Once again a courier company has stuffed up our job. They’re getting to be as unreliable as Australia Post.

Job booked (and confirmed by phone). Driver doesn’t get booking details, so job missed morning pick-up … which means it won’t get to the client until the next day.

Courier company response? We’d be lucky to get a verbal apology. And they still expect us to pay FULL PRICE for this abysmal service.

A fair dinkum courier company would send another driver — or pay for a taxi — or, god forbid, book an urgent door-to-door pick-up through a competitor. In other words, they would jump through hoops to get the job delivered.

But they don’t.

They ALL seem to be full of excuses rather than full of ways to satisfy their customers.

From a customer viewpoint, this industry is sadly lacking a decent provider who is prepared to guarantee their service and back it up.

I’d pay MORE for that. But none of the companies we know have a customer-centric service philosophy.

Actually, when it happens for jobs being sent from here to our customers, we cancel the original courier booking and pay ourselves for an urgent (“missile”) replacement service — and wear the cost. We want to keep our customers happy … I wish courier companies would do the same!

Damn frustrating.

While our current provider is better than what we’ve had in the past, they still lack that “do whatever it takes” attitude. I’d give them a “B” — fine most of the time, but not always.

If you know of a decent “A/A+ rated” service in Melbourne for the regular pick-ups/vouchers/coupons etc, we’d love to know.

My love/hate relationship with technology continues.

On the love side, technology helps me make money. I use a computer to write, to design, to create output that I get paid for. I also get to easily keep in touch too with clients and friends. I can write an email blast and make it look one-on-one (and I love it when I get back personal replies to an email campaign). And today, installing our new A3 mono laser printer (to replace our retired A3) — well, I used the power of Google to enable us to reset settings and get it working again.

On the hate side, technology is frustrating and invasive. I’ll illustrate “frustrating” with this example: my 3-month old PC with high powered configuration and graphics card cannot play video without a FULL crash — I don’t even get a “blue screen of death” — just an instant shutdown/restart. Terrible. So much for that multi-threaded 32-bit operating system. Despite upgrades/uninstalls/reinstalls and many HOURS of time, nothing helps. No reset button here to assist.

And “invasive” — the expectation of email and online communication (along with mobile/cell phones) can be very interruptive. An email doesn’t REQUIRE instant response. My emails arrive silently and sometimes I’ll take hours (or days) to download them. I’ve seen drivers and pedestrians nearly get killed using their mobile phones: forgetting completely about their surroundings. Or even people leaving a movie theatre with their head down, buried in their mobile. What’s so important that at 9pm Sunday it needs instant attention? I love NOT having a mobile phone turned on (only when I’m away, or away from Mel — I’ll carry it with me but I’m lucky to turn it on more than once every few months). Some people mention they envy not having to be a slave to their phone. I’m pretty damn sure they could turn it off more often. No-one really needs to answer their phone when they’re taking a leak!

The video crash is a real pain. It IS like beating your head against a brick wall: every attempt to fix it fails (driver updates for windows, driver updates for the card, drivers for the monitor, re-install DirectX, update media player, turn off hardware acceleration). The problem wasn’t there a month ago. Then it was. Too late to try a System Restore point. Too much time wasted on fixing something that should be more robust!

Grrrrrrr, technology. Is it no wonder I fantasise about flinging my PC out the window at least once per day?!? At least my friends/clients with little experience feel some relief that even someone who has been using computers for over 20 years feels the same way they do.

I’m rather shocked to read that from later this month (20th Feb), eBay sellers can no longer give buyers negative feedback.

Having helped more than one seller improve their eBay trading results through better marketing and presentation of auction listings, I know for certain that there are buyers out in the land of eBay that simply have no intention of paying for something they bid on.

Even eBay admit non-paying bidders make up about 6 percent of auction results: that’s MILLIONS of eBay results that are affected.

And suddenly sellers won’t be able to tell other sellers about it, because eBay fears that such negative buyer feedback “drives them (buyers) away from the site.”

So it should!

Bad buyers should NOT be encouraged by eBay to waste the time, money and potential auction returns of other sellers. Sellers have to lodge alerts, chase up bad buyers via email, wait and hold on to an item for longer, potentially have to re-list and then not attract the same level of bids from other buyers who missed out the first time, but may not bid again.

It’s a strange marketplace indeed. First of all eBay “powersellers” aren’t rated on PROFIT, but simply turnover. Even losing money on eBay can cause you to become a Powerseller, simply because eBay are happy with the fees you’re paying them!

And now bad buyers can’t be given negative feedback by sellers.

Sadly, for a lot of hobby sellers, this change will affect the way they interact with eBay.

Here’s the marketing lesson: if this affects you as an eBay seller, and you have no other “marketplace” to make money — then you risk your profits because you rely on only one outlet for sales. Be careful, it’s a dangerous selling strategy. As I’ve heard many times, the most dangerous number in business is “1″.

I am doing a holiday cleanup of my workspace at the moment – and that includes email accounts and settings. I’m trimming the stuff that I don’t read much. I confess to subscribing to a LOT of lists, but then losing interest after some time.

And that’s how I happened across a graphics.com newsletter subscription — one I haven’t looked at in a long time (18 months).

However, given the content I’d be happy to stay a member, but move the messages over to my private Google mail account — which I use for mailing list things. My primary work inbox is no longer used for any lists. I prefer to separate out the list messages so I can view them at a time of my choosing, without a bunch of filters in my primary inbox.

Graphics.com had only two options at the bottom of the message: to either cancel/unsubscribe, or go to the members area. As I only wanted to change my address, not cancel, I tried the members area. But I was presented with a nickname/password login. Nickname? Password? I can’t remember my nickname — I haven’t been reading the messages or to the site in 18 months. The only way to retrieve the password is with the nickname — which I probably created 4 or 5 years ago when I first subscribed.

My only option: to cancel. One click, done.

The EASIEST option presented was the one for me to cancel! No easy option to change address… clearly that process needs more thought to keep rather than lose customers off your list.

Would you rather your clients disappear easily in one click, or work out a way to easily have them self-manage their email address on your list?