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I used to get spam from a Chinese exporter who conveniently included their actual address in the emails. One day I happened to be visiting their city and went t

I used to get spam from a Chinese exporter who conveniently included their actual address in the emails. One day I happened to be visiting their city and went to their office and asked them to unsubscribe me in person. The lady was very confused and first thought I wanted to buy something. I showed her the spam on my phone and she agreed but didn't bother actually removing me. Just seemed to think I was a bit stupid for travelling so far (I was also a foreigner) to complain about a spam. It was interesting to see what those companies look like in real life though - an office filled with piles of widgets and cartons of deliveries everywhere. These Chinese exporter spammers do tend to be legitimate businesses and they can actually provide good cheap access to manufacturers but they harvest emails from everywhere if there's any hint you might work in a related industry.

dylan604 4y ago
There's no better motivater than having an upset customer in your presence. I have camped outside the office of someone until a situation was resolved.
- informalo 4y ago
  Details please
  - dylan604 4y ago
    It's really not that interesting of a story. The business manager for the apartment complex I was at was not being prompt on responding. So for 2 days, I sat in the lobby so every time he stepped out of his office, there I was just waiting. I also got to have a little chat with anyone and everyone about why I was there. This included new prospective residents coming to visit the complex as well as existing residents.
- rubatuga 4y ago
  Do tell
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ipython 4y ago
  Agreed. Great motivator. Slightly different twist is if you have kids - rambunctious kids are even better. We had an issue with a home renovation project that was not completed (we had stupidly paid the final invoice on time, lesson learned- always hold back 10% until you’re 100% satisfied) My wife got pissed at their lack of response. She took our two boys to their office, sat down, and instructed them to feel free to touch and play with everything (tile, wood samples, etc.) Salesperson notices and approaches “can I help you?” She explained the situation and the salesperson said no problem we will send someone next week. Unsatisfied with this answer- we had already experienced many weeks of “soon” - she said ok no problem, we will just sit here until someone shows up at our house to finish the job. Sure enough a worker showed up later that day and installed the three punch list items we had identified. Worked like a charm!
  - pjerem 4y ago
    Hahaha ! My dad did mostly the same thing with his home builder. Except he went to their exhibition stand at some local event. He just stood calmly there, talking with every potential customer coming in to share his story with the company in front of the boss, who was in the stand. They tried to get the security to take him out but since he paid to enter, that he was calm and stayed nice, they did nothing. Eventually, he got what he wanted to get : some 30k€ of construction work that weren’t estimated up front and that they tried to make him pay once back to the wall. And as a plus, the company’s boss took directly the management of the project.
- kaushikc 4y ago
  Most of the issues get resolved like this if they are not used to such things constantly by many people, in which case you may need an organised crowd of people with similar issue gathering for one thing. Perhaps that is called a protest.
  - cuu508 4y ago
    Atlassian Statuspage used to set tracking cookies on their customer status pages. Of course me as a single customer asking to remove the tracking cookies had minimal if any effect. So I crawled a list of Atlassian Statuspage customers, contacted them asking to also open support tickets. And indeed it worked, the tracking cookies got removed :-) My writeup about this "project": https://blog.healthchecks.io/2020/09/about-tracking-cookies-on-status-healthchecks-io/ https://blog.healthchecks.io/2020/09/about-tracking-cookies-...

dylan604 4y ago

There's no better motivater than having an upset customer in your presence. I have camped outside the office of someone until a situation was resolved.

informalo 4y ago
Details please
- dylan604 4y ago
  It's really not that interesting of a story. The business manager for the apartment complex I was at was not being prompt on responding. So for 2 days, I sat in the lobby so every time he stepped out of his office, there I was just waiting. I also got to have a little chat with anyone and everyone about why I was there. This included new prospective residents coming to visit the complex as well as existing residents.
rubatuga 4y ago
Do tell
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ipython 4y ago
Agreed. Great motivator. Slightly different twist is if you have kids - rambunctious kids are even better. We had an issue with a home renovation project that was not completed (we had stupidly paid the final invoice on time, lesson learned- always hold back 10% until you’re 100% satisfied) My wife got pissed at their lack of response. She took our two boys to their office, sat down, and instructed them to feel free to touch and play with everything (tile, wood samples, etc.) Salesperson notices and approaches “can I help you?” She explained the situation and the salesperson said no problem we will send someone next week. Unsatisfied with this answer- we had already experienced many weeks of “soon” - she said ok no problem, we will just sit here until someone shows up at our house to finish the job. Sure enough a worker showed up later that day and installed the three punch list items we had identified. Worked like a charm!
- pjerem 4y ago
  Hahaha ! My dad did mostly the same thing with his home builder. Except he went to their exhibition stand at some local event. He just stood calmly there, talking with every potential customer coming in to share his story with the company in front of the boss, who was in the stand. They tried to get the security to take him out but since he paid to enter, that he was calm and stayed nice, they did nothing. Eventually, he got what he wanted to get : some 30k€ of construction work that weren’t estimated up front and that they tried to make him pay once back to the wall. And as a plus, the company’s boss took directly the management of the project.
kaushikc 4y ago
Most of the issues get resolved like this if they are not used to such things constantly by many people, in which case you may need an organised crowd of people with similar issue gathering for one thing. Perhaps that is called a protest.
- cuu508 4y ago
  Atlassian Statuspage used to set tracking cookies on their customer status pages. Of course me as a single customer asking to remove the tracking cookies had minimal if any effect. So I crawled a list of Atlassian Statuspage customers, contacted them asking to also open support tickets. And indeed it worked, the tracking cookies got removed :-) My writeup about this "project": https://blog.healthchecks.io/2020/09/about-tracking-cookies-on-status-healthchecks-io/ https://blog.healthchecks.io/2020/09/about-tracking-cookies-...