customer service – Page 2

Starbucks is fired

It’s bad enough that Starbucks coffee tastes burnt. I could get around that by ordering, on my wife’s recommendation, the mild instead of the regular. And I can get by the milkshakes passed off as coffee by just making fun of the people who order them (A good general rule – if it takes more than 5 words to order your coffee, not including “please” and “thank you”, you’re drinking a milkshake). I even got past the first price increase that sent the largest coffee over $2 when you include tax. But now the medium coffee is $2.02, less than six months after the last price increase.

I’m done. No more Starbucks coffee. Tomorrow I’ll bring in a coffee mug and start drinking free work coffee.

On an unrelated note, I’m testing out a WordPress tag plugin. I don’t really know what it does, but this is the first post that has tags on it. Maybe nothing will be visible to you. Anyway, we’ll see.

The Kennedy Center is spamming me

My wife and I are going to see Phantom of the Opera at the Kennedy Center with my father-in-law next month, and I bought the tickets at their website. Now they’re spamming me, and refuse to stop. I tried their email preferences page, but every time I click anything, it selects all of the “send me junk mail and spam” options, and refuses to do anything else. I emailed their web support on June 20th:

I am unable to unsubscribe from your email list. I would like you to email me with updates related to shows for which I have tickets. I do not want any other emails from you. I do not want any regular mail from you.

Thank you.

Then again today after receiving more junk from them:

Customer # 3747291 requesting action on issue # 58603. I contacted you on June 20th, 2007, because you are sending me email spam, and your opt-out page on your website does not work. I received an automated response, and then nothing. Today, I received another spam message from you. I would appreciate your immediate action on this matter. I would like you to send me emails only in response to this issue, and for changes or updates to shows for which I have purchased tickets. Never contact me by postal mail, or by email for any other reason than stated above.

We’ll see what they do. Unfortunately, I don’t think the toothless CAN-SPAM act is applicable here because I have a business relationship with them. And, also unfortunately, they have something of a monopoly on large-scale theater in the area. Since both my father-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law are theater fans, it seems likely that I will return to the Kennedy Center.

In any event, I am annoyed by their junk mail, and I want it to stop.

Nice job, Apple store

Yesterday, my wife fried the power supply to her month-old MacBook. I think it happened when she unplugged it to move from the living room to the dining room. Today, I went in to the Pentagon City Apple store, where we bought the computer last month, and talked with a salesman there. He checked the power supply on a store computer, checked our computer on a store power supply, determined that our power supply was, indeed, dead, and promptly gave me a new one. No questions, no nothing. Just gave me a new one.

Then he walked me through the process for transferring files from the old computer to the new, which we tried once unsuccessfully. I’m going to try it again tonight.

So, I may not like Apple and their over-priced proprietary hardware and their snooty commercials and the f’ing iPhone. But I’m quite impressed with the service at this Apple store. They were busy, too. It’s not like I caught a guy, bored in an empty store, and got a lot of attention. And this will certainly be the first time an Apple has ever worked better after I touched it.