurance we could do so).

AWA advise that their supplier won’t take back the part, which is why they won’t take back the part from us. We asked them for a contact at their supplier so we may complain directly about this policy. They refuse to provide any details at all. So, not only won’t they help us, they won’t give us an avenue to take the matter any further.

At NO time did AWA advise us about the 7-day return policy until 4 weeks after that period had elapsed. We’re now stuck with a $130 part that doesn’t even suit our printer!

To make matters worse, AWA are now saying that when they dropped off the part, the tech could have tried to install it for us to see if it worked. This wasn’t made clear to us at the time: we understood than any further visit from the tech (despite the problem being unresolved) would cost us even more for each on-site visit.

Funnily enough, this has not endeared us in the slightest to ever using AWA again. HP shouldn’t be recommending a supplier to users of their equipment when that supplier cannot provide meaningful tech support or even the right part!

AWA would have been better off:

• Making it patently clear that the extra tech visits to resolve the issue wouldn’t cost any more
• Advising us when we ordered the part that there was a 7-day period for returns
• Not verbally assuring us of a return when in the end they wouldn’t accept the return of the part
• Supplying us at least with the right part to fit our particular model printer!
• Being more helpful in providing an avenue to complain

Unfortunately, we have wasted $350 on the way to spending $820 to replace the printer. Because HP’s original “no parts available” advice didn’t seem reasonable or believable to us on the initial call (who would just throw away a printer worth nearly $5,000? And then HP advised us of a parts supplier anyway!) — we tried to minimise our costs. In the end have lost out to really unhelpful service from AWA — no usable part for our printer and no help in resolving the fault (along with the expense and downtime along the way).

So rather than praise for AWA (and HP), there’s no way in the future they’ll receive any business from us!

Earlier this month Facebook added a new feature called “pages” amongst other announcements.

Pages let you do what you’d think: create specific pages on Facebook for all sorts of reasons: business, community, political, artists, schools etc.

The big difference, compared to your profile, is that anyone on Facebook can view complete Pages without having to be added to your network/friends. This then solves one of my Facebook frustrations: the very limited viewing of your profile.

In fact, I think pages are a much better solution, as you can create specific pages for separate needs: I just whipped one up for my Rotary Club.

Anyone can view this page: not just the 40-odd people in my friends list who can see my full profile. It makes a lot of sense!

You can become a Fan of the page, which means (with your permission) you get to keep up to date with what’s happening on that page and you can interact with the apps on the page.

As Ed Dale pointed out in his Facebook video series on his page, there’s no limit to the number of fans (unlike profile friends, which are limited) and they can be added automatically.

Used in the right way, this will make Facebook incredibly powerful: you can broadcast relevant messages to your “fans” — and they are in control if your messages start to get spammy. There’s plenty of viral opportunity here, used correctly, to really help build your network, your online legend/persona and keep in touch yourself with what interests you.

I found a nice little “tutorial” online to activate the Pages feature (not as obvious as you’d think!) — http://www.eironae.com/geekd/2007/facebook-pages-continued/. It only took a few minutes to get it up and running.

Based on this kind of addition to Facebook, I’m more and more convinced it’s a community that will be extremely valuable to all businesses in coming months and years.

• Currently Browsing: http://tinyurl.com/2byx4j Off to vote today, putting my faith in Galaxy! #

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According to this tech article I saw in theage.com.au, PayPal has unveiled Mobile Checkout — allowing users with a PayPal account to purchase goods on the fly.

Unfortunately I can’t find info yet on PayPal’s website.

PayPal is reported to have already signed up several partners including Hoyts, Warner Music, Deals Direct, Ready Flowers and Mobile Wine Club… some of which will start offering payments via mobiles today. And within a few months, the service is set to expand to include user-to-user PayPal transfers and payments and donations via SMS.

As the article also reports, combining eBay bidding and buying with mobile checkout means a user could be sitting in their local pub and fully complete an online purchase, without the need for a computer… that’s a great range of additions to online buying options and helps to even further expand the reach of media like eBay and websites for online commerce.