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> How do you know this? I don't. You are right that it could be policy. It just seems that the Occam's Razor explanation is human error. I disagree about the
by DanielStraight 14y ago
> How do you know this?
I don't. You are right that it could be policy. It just seems that the Occam's Razor explanation is human error.
I disagree about the ease of making the mistake. I think it is a very easy mistake to make. Customer service agents deal with tons of emails. They probably also deal with tons of emails where the customer has legitimately done something to warrant not taking the machine back (like say, dropping it in the bath tub). If you don't hear about Linux often (and most people don't), don't know the details of reinstalling OSes (something customer service agents are unlikely trained on), it's easy to think the customer has gone too far. You spend 2 minutes on the email (so you can get through them all), send it on its way and never give it a second thought.
I think it's an easy mistake to make because I make stupid mistakes all the time. Where I work, some users have a certain network path mapped as a drive letter and some don't. Yet even after making the mistake several times before, I still sometimes send emails to users who don't have it mapped referencing the drive letter instead of network path, only to hear back from them that my link doesn't work.
You want 100% certainty it won't happen again, but nothing is ever 100%. The best they can do is increase the number of 9's. Zero tolerance for errors simply doesn't work.
I will admit, however, that my tendency is to give the benefit of the doubt, so I could be biased here.
- papsosouid 14y ago>You want 100% certainty it won't happen again, but nothing is ever 100% No, I didn't say that at all. I want a reasonable assurance. Going "oops, nevermind" after a public outcry doesn't give me reasonable assurance. Saying "one of our support staff made an error, and we have decided to improve our training materials so that our support staff will know what an operating system is in the future" would give me reasonable assurance. And I would be totally fine with that, even though I have no way of knowing they actually did change their training. I would gladly give them the benefit of the doubt. The problem is not that I assume they are bad when they are trying to be good, it is that they are offering me no information at all, so I have to assume it would be risky to deal with them.
- DanielStraight 14y agoWhat about "one of our support staff made an error and we are doing absolutely nothing about it because stuff happens"? That, to me, is what seems like the reasonable respond from Newegg, but I don't think anyone would want to hear that.
- papsosouid 14y agoThat wouldn't cut it for me, since I don't feel it is a reasonable mistake for support staff to be making. If you are hiring people to process RMAs, and they don't know what an operating system is, then I obviously can't put any faith in your RMA process. If its just "we hire clueless people and don't care" then all sorts of other legit RMAs can be rejected too. I don't have the time nor inclination to fight with a company over crap like that, so I just stick to ones where I know I don't have to.
- papsosouid 14y agohttp://consumerist.com/2012/06/so-does-installing-a-new-os-violate-newegg-return-policy-or-not.html http://consumerist.com/2012/06/so-does-installing-a-new-os-v... It would appear that it was not a mistake. This is precisely why I need to hear a very clear "we messed up and are taking action to prevent it from happening again" rather than just "oops".