death of a Kirby salesman
A few years ago, on a Wednesday night, I returned from work and Norma told me in passing that she had got a man coming to clean our carpets for free.
Ten minutes later, I found myself welcoming not one but two Kirby salesmen into my house. What followed was possibly the worst 96 minutes of my life (with the possible exception of yesterday's fixture at Anfield).
I am normally polite and well mannered so I dutifully sat with my cup of tea and listened to the sales guy's pitch about the miscellaneous wonders of the Kirby vacuum cleaner.
After a while of professional, polished and non-stop patter, I interjected and tried to ask 'OK - this sounds great but how much is it ?' in an effort to curtail proceedings but was ignored.
I waited patiently as he assembled various attachments for dog hair, vacuuming the inside of the car and accessing the hard to reach areas behind radiators.
I got slightly more irritated as Norma excused herself to make tea for the kids and the senior salesman passed over to the junior apprentice for phase 2.
I cursed silently as Norma returned and asked 'Listen - you've been here 25 minutes now. When are you going to hoover my carpets for me ?'. Without pausing for breath, senior sales guy triumphantly plugged in the vacuum cleaner, and proceeded to clean and re-clean a 4 inch square of my lounge carpet. He then instructed his stooge to dump the contents onto a white cloth and invited us both to examine the contents in minute detail.
It was dust. Not that fascinating.
Again, I interjected with 'Listen - I'm really not interest-' but was interrupted with 'OK - now we will hoover your bed for you. Please bring your current hoover upstairs'. To my horror, Norma led them upstairs where they apparently lifted up a duvet and vacuumed the mattress of my 6 year old daughter. Twice.
Two more pristine white cloths was brought out and we poured over the skin debris that a human leaves behind on the sheets when asleep. We compared and contrasted the superlative results of the Kirby which has lifted much more dirt than our Panasonic hoover.
Norma, feeling incredibly guilty and no doubt a little embarrassed, now started to assert herself and politely asked the salesmen to leave as it was now the kids' bedtime.
Still, the two sales guys persisted as, after what seemed like hours, we entered the home straight and the the closing of the deal. Finally, we got to a price. It was a lot - I think it was over £2,000 which almost made me spill my now cold cup of tea. I countered with 'Come on, I can get a Panasonic for £200 from Comet' and the sales guy immediately replied with his 'Objection-Retort' from the school of pressure selling about the benefits of the Kirby and its lifetime guarantee.
My wife left the room. I could tell she was now quite upset at the imposition of having these chaps in our house, interrupting our routine. People who upset my wife (with one honourable exception - me) tend to upset me so I now got slightly more forceful.
'Listen, chaps. I realise my wife invited you here this evening but she thought she was getting her carpets cleaned for free not a gentle, prolonged, high pressure sales pitch. We've got a hoover. We're not looking to buy a hoover and we certainly would never contemplate a Kirby hoover that cost over £2,000.'
Senior salesman piped up with 'Ah but that's the good news Mr. Brightside - if you commit tonight, I can offer you a 40% discount.'
I sighed inwardly and stared at the mantelpiece. I was transfixed. I stared again at the clock on the mantelpiece. The time was 7:41pm on a Wednesday night.
I stood up, folded up the white cloth, put the assorted attachments back into the box and handed it to the junior apprentice.
'Listen lads. I realise you're only doing your job but my wife has politely asked you to leave. I have also politely asked you to get out of my house but United are playing in Lyon and the game kicks off in 4 minutes so now I telling you to get your fucking stuff together and leave. Now.'
Senior sales guy could now (finally) see the writing on the wall and started moaning about how we'd wasted their time - a little ironic as I viewed it as them wasting our time - and started to protest and call me rude names.
I ignored him, turned the TV on, picked up his box of tricks and his catalogues and ushered them both to the door.
three red rings of death
Last Friday, Norman Junior III emerged from his bedroom, looked mournfully at me and pronounced in a quiet voice: 'Dad - I've got the three red rings of death.'
'Just have an aspirin and sit down quietly for a bit. Your mum will be back soon.'
'No Dad - not me. It's my XBox. It has the dreaded three red rings of death and won't boot.'
And so we embarked on a prolonged saga that involved a fruitless hunt for a two year old receipt that revealed plenty of interesting long lost items but not the actual receipt from Game.
Then I contacted Microsoft about the prospect of repairing a faulty console that was out of warranty and had subsequently fallen by £100 in price.
Much to my surprise, Microsoft told me that, for this specific hardware fault, the warranty had been extended to three years.
Microsoft checked the date of manufacture from the serial number, confirmed the box was eligible for the extended warranty and asked me to courier the faulty console, free of charge, back to their service centre in Frankfurt, near Germany for repair.
Microsoft sent me the necessary paperwork to ship the XBox to Germany using UPS. In turn, UPS sent me a package label, invoice, receipt and an export certificate.
I then booked an appointment with UPS to collect the games console at my convenience.
And all of this was accomplished without speaking to a single human being - except for Norman Junior III who is doing well and making a fine recovery after going 'Cold Turkey' from Call Of Duty.
It all sounds too good to be true...
Virgin Media email outage
Virgin Media email has been down for 48 hours and counting...
I am not looking forward to explaining this (again) to Norma tonight. She seems to hold me personally responsible and keeps asking 'What is wrong, why haven't they got in touch, why is it taking so long to fix it and when is it going to be fixed ?'
This is a complete CRM disaster from Virgin Media. No meaningful updates in over 2 days.
Can you imagine the fuss in the blogosphere if Gmail was down for just a couple of hours ?
has your company got a Community Manager ?
My support for the Disqus commenting system used on this blog is well documented. I have also had great support whenever I have had minor issues with a service I paid precisely nothing for.
Disqus are a small company with less than 10 employees. However, Disqus are not a cottage industry operating out of Daniel Ha's garage. Disqus are funded by venture capital (Union Square and angel investors) and raised $500,000 in the last round of funding (March 2008).
So it's not surprising that Disqus are growing and hiring people. However, what fascinates me is that in addition to hiring talented developers to develop, improve, enhance and fix the product, Disqus have recently appointed Giannii as a 'Community Manager'.
Ignoring the lack of a surname and some of the Web 2.0 terms sprinkled in this introductory post; for example, 'Chief Happiness Engineer' is frankly cringe worthy, it is worth noting that Disqus have many channels available for people to contact them:
- Disqus forums
- GetSatisfaction
More importantly, Disqus don't just sit by the computer waiting for people to call in - they proactively monitor all these channels and participate. Moan about a Disqus problem on Twitter and count the seconds until you get a response.
What is interesting about Disqus hiring a 'Community Manager' is not necessarily that a small startup can afford one but Disqus (and presumably the people controlling the purse strings) actually view this role as one of the first ten, and most important, positions to be filled in the company.
So what ? Every company has a 'Community Manager' - they are just called different things 'Sales', 'Marketing', 'Partners', 'Customer Care', 'Public Relations' - every company does this stuff but they don't a) shout about it and b) dress it up in Web 2.0 tinsel.
To pick just one example, Apple are a big, successful company who make clever videos and sell expensive, stylish computers, iPods and iPhones to this type of demographic so surely they must have a 'Community Manager' ?
Surprisingly, they don't. In September, Apple released the 2.1 firmware for the iTouch and this update broke WPA2 wireless connectivity. Having recently acquired an iTouch and been hugely impressed with the device, I was surprised Apple could have introduced such a fundamental bug but I ignored it and waited patiently for a patch.
Unsurprisingly, lots of Apple customers experienced the same issue and multiple threads arose to discuss the issue on Apple's official support forums. The most popular thread now has 36,208 views and 436 replies.
- How many of the 436 replies came from Apple ? None.
- Did Apple respond to any of these threads ? No.
- Did Apple even acknowledge the problem ? No.
- Do Apple care about their customers ? Not sure.
- Am I encouraged to give more money to Apple by spending in the iTunes Store ? No.
- What impression does this give to a recent Apple convert ? Arrogant.
- When is 2.2 scheduled for release ? Not known.
- Will 2.2 include a fix for this issue ? Not known.
- Is a fix even on the horizon ? Originally, I would have bet money on it but, given Apple's lack of response to date, I am now starting to have doubts.
It's obvious that Apple don't have a 'Community Manager'. Does your company ?
BA launches bid for prestigious 'marketing campaign' award
British Airways, shocked at missing out last year's trophy, have launched a superlative campaign for 2008.
Agency: Itchy & Scraatchi. Cost: £25,000 found in a digger after the completion of T5. Gate 3 - Newcastle airport.
Together we can work wonders
Off to a gentle modest start.
Together we can get people talking about T5
That is certainly true.
Together we can make T5 world famous
Some wag has added a prefix of 'in'.
Together we can keep people smiling
Most people smile, dumped in Vancouver 17 hours late with no clean shirts and underpants, don't they ?
Together we can keep things moving
Well most things with the exception of the baggage carousels.
...and the final, closing, crowning glory.
Together we can get off to a flying start
Honestly, if you made it up, people wouldn't believe you.