Tuesday, September 02, 2008 Covington: WWW By Gary Covington Looking in
THE good news! At last I've got the spare part -- a small plastic doodah -- for my garden grass cutter.
The bad news? Ordered from one of Davao's largest hardware stores where I bought the machine, it took five months and that's the difference between business and commerce, selling stuff to the customer.
Business is one businessman selling a product or service to another businessman, jacking up the price in the process to make a profit and it's smiles all round and, heaven forbid, no contact with -- yukk -- the customer.
Selling stuff to the customer is an afterthought, the "if there's one on the shelves you can buy it but otherwise there's the door". Selling stuff is the 24-hour bakery not having any bread, the stationery store not having any envelopes (really, really, up my nose annoyances from just the past two days). Business in Davao -- those businessmen passing the product and making a fine profit -- is booming but the customer can go hang, customer service stinks.
This episode with my grass cutter hacked me off so utterly that I decided to write to the makers, Black and Decker, direct. Not the local Far East manufacturer somewhere in Upper Hangchow Province but to B&D Great Britain where, not possessing any plastic, I could pay for spare parts with a UK check. But first I needed an address.
I warmed up the laptop and clicked up Black & Decker's UK website where there'd sure to be a spares shop and address. The little globe at the top of the screen turned, the blue line at the bottom advanced at a crawl -- Black and Decker is a big company with a correspondingly large website and PLDT, with all these call centers coming on line, simply cannot keep up with the demand. www -- world wide waiting. I went off to the kitchen to make a sandwich, brew a pot of tea, maybe paint the walls while I waited.
An eternity or two later, B&D's webpage came up. Hmmm! About B & D, Home, Sitemap, Careers, Store location, no spares -- try the sitemap. Click.
A list as long as your arm -- dustbusters, garden advisors, furniture, flooring, newsletter, where were the damn spares. Try customer service (and here's a photo of a beaming, ready to please, knows everything, blonde). Click.www -- and then up came a website called DeWalt Service Technical Homepage -- oh no, a web callcenter with a weird American accent but wait here was an icon -- a tiny hand wielding a pen and an envelope -- get in touch with us. Click.
www -- the webpage you have requested is temporarily out of service or unobtainable.
Lastly lastly, and not being qualified to comment on the MILF, MOA-AD, GRP carrying-ons I won't, but just what are these MILF "rouge" elements I keep reading about? Could it be a typo -- rogue elements -- slipping into everyday usage (like the infamous "stockfiles" roadsign)?
