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!

Do you have “brick walls” blocking the positive user experience of your customers when they’re on your website?

Here’s an example I’d suggest you avoid.

MySpace has a feature where you can specify your high school — not a bad way of tracking down old friends. However, my old school isn’t in the database, so I contacted MySpace.

The first reply — obviously automated — answered nothing about the detailed information I’d provided about the school not being listed.

A week later, a second email turns up — telling me to try what I’ve ALREADY done to find out my school isn’t in the database!

MySpace then suggest if the problem still exists, to contact them.

I’ve ALREADY done that — several weeks ago! Did a real live human being actually cast eyes on my message? I doubt it.

From the customer’s point of view, this response is both irrelevant (covering areas I’ve already considered) and in part offensive: they don’t care enough to read my detailed submission to know that I’ve already advanced past their suggestions.

And, if I do submit this again — what’s to say that I won’t just go through the same run-around frustrating waste of time? There’s no assurances in the message received about that concern.

Have you looked for virtual brick walls? What can you do to assure your customers of a responsive, relevant reply?

The answer is a social community website: Facebook (f8 for short).

F8 gets more than 50% of its users on the site DAILY. It’s active userbase (logged in during past 30 days) is growing towards an estimated 50 million by the end of this year. In late May 2007, f8 had 24 million users — of which 12 million logged in to f8 EVERY day.

Facebook was described by Ed Dale as “MySpace for grownups” and as I get into f8, I can see why.

F8 “apps” mean that the way in which you can connect, interact, network, broadcast and communicate via f8 are hugely powerful. Applications enable anyone to build social applications to develop or support their online f8 network/community. The ways in which f8 can be tailored to a user’s own needs helps it go well beyond something like MySpace.

It’s no wonder F8 is currently valued at US$15 billion, based on recent investments on companies like Microsoft, who put in US$240 million for a tiny stake in the company.

PS: Here’s my f8 profile.

Okay, time for a small rant about telecommunications.

In the early days of Call Waiting, when you called another party who is already on the phone, you’d get a different ringing tone to indicate that the other party was already on a call.

You then had a choice to hang up, and try again a bit later, to catch the other party when they’re off the phone. Or, you could be persistent in the hope the other party realised your call was urgent, and utilised call waiting and interrupt their earlier call.

The system sounded fair enough to me. “Hey, they’re on the phone, I’ll hang up and call them again shortly.”

But, no, that system was changed. Apparently, having the incoming caller know you’re already on a call is a privacy issue in some way. If there’s no difference in the ringing tone, you can’t tell whether they’re on the phone or not.

Therein lies the problem, especially in a business sense.

Nowadays, when you call a number, it can ring and ring and ring — and you wonder why the phone isn’t being answered. Finally, after what appears to be “ages” of time, you get a brief announcement letting you know the other party is already on another call.

That’s of course if you wait that long to hear the message.

In the meantime, the other party has the annoying call waiting background “pips” that don’t seem to stop. You’re interrupting their call and you don’t even know it!

And, if you’re a business, it might sound like you’re either too busy to answer the phone, or that you are ignoring it.

(Not that it’s a bad thing to NOT be a slave to your phone or incoming callers — but that’s for a different post).

So what can you do? Well, there’s only really control of this at the RECEIVING end of calls — if you’re the party being called.

1. You can turn off call waiting. When you’re on the phone, incoming calls get an engaged signal. This isn’t a bad option… but is still not as good as how Call Waiting used to operate.
2. You can take the incoming call and switch between callers. I don’t like this option — devalues what you think of the original caller, especially in a business environment. Why interrupt/shut-off a caller to answer a call (and not even knowing who is calling you!)?
3. You can just ignore the call waiting “pips” — although this can still add a little time urgency/annoyance to your original conversation

So why can’t WE decide whether we want the original Call Waiting approach or the new approach? Surely it’s just a setting that can be controlled from the user’s handset, just like call waiting, three-way conferencing etc.

Why should we be told what’s best for us? Give me back my choice please!