10 Technology Masterpieces that made it

I just finished reading Akweli Parkers article entitled "Ten Concept Car Success Stories: The Ones that Made it to the Production Line"

"Ever since legendary automotive designer Harley Earl created what was arguably the first concept car in 1938, the public has been enthralled to witness the ever-expanding limits of technology combined with auto designers' unrestricted imaginations.

Traditionally, concept cars were usually extreme flights of fancy. With exaggerated bodywork and wildly impractical technology (on-board nuclear generator, anyone?), concept cars of the past boldly tossed reason out the window while pointing the way to a more fun motoring future."

See the rest of his great article here.

10 Technology Masterpieces that made it

I just finished reading Akweli Parkers article entitled "Ten Concept Car Success Stories: The Ones that Made it to the Production Line"

"Ever since legendary automotive designer Harley Earl created what was arguably the first concept car in 1938, the public has been enthralled to witness the ever-expanding limits of technology combined with auto designers' unrestricted imaginations.

Traditionally, concept cars were usually extreme flights of fancy. With exaggerated bodywork and wildly impractical technology (on-board nuclear generator, anyone?), concept cars of the past boldly tossed reason out the window while pointing the way to a more fun motoring future."

See the rest of his great article here.

An Epic Failure to Service the Customer and Resulting Revenue Loss

This is notes from a recent dialog I had with an Big company representative who utterly failed to comprehend that she lost her employer money by not escalating this.  To be fair to them, I got on the phone and a person stayed with me until they solved the issue.  Their phone service is awesome.  I guess you could say that every barrel has its' 'bad apples'.  Private info is blacked out.

**************FIRST MESSAGE FROM ME********

Hi:

For some reason, I cannot retrieve my password for duanexxx. I no
longer seem to be able to get access to emails at nickull@XXX.com or
duanexxxx@XXXXXXXXXX.com which are listed as the emails that the password
reset goes to.

Can you please reset the password for duanexxxxxxx and send it to
duane@XXXX.XXX?

I am trying to buy software.

Duane

**************MESSAGE BACK***********
Hello Duane,

It's me again, Grace. I apologize for the delay in response, I just got back from my two days off. Thanks for your understanding.

Sorry to hear about that, Duane. However, I still wanna thank you that you have been an  customer. Should you have other concerns, please let us know. Cheers!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

**THIS IS THEIR RESPONSE WITH MY SECOND MESSAGE INLINE***
 Inline:

On 12-01-18 1:38 PM, wrote:

Hi Duane,

Thanks for contacting Support again. This is Grace and I'm
taking over on Gagan's behalf. Glad to assist you today.

I understand that you need assistance in resetting your password for
"duanexxxx". I realize your eagerness to have this taken care of,
and I'd be happy to help.

Duane, I can reset the password for you. Before I can do this, I
require that you provide at least one of the following, for your
security:

- the order number of one of your purchases
DN: #120020XXXXXXX

- the last four digits of the credit card used for your account
DN: MasterCard .... XXXX

- the answer to one of your security questions

And two items from this list:

- your birth date
DN: April XX,XXXX

- the billing address listed on the account
DN: XXXX West Xth Avenue, Vancouver, BC XXXXXXX

- the phone number on the account
DN: One of these
604 XXX XXXX
604 XXX XXXX
604 XXX XXXX

Upon receiving your response, we will verify your billing address,
reset your password, and send you an email with your new password.

Take care and have a good one, Duane!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*****THE MESSAGE I GOT BACK A DAY LATER****

On 12-01-18 2:49 PM, wrote:

Hi Duane,

Thank you for providing the information that was requested, Duane.
However, the credit card number and order number you provided did not
match our records. Now to have this sorted out, please respond to this
email and provide other credit card numbers you used on the account
that you are trying to access. Or, provide an order number that you recall
you made on the account "duanxxxxxx".

Thanks for your patience, Duane. Hope to hear back from you. :)

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*************MY RESPONSE*****************

At this point I sent her several emails showing orders made from the specific account in question
and using the credit card.  All these orders were labelled with all the data she had requested.

I also asked her to please expedite this as we are trying to make a decision to go with a competitor.

*******MY (SEMI RUDE) RESPONSE**********
So screw you. We decided to buy (A competitor) instead. As I told you
yesterday, we were trying to buy software from [you]. I am
responsible for IT buying in my company and you made the decision easy.
We will now use [someone else's software] as the standard.

I am really angry at the fact I have provided you everything you asked
for below and you don't even phone me or respond.

You just lost your company $$$

GoodBye!

***AND YET ANOTHER DAY LATER I GET A CHEERFUL BUT USELESS REPLY***

On 12-01-19 10:18 AM,  wrote:

Hello Duane,

I'm sorry to hear about that. It's really a pain for me as an
advisor to loose a valued customer like you. But please, allow me to
explain the other side of this issue.

If you feel that way because I am unable to reset your password right
after 30 minutes, and I am unable to phone you, I admit that it is my
complete mistake as I haven't given you a heads up. Please note that we
are receiving volume of emails and there are tendencies that we
overlooked replies. Further, [our company] does not provide
assistance via phone call so we are doing our best to provide you with assistance
through email.

Duane, please don't get me wrong about this, as much as possible I would
not want to be the reason of loosing a valued customer, so I apologize
about what happened.

Thanks for bearing with me. Have yourself a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


**************NOTES*************


OK.  At this point I am now completely pissed off.  WTF is she talking about 30 minutes???  I gladly would have loved if it had been done in twice that time.  The "Have a wonderful day" quote is about as stupid a thing you can say to a pissed off customer.  The last line "Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you." should perhaps only be used when the customer service rep actually does something.  What about not being allowed to use a phone to sort this out????

But wait - there is more...

*********MY RESPONSE*************


So are you giving me access to my account or not? I sent you all orders
I have copies of, answered every question you asked etc. I also waited 24
hours now, not just 30 minutes, which would be okay. I haven't bought [your competitors software] yet so if you can do this in the next hour, maybe we will stay as customers.

Reset the duanxxxx password and or change the email account used to
retrieve the password to duane@xxx.xxx or duane.xxx@xxxx so I
can do it myself.

If not, not only will you lose a customer, I will seek any legal remedies
that are available to me against you for denying me access to my
account and previous purchases.

Since I have given you everything you asked for, you should just do this
right now. I should not suffer anymore because your company does not
allow you to pick up a phone to verify me.

Duane Nickull


************HER RESPONSE*************


Hi Duane,

Thanks for your response again. As you have requested, I reset the
password for "xxxxxx". This is the password: xxxxxxxx.

Please let me know if it still does not work. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


************NOTES*************


Guess what?  It did not work!!  I sent another barrage of emails explaining politely that it did not work.  This is where I decided to call and got a smart, capable  rep who fixed the issue.


*********HER REPSONSE (24 hours later)**********


Hi Duane,

Thanks for letting me know about that. I checked your account and found
that "xxxxxxxxx" is renamed to "xxxxxxxxx". This is why
you're still unable to access the account.

Now, please sign in with "xxxxxxx" using the password I
provided. If you still can't, I will have to reset the password again for
you.

Thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*********NOTES*********


So at this point I had the issue solved by the very capable and heroic guy from their help telephone desk.  I tried her advice again and once again, it did not work.  This prompted me to send yet another email back saying "It doesn't work"


**********HER RESPONSE (A DAY LATER)********


On 12-01-20 3:41 PM,  wrote:

Follow-Up: 173662775

Hello again,

I wanted to send a quick note to see if you are still experiencing any
difficulties with the  Store. Resolving your issue is important to
me, so please don't hesitate to reply if you need any further assistance.

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*********MY FINAL RESPONSE************


???

You didn't think it was important enough to fix when I asked yesterday so
we went with [competitor] instead. We will not buy your products for our
office.

Duane

************FINAL NOTES**********

Ok - I got mad.  I acted a bit unprofessional but honestly, this sort of thing should be a lesson for anyone doing customer service.

1.  Don't wait 24 hours each time.  Note the entire thread took place over 6 days.
2.  Escalate things if you can't figure them out.  I don't claim to know everything and will gladly escalate stuff to whomever can help.
3.  Don't be condescending to the customer with crap like "Have a wonderful day" when you know they're frustrated at you.

and lastly...

Grace - you are an idiot!!!!

More on (Moron?) SOPA

Funny thing about SOPA is that it keep my awake at night.  I actually took the time to read the bill to understand it better and it seems that around 2:45 AM my brain makes random connections as to why the Stop Online Piracy Act might pose threats to people who don't event know about it.

Today a colleague wrote a post also outlining some additional thoughts entitled "10 Reasons Lots of Websites Violate SOPA and Don’t Know It".  Now according to several news sources, SOPA has been shelved so no one is actualy violating it as it is not in effect.  Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about from a perspective of false positives and what could happen.  On the InternetServiceProviders.org blog I found the following arguments.  I've reposted a few to share here but urge interested parties to go to the source to leave any comments or read the rest.  These are five of the ten reasons.

"1. Vague Language – Though House supporters have claimed that SOPA is designed to protect the intellectual property of Americans from foreign profiteers that illegally distribute content in exchange for advertising and membership revenue, the vague wording of the bill makes it difficult to understand exactly what constitutes a violation and certainly doesn’t offer immunity to inadvertently-offending American sites."

My take on this is that there is certainly ambiguity and penalties in the forms of takedown notices.  The innocent ones here who might be the most liable are the ad servers themselves. If the bill was put into effect as written, it is not clear how some of the enforcement mechanisms might be implemented.  My stance is that most of the illegal copyright and trademark infringement has actionable paths under existing laws, many of which are not enforced.  If existing laws are not enforced, who amongst us believes a new, untested bill will stop this.  Not me.

2. User-Submitted Content – If a site allows any sort of user-submitted content to be posted as part of their business model, they could very easily find themselves in violation of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Under the current language of the proposed law, the owner of the site that hosts the content, the user that posts a link to the content and the website that allows the user to submit that link could all potentially be charged with violating the bill.

Our gut feeling on this is true, but once again, this is illegal under existing laws.  Why do we need a new law to stop someone from selling fake merchandise over eBay?  Use existing laws.

3. The “Friend-of-a-Friend” Effect – Do you remember when you were a kid, and the friend of a friend did something that got you all in trouble? Maybe you weren’t directly involved, and maybe you didn’t even like that person very much, but your mom still said that you were “guilty by association.” Under SOPA, the same principal applies: even if a link to legitimate and legal content housed on another site is shared, the site that posts the link could be punished if the hosting site is found to house illegal content as well.

Not quite correct.  According to the SOPA act, as written today, a takedown notice would be issued.  This would still have the effect of creating a lot of work for webmasters.  Even the odds that the Technoracle blogroll points at a site that might contain an ad that is subject to SOPA laws is very high.

4. The Comments Section – One of the quickest ways to lose faith in humanity and the education system is to take a look at the comments section of a YouTube video or comedy article; comments are almost universally inflammatory and poorly spelled, but that’s still legal. Should SOPA pass and one trolling user posts copyrighted material in the comments section, the site would be in violation and could face blacklisting, blocking of revenue and DNS blocking.

This is not how I interpreted the SOPA Act but in such cases  take down notices would be issued.  What I am curious about is how the government intends to patrol all these comments.  Even as we contemplate this today, I would argue our NTi ( an index of collective content production vs content consumption) is reaching the point where most people create more than they consume.  Bots using RSS feeds and aggregators add to this menace.  To enforce SOPA, one would have to patrol the web with a virtual army of police to scour all such comments.

It is more likely that peer to peer interactions are going to be more effective against such comments.  I've deleted some spam from this site on numerous occasions.  Google also once in a while let's me know if there is a comment up here violating the Blogger terms (which I take down).  I would not voluntarily censor anything for SOPA if it was not directly violating someone's copyright or trademark against the true copyright owners will.

There are six more comments on the original article - a good read at http://www.internetserviceproviders.org/blog/2012/10-reasons-lots-of-websites-violate-sopa-and-dont-know-it/