#oneaday Day 656: User error

One reason I absolutely cannot wait to ditch my professional social media responsibilities (which will be at some point in the next few months, in all likelihood) is the phenomenon of users making an error themselves, then yelling at us for their own mistake. There have been two separate examples of this just today, and I'm glad I was too busy to reply to them (the chap who's been helping us out with social media handled them) because I'm not sure I would have been able to resist being sarcastic. (Naturally, I won't name and shame or give the exact examples here, but anyone who has worked in any sort of tech with a vaguely public-facing aspect will likely know the sort of thing I'm talking about.)

Whenever I see something like this, it just comes across as a completely alien way to react. If I'm using a device, and it behaves in a way that I don't expect it to, the first thing I look for is if I'm doing anything wrong — which I inevitably am. I use it as an opportunity to learn exactly what it is that I'm doing wrong, then to never make that same mistake ever again, because I learned what the problem was and how to fix it. The absolute last thing I would consider doing is going on social media and yelling at the company who makes the product in question — particularly when there is absolutely no way of them solving my issue without making me look, at the very least, a little bit stupid.

I get that people are frustrated when things don't work the way they expect and they don't know why. But receiving a message filled with swearing and abuse because you didn't think to press a single button that would immediately resolve the problem you are having — yes, this really was one of the incidents today — does not make the person who has to answer that message feel particularly inclined to want to help you. I mean, most of the time they will go out of their way to help you, even for particularly stupid questions — contrary to popular belief, there are, in fact, stupid questions — but you can rest assured that they're having a good giggle at you behind your back.

Note that I absolutely do not have a problem with someone who does have a question with a simple and straightforward answer, and who asks that question without becoming abusive. I am more than happy to help anyone like that out. But someone who bursts into an inbox with no prior contact and fills their message with "wtf" and "ffs" and all that sort of shit… well, they're not getting their relationship with us off on a particularly good foot now, are they?

The only time I've ever yelled at a company on social media was when CEX missold me an expensive arcade stick with the promise it would work on the consoles I asked if it would work on, and it did not do that. After the staff in the shop refused to help, I had little option but to Karen it up a bit and eventually got the situation resolved. I'm not particularly proud of that little episode, but I did manage to get it resolved without any swearing or abuse at the staff in question — just a lot (a lot) of repeating myself.

Anyway, don't be rude to staff of a company if the fault is actually completely of your own creation. It's not hard.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 556: Customer non-service

Generative AI has, supposedly, revolutionised a number of sectors, with customer service being one of the most commonly cited areas that benefits from having a lying chatbot front and centre.

Except it doesn't benefit at all, does it? Because all the chatbot adds is an unnecessary step between someone who needs some help with something and them actually getting that help. And, in a lot of cases, the chatbot passes completely incorrect information on to the few remaining real people who might actually be able to do something.

My current predicament is that I'm trying to return something to a retailer. A pair of shoes. They didn't fit. Should be simple enough, right? On the retailer's own website, they allow you to set up the return and organise a courier service to come and collect it.

The courier service of choice for the retailer, Schuh, was Evri. This will probably strike fear into the hearts of most people, but honestly, up until now I've not had a huge problem with them (or their previous incarnation, Hermes). But it seems that Evri, specifically, is having a few issues right now.

My particular problems started ten days ago, when the courier was originally supposed to pick up my package to return it. They did not show up. My wife and I were in all day. There was not a single knock at the door, and I got a notification that there was "no answer" when they supposedly called to pick up the package.

No matter, I thought, checking the tracking information. They said they'll be back the next working day.

They were not back the next working day. Or the one after. So I attempted to contact Evri in order to sort things out.

Initially I got a chatbot that promised to "escalate" the issue and then did absolutely nothing. Like, it just stopped responding to anything. So I tried again. This time I tried some different options and seemingly got a message through to someone.

Except the people on the other end of my correspondence are all absolutely convinced that I am awaiting a package delivery, despite me telling them repeatedly that I need the package collecting from my house. And thus I suspect what is happening is that they are rummaging through their big pile of parcels, hoping to find the one they think they are supposed to deliver to me, not finding it, going "oh shit" and then just not doing anything else — when, in fact, the package that I want them to collect has been sitting in my house's front hallway for the last 10 days.

This isn't the first time I've encountered a situation like this since the dawn of AI chatbots, either. Earlier in the year, I had an Ikea chair break on me, and it was under guarantee, so I tried to get it replaced. After laying out very clearly that I needed the entire chair replaced under the guarantee thanks to the nature of the problem, and receiving assurances that yes, I would receive a full replacement chair from the possibly-human-probably-not thing that I was interacting with online, I waited two weeks… and then received a package through the post that contained a single chair leg.

How is anyone looking at situations like this and thinking "yes, that's a big improvement over what we had before"? The blame isn't entirely at the feet of the AI chatbots, I know, because in all of these cases there's an obvious degree of (possibly) human error involved, but the AI chatbot certainly isn't helping the fucking situation. In every case that I've had the misfortune to interact with an AI customer service chatbot, the bot hasn't been able to help with what should be a very simple enquiry and has passed me on to what is supposedly a human being that speaks English. And in every case it has seemingly passed on incorrect information — information that the supposed human being won't fucking listen to me correcting, even when I do so repeatedly and very, very clearly.

Just another way that the cyberpunk dystopia we live in completely and utterly sucks. With no real benefits to go along with all the suck.

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#oneaday Day 367: Acknowledge, Align, Assure

Customer service is something that you would think we'd have nailed at this point. So why is it that everyone dreads having to contact an organisation's support department? It is, of course, because we emphatically have not nailed it.

I'd like to tell you the saga of my Ikea chair. One of the legs broke on it a few weeks back, so I've been attempting to get it replaced under its guarantee — something which shouldn't be a problem. So I contacted the support department through their chat facility — there's no means of emailing them, and I do not like talking to people on the phone — and, after several minutes of attempting to make the stupid AI chatbot understand what it was I was enquiring about, I was transferred to someone that was supposedly a human being.

I explained to the person that the chair leg had broken, and that the problem was with the point where the leg attached to the chair's base. As such, I needed the base of the chair replacing rather than the leg itself.

It was at this point that I first ran into a phenomenon that I'm sure you've all encountered at some point in the recent past: the Acknowledge, Align, Assure approach to customer service. I first became aware of this when I worked at the Apple Store between 2007 and 2009, and it still appears to very much be standard practice when dealing with any large corporation today.

Here's how it works. You explain your complaint. The person you complain to then repeats your complaint back to you verbatim, which is them Acknowledging there is a problem. They then say something along the lines of "I'm sorry" or "I understand that this might be frustrating", which is them Aligning with your viewpoint, attempting to demonstrate that they empathise with your plight. They then tell you what they are going to do, and Assure you that everything is going to be all right.

This happened by the book in my first contact with Ikea's support agency. The person on the other end of the chat said that they were sorry my chair leg had broken, and that the problem was with the point where the leg attached to the chair's base, and that I needed the base of the chair replacing rather than the leg itself. They explained that they understood how frustrating this must be, and then told me that a replacement would be with me within 14 working days.

Just to ensure that I wasn't about to be sent nothing but a chair leg in the post within 14 working days, I reiterated very carefully and clearly that the problem was with the chair's base, and that that was the part which needed replacing. I was told "don't worry" and that everything would be resolved within 14 working days.

At some point within the next 14 working days, I received a small package through the post from the Netherlands. Inside the package was a single chair leg.

Of course, I immediately contacted support again, and told them the situation. I was once again told how sorry the chat operator was that I had been sent a leg and not the whole chair base that I had asked for, and that they appreciated how frustrating this may be. I was told once again "don't worry" — those exact words — and assured that the base of the chair would be with me within 14 days, that it would be coming via DHL and that I would get a phone call the morning it would be arriving.

Another 14 working days passed. I received no further packages from the Netherlands, no phone call from DHL, and indeed no indication whatsoever that anything had been done at all. So today I got back on the chat and asked to know what on Earth was going on.

After telling me how sorry that they were that the chair on my leg was broken, and that I needed the base of my chair replacing, and that I had been sent nothing but an individual replacement leg of the chair and no indication that a new chair base was, in fact, on the way to me, and explaining how they understood how frustrating this was, they were about to assure me that everything was okay before I stopped them.

"Just please replace the entire chair if that's easier," I said.

They are coming on Wednesday to pick up the old chair and provide me with a new one. At least, that's what's supposed to be happening, anyway. We shall see whether or not that actually happens.

The thing with Acknowledge, Align, Assure is that it's one of those things that looks and sounds perfectly fine in theory and when you're training people, but in the real world it comes across as insincere and patronising. Surely, you'd think, who wouldn't want to feel like the person manning the support channels wasn't on your side? Having them say they understand how frustrating things are humanises them, surely, and thus that makes them more likely to be believed when they offer assurances that everything is, in fact, going to be all right when it emphatically is not.

I understand why it happens. It's because of corporate policy and procedure, and it is primarily there to protect both the company and the individual support agent. In theory, it prevents the support agent promising things the company will not be able to fulfil, and it ensures the support agent themselves is not held responsible as an individual if something goes wrong amid the process.

But it's completely and utterly dehumanising for everyone involved. There's a reason why people still like going to little, local mom-and-pop shops, and that's because that's where you get real customer service; that's where you get people being genuine, where you feel like they really want to help you and ensure that you walk away happy. Because while a single unhappy customer is a drop in the ocean for a huge corporation, for a small, local company it could be the difference between life and death.

Ikea, Apple and any number of other huge corporate entities obsessed with policy and procedure aren't going to change their ways any time soon, and I don't have any particularly comforting words about that. I guess the ideal answer is that we all make a commitment to shopping with small, local businesses rather than multinational corporations — but I think we all know that simply isn't possible for a lot of us, for one reason or another. It sucks, but it is the world we've inadvertently created for ourselves, so now we have to live with it.

I'm sorry that it sucks and that it's the world we've inadvertently created for ourselves, so now we have to live with it. This must be very frustrating. But please don't worry.

Because nothing is going to get any better, ever. Happy Monday!

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#oneaday Day 193: Migration woes

I was suspicious when the new hosting provider I've signed up with, Zume, offered "same-day migration" — not because I doubted their abilities, but because I doubted my current/prior host, Bluehost, would make it in any way easy to get everything off their servers and onto someone else's.

Turns out I was correct. Migrating a complete website setup like mine should be a case of going into cPanel and exporting something called a "cpmove" archive, which contains everything about the website: all its content, all its configuration, everything. Naturally, this is only something you can export yourself on a more expensive plan than I'm on, leading to multiple conversations with support people via a bloody chat interface, during which they consistently failed to understand what I was asking of them, despite me spelling it out to them very clearly and repeatedly.

The first time they ran the export, it seemingly worked correctly and created an archive, but said archive was, for some reason, faulty — and in the meantime, it had filled up my hosting account's storage space. So I then had to delete that and spend another couple of hours waiting for the person on the other end of the chat to run another export, only for them to first of all misunderstand the fact that I wanted to export two websites (this one and MoeGamer) not just this one, and then to completely miss the whole "cpmove" part.

Thankfully, the representative from Zume that I've been dealing with has been inordinately patient throughout this entire process, and has been keeping me informed on progress. It seems that he will be able to complete the migration without the "cpmove" part, it'll just take a bit longer to get things set up. I'm fine with this; I'm not in a rush to get it done, so I'd rather it be done right than done fast.

Self-hosting your own website certainly gives you more flexibility than being locked in to something like WordPress.com — to say nothing of the inherent risks of hosting your entire website on someone else's service — but man, it is a pain in the arse when something like this happens. And make no mistake: this is happening because Bluehost are deceptive fuckers who gave absolutely no indication when I signed up that their prices were going to increase this much after a year. We're talking an increase from about £60 to nearly £300. Absurd. And I bet they count on people just thinking "eh, I can't be bothered to fix it, so I'll just pay up".

Well, no. I'm not paying up. I'm looking forward to hitting the big red "CANCEL" button when all my sites are successfully transferred over, and here's hoping that Zume lasts at least a few years before enshittifying itself, too.

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1848: Small Change

I had a baffling… I guess you'd call it a customer service experience earlier. It was extremely unpleasant at the time, but looking back on it, it was just plain bizarre.

Some context first: where I work (which is some 30-60 minutes' drive from my house, depending on traffic), there aren't enough parking spaces for everyone who works there to be able to park, so parking spaces are limited to those who carshare. I don't carshare because I'm an antisocial fucker who likes driving along blasting out Final Fantasy tunes at full volume… and also I don't know anyone else coming from my direction. This means that I have to make alternative parking arrangements, of which I have three choices: park on a lorry park about 10-15 minutes' walk from my office; park on a residential street about half an hour's walk from my office; or park on a multi-storey car park in town about 30-45 minutes' walk from my office.

None of these are particularly desirable options, but of the three, the lorry park requires the least amount of trudging through the cold and also means that I'm more likely to be able to start working early and consequently finish earlier in the afternoon. Downsides to the lorry park include the fact that, being a lorry park, lorries tend to be given priority, and consequently sometimes it's simply not available if there are too many lorries already parked there.

Downsides also include, as I discovered today, the staff.

It costs £12 for a week's parking on the lorry park, payable in cash. I inevitably forget to get the cash until first thing on Monday morning, necessitating a quick trip to Tesco to draw out £20, then break a tenner on a bottle of water or something. This morning, however, I knew that I had enough money in my wallet, so I simply went straight to the lorry park without having to stop off. I pulled up as normal, handed over my tenner and the remaining £2 in change — 50ps, 20ps, 10ps and a few 5ps.

"You're having a laugh, aintcha?" said the attendant, a sour-faced man who clearly derives no joy from his miserable occupation whatsoever — and who can blame him? I initially thought he was joking, but then he continued. "You've had all weekend to get your change together and you give me that?"

Confused, I wasn't quite sure what to say. I will add at this point that I had counted out the change in front of him and apologised for it being in "shrapnel", and he hadn't said anything until the money was already in his hand.

"What the hell is this?" he continued. I still wasn't sure what he was so angry about. It was the right money.

"Sorry," is all I could really say, since I'd apparently mortally offended him by giving him anything other than two nice, neat, shiny gold pound coins.

"Yeah, well you won't do it again, I'll tell you now," he said aggressively — a statement which appeared to have a pretty clearly implied threat in it — and sent me to go and park at the far end of the lorry park.

I then spent the rest of the day paranoid that I'd come back to the lorry park at the end of my shift to discover my car in ruins, or the attendant refusing to hand over my ticket, or something equally unpleasant. It stressed me out a great deal throughout the whole day, and as I walked back to my car after a day's work, I found my stomach churning in that way it does when you know you're on the way to do something unavoidably unpleasant that scares you a bit.

Fortunately, my car was still in one piece when I collected it, and when I asked the attendant — who was busily directing a large lorry into a tiny parking space when I arrived — if it would be all right to pick my ticket up tomorrow morning, he simply said it was fine, apparently having forgotten the whole thing.

I'm glad he has the luxury of being able to forget the fact he was a complete cunt to a paying customer at the start of the day, but unfortunately I wasn't able to forget the incident particularly quickly. As I say, it stressed me out all day — all the more so for the fact that 1) it was so incredibly irrational and 2) there wasn't really anyone that I could report my experience to — and it's enough to make me seriously reconsider parking there any more. Were it not for the fact that parking anywhere else is such a long distance away — making my commute almost as much time walking as driving — I would abandon it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure I have that luxury, but we'll see.

Anyway. You may think that this was a stupid experience not worth getting worked up over, but it was extremely unpleasant to be a part of. I hope there's no repeat of it, and while I'm loathe to capitulate to this attendant's apparent (and, until today, unstated) demands to pay using nothing but £10 notes and £1 coins, I may have to do so if only for a quiet, stress-free(ish) life.

1754: Yet Another Exhortation for Websites to Stop Bugging Me

Page_1 As the years have passed, the Internet has undergone continuous improvement for the most part. It's now one of the most — if not the most — democratic media in the world, for better or worse, allowing pretty much anyone around the world to speak their brains on pretty much any subject they'd care to share with anyone who wants to listen. (This blog is, of course, a prime example of this in action; I'm still frankly bewildered anyone reads this at all.)

But not every improvement in the Internet has been a positive one. In fact, one thing specifically appears to be on the rise, and it's not at all a positive thing, despite usually being implemented with good intentions.

I am referring to websites that, within moment of you arriving, pop up a Google Hangouts-style chatbox in the corner of the screen, often featuring a photograph of some overly-chipper looking person, and invite you to "chat" if you need help.

Now, in principle this isn't a terrible idea. Those who are less familiar with the Internet will probably appreciate having guidance on hand — immediately, and without having to seek it out — should they run into difficulties. (That said, assuming that "those less familiar with the Internet" are too dim to determine that clicking on a link that says "Help" — as most (vaguely useful) websites offer — will actually provide them with assistance is, to be honest, rather insulting towards those who are "less familiar with the Internet". And yes, I'm primarily talking about old people.) Having a live person on hand is, theoretically, a great thing, as it means you can ask questions without having to work out what the specific search terms to describe the problem you're having are — and then discover the only vaguely useful search result is an unanswered forum post from three years ago of someone having the exact same problem and never resolving it, of course.

The implementation, however, leaves something to be desired. Take WordPress here, for example. I started composing this post and not five seconds after the post editor had appeared, up popped a little blue box in the corner of the screen cheerfully enquiring "Hello! How can we help?" It's distracting, it's annoying, it's patronising and it is, in this case, unnecessary: I have been using WordPress for… (checks) quite a long time now, and thus it's probably reasonable to assume I know my way around most of it — and that anything I don't know how to do I'm perfectly comfortable with looking up in help files and forums.

That doesn't stop this silly little box from popping up every few times I start creating a post, however — yes, it's not even every time I start writing a post. No, apparently WordPress believes that maybe two or three times a week I'll reach some sort of existential blogging crisis and rather than, as most bloggers would do, pontificate about it for a thousand words in a self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness post, I would like to "chat" with someone about it. I do not want to "chat" with anyone from WordPress. I would like them to be on hand if I have a specific question, but I'm more than happy to use the already established channels for that — I don't need live support.

And it's not as if this "live" support is particularly live, anyway. Owing to the fact that most chat support people are juggling a number of different conversations at the same time — each of which is with someone who has a markedly different thinking and typing speed from everyone else they're interacting with — it can often take minutes at a time to get a response. Not exactly "instant" messaging. And, okay, it's still quicker than waiting a day or two for an email response — or more, if you ever have the misfortune to deal with any sort of government agency via email — but the benefit of instant messaging is supposed to be that you can get an immediate response, and if that one benefit isn't even present in these ever-present "How can we help?" boxes, then there's no fucking point them being there in the first place.

I might write a letter. That's always seemed like the most satisfying — albeit least time-efficient — means of expressing your dissatisfaction. Although sadly, it's also one of the easiest to ignore in this digital age. But the recipient actually receiving and reading it isn't necessarily the point in many cases; often putting pen to paper is a cathartic experience that makes the frustrated party get a few things off their chest and calm down a bit. It may not resolve anything in the long run, but, speaking from personal experience, by golly does it sometimes make you feel better.

So that's how you can help me, WordPress. You can bugger off with your patronising little chat box, otherwise you might just find yourself on the receiving end of a sternly-worded letter written on actual paper.

Or not. I might just stop getting worked up over stupid little things like this and go and do something fun instead. Hah! That'll be the day, eh?

1237: Is Everything All Right?

Jun 08 -- Is Everything All Right Members of the restaurant industry! Be you serving staff or restaurant owner, know this: my meal is just fine, and thus you don't need to ask me if everything is all right with it. If, on the off-chance, something is actually wrong with my meal, I will attract your attention and explain what the problem is. In the meantime, kindly bugger off and leave me alone.

I know this is an irrational thing to get annoyed about, but it's not so much the thing itself that I find irritating as it is the reason it happens. Because when your waiter/waitress comes over and asks you if everything is all right with your meal, they are not doing so because they care. They are doing so because their restaurant's policy is to go and check up on people five or ten minutes after they have started eating, just in case they're too, I don't know, shy to bring up the fact that their food isn't cooked properly.

I give this information from a position of experience, having worked in a few pubs and restaurants back when I was at university. It was simply policy to do this to make it look like the staff cared when in fact all they really wanted was for all the members of the public to go away so they could enjoy a good old-fashioned apple sauce fight in the kitchen.

I think the knowledge of why this happens — to give the illusion of good customer service, rather than simply to provide good customer service — is what makes it particularly infuriating. If I believed at any point that the people attempting to look like they cared about my dining experience actually did care about my dining experience, I'd be fine with it. However, my mind poisoned by my past experiences on the other side of the customer/staff divide, I just can't see it that way; I just can't believe that these people really give a toss whether or not my meal is to my satisfaction or not.

It's the same with going to shops, of course. That innocuous-sounding "is everything all right there, sir?" can usually be translated as "can I sell you anything, sir?" Checkout operators have stickers on their tills reminding them to thank customers for waiting, and to smile at them. And employees of certain fruit-based computer manufacturers' retail presences have a little "routine" to go through any time they attempt to engage a customer in conversation. (To be fair, in the latter case, it worked quite well, but it's still a completely "false" interaction with another person — speaking from the script rather than from the heart.)

Pish and balls. I guess I'm just grumpy. It is nearly 2AM after all. I should probably go to sleep. It is Sunday tomorrow, then on Monday I am covering E3 professionally for the first time in a while, albeit still only on the "home front" rather than actually going there. One day… one day.

I'll leave you with this.

1151: Twitter Let Me Down (Or: Why I'm Not Going Back)

Let's recap.

About a month ago, I was the victim of an organised "cyberbullying" campaign on Twitter. (Aside: I hate the term "cyberbullying", but it seems to be the accepted terminology so I will use it for now.) Members of an Internet-based organisation known as the "GNAA" (NSFW Wikipedia link) started harassing me, attempting to spread slanderous rumours that I was a paedophile, and copying me in on their pronouncements, presumably attempting to get a rise out of me. I blocked and ignored them as is the sensible thing to do in this sort of situation, but still they kept coming.

They started phoning people close to me — specifically, my brother and the owner of Games Are Evil, both of whose phone numbers are stored in the "WHOIS" information for their respective websites. Not just one phone call, either — several, each increasing the intensity of the threats to get the authorities called on me for my supposed (and, I'm sure I don't have to add, fictional) perversions.

The reason for this group's attack on me, it transpires, was the fact I had the word "Brony" on my Twitter bio. ("Brony", for those who don't know, is the term for adult-age fans of the recent My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic TV show, a group which I identify myself as being a part of. Seriously, that show's great.) This group had been attacking Bronies for a while and attempting to slander them in similar ways. They were also responsible for a high-profile attack on the social networking/blogging platform Tumblr back in December — said hack was also an attack on the Brony community.

Because this unprovoked assault on both me and my reputation was frightening and unpleasant, I reported it to Twitter. Because it was spilling out of the online sphere and into the "real world" with the phone calls, I also reported it to my local police station. The latter weren't able to do much about it — I wasn't really expecting them to be able to, to be honest — but I did at least feel somewhat reassured that I'd done all the things they would have suggested I do in this situation: change my username, block the perpetrators, do not engage with them, let other people know what's going on. Eventually, the perpetrators tracked down my new username and hijacked my old one, using it to impersonate me with the most obviously fake "this is what a paedophile does" sort of posts you'd ever see.

I reported the impersonation to Twitter as a separate issue, which required me to fax them a copy of my passport at my own expense to prove my identity. (Fax? Seriously?) It took them a few days to respond to this, but they eventually suspended my old Twitter username to prevent it from posting further offensive content in my name; in the meantime, I closed my Twitter account completely.

What I'm particularly disappointed about is Twitter's handling of the rest of the issue. I reported the problems I had been having back when that original post I linked to was written — mid February — and only received a response last night. The response I received was boilerplate text that simply said there had been no violation of Twitter policy, and that they didn't mediate in disputes between users. No attempt to address my concerns. No response to the fact that I had clearly laid out a series of tweets that showed an organised — and demonstrably unprovoked — campaign of hate against me. No concern for my wellbeing.

There is a difference between a "dispute between users" or a "difference of opinion" and an organised campaign to victimise someone based on their tastes and preferences. The offenders in this particular case went above and beyond simple name-calling into full-on harassment of not only me, but also my family and friends — and not only on the Internet, but also over the phone. None of this appears to have been taken into account in the month that Twitter's safety team have had to review this situation. In the meantime, the unpleasant individuals responsible for causing me such upset remain at large and unpunished, free to do it again to someone different for just the same stupid reasons they attacked me.

For this reason, I will not be returning to Twitter as a means of personal communications or social networking. While I appreciate a network of that size is difficult and time-consuming to police, that doesn't mean that the site's user safety department should get to just sit back and say "deal with it." This incident caused me considerable personal distress, and doubtless it upset and confused my family and friends who were dragged into it, too. The complete lack of concern Twitter's user safety department has shown towards a demonstrable case of organised harassment and bullying means that I do not feel comfortable trusting them in future; consequently, I will not be returning.

I doubt they care, of course; one user is but a drop in the ocean. I felt the need to share my frustration regarding this issue, however. Cyberbullying is a real problem that destroys lives — literally in many cases — and for Twitter to just turn a blind eye like this doesn't strike me as particularly acceptable.

If you used to follow me on Twitter, please feel free to share this post with any of our mutual friends. I would like to spread the word about this if at all possible.

Thanks, as always, for listening.

#oneaday Day 912: Blood from a Stone

I'm pleased to confirm that, after several days of wrangling, arguing and repeating myself over and over and over again, CeX finally relented and gave me a full refund. (Context.)

I hate complaining. I feel like an asshole. Normally because in order to complain effectively, you have to be a bit of an asshole. I hate it because I've been on the other side of things, receiving those complaints. It's frustrating for both parties in the whole situation, because in many cases the person receiving the complaint really does want to help but their hands are tied, and the person complaining just wants things to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Such was the case with this whole debacle. It took two days of talking to someone on CeX's Twitter account and subsequently emailing their customer service team, then going in to the store where I bought the item in the first place to actually claim the refund. It would have been easy to just give up, but that would have left me £70 down and, while I don't like complaining, it was the whole principle of the thing here.

The thing that infuriated me most about the whole experience was the blindingly obvious things CeX could have done along the way to help me out. As I said in the original post, it would have cost them literally nothing to help me out and just issue me a refund. The item was already second-hand and open, so it was in the same condition as when it was sold when I returned it. It was also returned within about an hour of me having purchased it, so it's not as if I could have been using the shop as a quasi-rental service, which is — presumably, anyway — what this policy is designed to discourage.

I grant that, since there was nothing technically wrong with the item, I wasn't entitled to a refund under the various laws and regulations that govern this sort of thing. But when making an honest mistake — as I did — I don't expect to be punished for it to the tune of nearly a hundred quid.

So I complained. And I persisted. I remained polite — though clearly frustrated — throughout the entire experience. I didn't swear, I didn't insult anyone, I didn't cast aspersions on the sexual preferences of anyone's mother. I simply repeated the things that were upsetting and frustrating me in the hope that it would sink in. And I kept a close eye on the people around me on Twitter who were taking an interest in the case. There was the potential for some serious damage to CeX's brand here, and while I had no particular desire to cause trouble in that manner, the longer it went on the more it looked like being a potential PR disaster for the company — which is why I was so confused that CeX appeared to be in no hurry whatsoever to help me.

Customer service is actually relatively simple. Follow your business' policies as appropriate, but when a customer complains, review the situation carefully and determine how you can help them. If bending the "rules" slightly doesn't impact your company and does help the customer, then doing so builds considerable goodwill because it makes it look as if you've gone out of your way to help them. Apple stores are really good at this. Very often a customer will enter the store frustrated and angry that something or other isn't working, and leave with a smile on their face because they've been pleasantly surprised by an employee apparently going out of their way to do something nice. (In actual fact, said employee more likely than not knows exactly the situations in which is is appropriate to bend the rules and simply set the customer's expectations accordingly.)

This is what CeX wasn't willing to do for me. I was repeatedly quoted store policy and made to feel like an idiot for not knowing it before purchasing the item. But how was I to know? It wasn't explained to me at purchase, I've never returned anything to them before and the only place in the entire shop their return policy is mentioned is in a single sentence of roughly 10-point text on a small mat near their cash till — a mat which, I might add, is more often than not covered up by items that are being bought and sold at the time. The fact is, I wasn't aware of the policy, otherwise I wouldn't have taken the risk on the item in the first place. Repeatedly quoting it at me after the fact was just making me more and more angry, and the people who were doing so just didn't appear to notice this — or care. It became something of a battle of attrition — me repeating how annoyed I was and what I wanted out of the whole situation, them repeating their policies over and over. Something had to give.

It was them. I certainly wasn't going to back down, and the situation was looking worse and worse for them as they continually refused to acknowledge my concerns and upset. I can imagine I was probably called some fairly unpleasant names behind the scenes. But I prevailed in the end. For fairness' sake, I should say thank you to Raj on CeX's email support team and Jackie, the store manager of the Chippenham store, for making it happen.

Complaining works. It's not a pleasant thing to do, and it often takes time, but it works. We've seen plenty of examples of it Getting Things Done recently — whether or not they're "important" is neither here nor there — and people should know when it's appropriate to step up and say "wait, hang on a minute, that's not right." It's all too easy to just allow yourself to get screwed over and then feel completely powerless. So don't be afraid to complain, and remember it's different from whining.

If you can't remember the difference, perhaps this will help you out:

#oneaday Day 908: Customer Disservice

I wanted to share a customer service experience I had today as I found it immensely disappointing. It was partly my fault, I accept that, but the way in which it was handled left me with a very sour taste in my mouth and a feeling of disillusionment in a company for whom I had previously had nothing but good things to say.

After purchasing a copy of Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition in the currently-running Steam Summer Sale, I decided that the time had come for me to get an arcade stick and see if I could actually improve my generally-dreadful fighting game skills. I took a trip into town to my local CEX — they'd opened recently so I wanted to support them — and was pleased to see that a Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition FightStick was in the window for half its usual "new" price. A bit of preliminary research online had revealed that this stick from MadCatz was one of the best ones out there, and to see it for half its usual price was a deal too good to pass up.

The stick in question was designed for PlayStation 3, but uses a USB connection. I looked online and consensus said it worked with some PCs, though the chipset the computer in question was built on determined whether or not it would actually work. Intel chipsets were fine, apparently, but nVidia or AMD ones were not. Having been poking around inside my computer recently to fit a new power supply, I was pretty confident I had an Intel chipset.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. I brought the stick home, connected it up to the computer, Windows recognized it and then… nothing. No response from the stick in Control Panel, no response in game, no means to get it to register any inputs whatsoever. I tested it in the PS3 to make sure the device wasn't actually faulty, and sure enough, the PS3 had no issues with it whatsoever. Unfortunately, I don't have any fighting games (or even "arcade-style" titles) for PS3 that would necessitate the use of an arcade stick, so I had essentially wasted £70.

Or had I? No, I thought, if I head straight back to town now I'll have time to return it, get my money back and be home in time for dinner. So off I went, back to CEX, and queued up in an attempt to return it.

"I'd like to return this," I said, explaining the situation. Being an honest sort of guy — curse that particular character trait — I said that the stick wasn't faulty, but that it didn't work with my computer. (To be fair, lying and saying it was broken wouldn't have achieved much — CEX has a rigorous policy of testing things to prevent shysters trading in broken crap.)

"This isn't the selling till," said the woman behind the counter. "You need to join that queue."

I was taken aback by the bluntness for a moment after she had been helpful earlier in the day when I had purchased the thing. Fortunately, her colleague jumped in and pointed out that I wasn't trying to sell something to the shop, I was simply trying to get a refund.

She took the stick and scanned it, then explained to me that CEX's policy was that since it wasn't faulty, all she could do was give me store credit.

"Well, do you have an Xbox 360 stick available?" I asked. (Xbox 360 sticks work with Windows no problem.)

"No," she said.

"Okay," I said. "Then that's no help to me, really, is it? I've spent £70 on something I can't use. I would like my money back, please."

It was at this point that the cashier in question — Emily, her name was — decided that she couldn't handle this and called her supervisor who then launched into an obviously-rehearsed speech.

"I'm sorry it didn't work for you," she said with an incredibly patronising tone of faux-understanding. "I appreciate that it's frustrating, but unfortunately we're only able to give a refund as store credit."

I was really not in the mood for argument — I hate confrontation at the best of times — so after asking whether or not the voucher could be used online — apparently it can, but only through an unnecessarily convoluted process that involves paying the full price for the item then claiming a rebate — I grudgingly accepted and was on my way. I left immensely disappointed with the poor service I had received from CEX, and thinking that I would be considering things very carefully before making use of their services again.

Here's the thing that annoyed me most about the whole thing: there was no sense of the staff wanting to help me. I was quoted policy and simply shut down without any discussion. No consideration was given for the fact that I had bought the item that same day and had returned it in the exact same condition in which it had been sold to me. No consideration was given for the fact that I had wasted £70 and was being offered store credit in exchange when there was nothing I wanted to spend it on in said store. No effort was made to make me feel better about what I freely admit is my own mistake. Rather than doing something that would have built goodwill and allowed me to leave satisfied and happy while leaving them no worse off than they had been before I bought the thing in the first place, I was simply the recipient of a speech that had obviously been given many times before.

Customer service is a fine art, and CEX in Chippenham is clearly sorely lacking. CEX's return policy as a rule is unnecessarily harsh on those who make honest mistakes, and leaves no room for employees to "surprise and delight" a customer. I don't think this case is actually in breach of the Sale of Goods Act as the goods do work as described — the stick worked fine on PlayStation 3 and the people at the shop didn't explicitly tell me it worked on PC — but the fact is from a customer service perspective, CEX let me down. Store policies shouldn't be so inflexible that they leave a customer walking out of the store dissatisfied, disappointed and upset. Apple are good at this, often exchanging items for free simply as a means to, as said above, "surprise and delight" their customers. Head into an Apple store with a pair of dodgy iPod headphones, for example, and the store team will usually swap them straight out for you, no questions asked. Go in there with a broken iPhone/MacBook/whatever that's just out of warranty, and if you ask nicely they'll often help you out as if you were still covered. And on those occasions when they do turn you down, there's usually a good reason for them not being able to help you.

It would have cost nothing for CEX to help me out today. Had they refunded me and taken the stick back, they would have been no worse off than they had been this morning, and I would have left satisfied and confident in purchasing from them again. Instead, I am left with a piece of paper worth £70 and, currently, nothing to spend it on, as the Xbox 360 version of the stick is not available online. I am also writing about my poor experience on the public forum that is the Internet rather than praising them or simply keeping quiet.

So basically, CEX Chippenham, I'm exceedingly disappointed in the service (or lack thereof) I received today and will be thinking very carefully before I buy anything expensive from you again. You had the chance to surprise and delight me; instead you stonewalled me and flipped the bird. THANKS A LOT.