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Sprint Customer Service Needs Work
Yesterday, Sprint announced that the new cell phone I want, the Samsung MM-A900, was available for purchase at sprint.com and at their stores. Well, the phone isn't available online and calling them results in them not having a clue. I took a gamble and went out to another Sprint store today (the closest one is 10 minutes away and they had nothing yesterday, so I went 20 minutes away). I got to the store and found out that they had 2 phones (I basically had to dance around if I was a new subscriber/adding a line just to find out if they had the phone). Great, so maybe I could buy one. Unfortunately they would only sell it if I was a new subscriber or activated a new line as they have to meet quotas. So here I am a customer of 6 years that currently has 6 lines on Sprint and am paying $165 per month and they won't let me shell out $350 for a new phone (I'm not eligible for a rebate and I wouldn't take it as it would extend my contract). What kind of customer service is that? The guy at the store said if he had 10, he'd sell me one. My hope is that Radio Shack gets them tomorrow and I don't have to deal directly with Sprint. Why can't corporate headquarters make sure that phone stock is available when they make a press release and why can't they tell stores that they should try to keep customers? Customer service says that it is cheaper to keep a customer than to gain a new one.If I didn't have such a good plan with Sprint and we already have the phones, I'd almost consider switching. However, I'm sure customer service is pretty poor in the whole industry.
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Crappy Power Adapter
On my last trip, I forgot my power adapter for my PowerBook. Luckily it was a one day trip and where I went, someone loaned me one for the day. Since I didn't want to repeat that experience, I decided to purchase a second adapter. Apple's adapter is $80, so I looked at alternatives and found one by Kensington. A cool thing about this is that I could get different tips and charge my cell phone or my iPod (it came with the iPod tip). I ordered it from Buy.com and received it quickly (UPS ground shipping from them is 1 day due to their proximity). I opened up the adapter when I got it and plugged it in. The fit was just awful; extremely loose and then I found that if I turned the tip, it was no longer charging. To top it off, the Apple adapter has a green ring showing when it was charging; the Kenginston one had nothing. Luckily returns for Buy.com are simple; total time from delivery of adapter to being packaged up and ready to go back...about 20 minutes. Maybe I'm just too picky about what I buy, but for the $16 I saved overed buying the Apple adapter, it just isn't worth it to have a crappy product that I have no idea if it is charging without opening the computer and looking. I guess tomorrow is off to the Apple store to buy a second adapter like I should have done in the first place. Kensington used to make decent products; I'm not sure what happened here, but I'll steer clear of them in the future.
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Sound isolation - the final chapter
Well, all my sound isolation stuff worked pretty poorly and I was a bit annoyed at the noise. I decided to take another stab at it and read reviews that the Antec cases were pretty good and quiet. I bought a Sonata II from NewEgg that arrived yesterday. I removed my computer from the old case this morning and put it in the Antec. I powered it up and was amazed at how much quieter my server is. The new case cost $99 + tax and shipping; the old one was about $60; the $40 difference is quite remarkable. When I got the server in the first place, I said I wanted a quiet case, not knowing a whole lot about build your own computers, I let Chip Merchant pick a case. That sure was a mistake and I won't repeat that one. The Antec case is well built and everything fits together well. The cheap case I had before came with no instructions and was extremely bare bones. Too bad I had to go through the process of swapping cases and hearing my machine for a month.
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eBay Feedback sucks
As I mentioned in a previous entry, I got a PlayStation 2 network adapter off eBay. It took forever to arrive and the seller wasn't responsive. Once I received it, I left neutral feedback saying that shipping was slow and seller was unresponsive. Well, today I checked my feedback and found that I got neutral feedback from the seller with the comment that she had computer problems. A few problems with this: 1) I sent payment immediately which should make for positive feedback and 2) the seller had been posting feedback for others during the time when she was unresponsive indicating she had computer access, but didn't respond to me. Lesson learned...eBay feedback means nothing...always pay with a credit card so that charges can be disputed in case of a problem. If I actually sold anything on eBay, this feedback would look bad for me.