The case of the lost wheelchair

If you have followed my blog, you know by now that I have started to dislike flying a lot in the last few  years. Ever since the financial crisis went from Wall Street to Main Street airlines have been trying to cope with the fact that fuel prices went up and fewer people can afford travelling internationally. On top of that their service is getting really crappy as well. Believe me: airlines are trying to pinch every penny. I also think this is wrong; instead of raising prices and lowering service overall to a lousy level  (paying $5 for a […]

Forget customer service; just tweet…

I hear a lot of people gripe about companies and how lousy customer service is when something goes wrong. I have some personal experience with that myself.  Just search my blog for the word “fail”. It seems that calling or emailing customer support nowadays isn’t getting you anywhere. So what is a person to do about it? Well, I have found that for whatever reason the whole “social media” thing is apparently more important now to companies than good old complaints by email. So lately I have been tweeting my gripes. And it has proven to be more effective than emailing. […]

Epic T-Mobile #FAIL

So in February this year I decided to get myself a new phone with my T-Mobile subscription. Since an iPhone 4 was way too expensive, I decided to get a high-end Android phone. The idea is that I give either that phone or my Samsung Galaxy S, to my girlfriend in the US as a birthday present. After some careful considerations I decided to get the HTC Desire HD as it packs almost the same specs as my Samsung. Now, one would think that the easiest way to order a phone would be online: after all it is 2011, right? Well, […]

Speednames? No they are not.

Here’s a true story in the category “customer support hell”. It is one of those stories where you would swear that people are actually instructed to do anything but assist you and get a kick out of that. A prime example of customer harassment instead of service. So what’s the deal? Back in 2003 I decided to register my last name as a domain name. Because the .NL domain name was already taken, I decided to register the .COM domain. I used a Danish company for this called “Speednames” (part of Ascio which is part of the UK Group NBT […]