It can get lonely and isolated on the Internet when I run into a problem with a business, and can’t get help.
Yesterday, I spent a couple hours filling out a long, multi-page form to sign BoomanTribune up for a major affiilate program. When I got the confirmation e-mail and password, I logged in, and got this message, “We are unable to validate one or more pieces of your profile information at this time.” But the message didn’t explain which information couldn’t be validated. Luckily, I spotted a “Support” link, so clicked and filled out the form, asking how I could answer their questions. When I clicked “Send,” I got this message: “404 Not Found — The requested URL /fs/ was not found on this server.” So, I found an e-mail address, and sent them a couple messages, but have not received a reply.
In the meantime yesterday, after I recalled seeing a promo for an author interview on BookTV (C-Span2) that’ll be on this coming weekend. I looked up the book at Powell’s. Powell’s has the book, but it’s at full price. So, I sent an e-mail to Emily in the Partners Program at Powell’s. I told Emily that the book will be featured this weekend on C-Span2, that I’d like to advertise the book, but wondered if Powell’s would be discounting the book. This afternoon, I received this reply from Emily:
Ask and ye shall receive 🙂 (at least whenever possible). 30% off starting tomorrow, online only. Hopefully we can work together to drive some sales!
Please let me know if you have any questions, or if I can help with anything else.
Emily
I’m not surprised. Emily is unfailingly responsive to every question I have. When my e-mail program crashed a couple weeks ago, and I lost all the e-mails chock full of info that she’d sent me before, she again sent me the info I needed. Emily can’t always say yes, but she always is cheery, polite, and clear and helpful in her tips and instructions.
I think it’s called Customer Service. C.S. for short.
Emily has C.S. down. And so does her company. As opposed to another company I dealt with yesterday.
Now that I’ve made her spend time getting me a deal on the book I hope we sell a couple of them!
Oh! The book! How could I forget. (Sometimes C.S. stands for common sense.)
Here’s the jacket, the title, the author, and a couple blurbs.
The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor–And Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!
by Tim Harford (who’s a columnist for the Financial Times)
The reason I got excited was that the promo on C-Span says the book exposes:
“… how companies from Amazon.com to Whole Foods to Starbucks have gouged consumers through guerrilla pricing techniques and explains the high rents in London (it has more to do with agriculture than one might think).”
Now that made my ears perk up. On the rare occasions that my daughter and I get to Seattle, we love to go to Whole Foods. But we can never figure out why we’re $80 lighter after buying not very much at all, it seems. I want this author to tell me how Whole Foods does that.
One customer review reads: “If you read only one pop economics book this year, The Undercover Economist should be it. Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times among other distinctions, has written a book that could almost serve as a textbook for an Economics 101 course. But it’s emphatically not dry or dull. Instead, what Harford has done is convey the excitement, the power, and the often counter-intuitive results of economic thought. In so doing, he has written more or less the economic equivalent to The Selfish Gene. ”
Sounds worthwhile, and fun too. Check it out. For Emily (and me). And I hope that the “undercover economist” doesn’t look at price only. Service counts for a lot too.
Have you had some good — or horrible — customer service experiences on the ‘net?