Is HP Really Killing the Touchpad?

August 31, 2011 0 Comments

We have all heard the latest hype about the HP Touchpad that was released to the market back in July. After a dismal performance compared to the powerhouse Apple iPad, HP decided to kill off the Touchpad. The way they did this was by creating a firesale and dropping the prices to $99 for the 16gb model and $149 for the 32gb model. Anytime you create a firesale, you can guarantee that people will buy the product. Now, the question should be asked if HP really has a desire to kill the Touchpad.

Though they have taken the time to put out blog posts about the availability of the Touchpad, there are many business leaders that think HP is just using this as a great marketing tactic. Yesterday, HP announced that there will be more Touchpads to hit the market as a “final run”. This has made the hype even more extensive as the people that couldn’t get the tablet during the first initial firesale, might actually get a chance at a second sale. Hmmm…….

You usually do not see large companies such as HP put the amount of money into a product to just kill it after a month on the market. But you do see them create innovative marketing campaigns to drum up interest. The best way is to create demand and reduce supply. Once people wanted the tablet, HP had the customers where they wanted them. This is the same thing that Nintendo did when the Wii first came out. They had a great marketing campaign, but didn’t “anticipate” demand, so their supply was really low. Nintendo told everyone that is was a supplier issue, but most came to the conclusion that they were just controlling the supply to keep the demand high and it worked like a charm. HP could be doing the same thing with their Touchpad.

While I don’t know if HP actually plans on killing off the Touchpad after this “final” production run, we shouldn’t be surprised if they revive it and keep it going because of the interest that this firesale has created. We will probably see the price go back up, but maybe not as much as it was before. Even if they don’t keep the Touchpad alive, they could possibly sell it to another company for good money, so people that have the Touchpad will continue getting proper updates and upgrades. Either way, I should say, Well Played HP!

ARS Rescue Rooter Service Fail

August 16, 2011 5 Comments

Another company hasn’t learned the meaning of customer service and satisfaction. I came across ARS Rescue Rooter on Friday, August 12th. My A/C decided that it wasn’t going to work any longer, so I needed someone to come out and check it out. I had called a number of local companies, but they were booked solid for a couple of days due to the heat. ARS Rescue Rooter was recommended to me by a friend, so I decided to give them a call. They were the only one able to come out and check out my system. Boy, do I wish I was aware of how bad this company is.

ARS did arrive within the allotted time frame, so that was a plus. The technician came in my house and asked what was wrong. After describing my situation, he got his tools and headed to the attic. 10 minutes after fiddling around with my system, he came down to tell me that my motor was dead. Yes, 10 MINUTES! I was a little skeptical of the 10 minute diagnosis, considering he never checked the pressures on the system or even went outside to check the compressor. I asked how much a new motor was going to cost me and what time frame it would take to get the unit fixed. The quote was for over $1,400!

The best part was all of the services that he had “included” in the overall fee. He recommended an attic tent with a HSA plan for them to perform maintenance. These were all added on the quote with the main culprit of a $900 motor. He then proceeded to tell me that they didn’t have the motor in stock and it would be available on Monday, August 15th for install. I said I will decide on the bill once the motor is in and ready to go. The technician left the house and I had nothing to show for it. I did not stay in my house over the weekend as it was hot and I am a cold weather fan.

Monday comes around and I am working, waiting for a call from ARS Rescue Rooter. At around 12pm, I still had not received a call, so I decided to make one myself. The receptionist told me that I was on the schedule for the install and they would be out between 1 and 6pm. I said ok, as it was getting hot in the house and really uncomfortable. I was called by the dispatch at around 2:45 to tell me that the tech was on his way. The technician arrived at 3pm, which is within the time limit, so again, they were on time for both of our meetings.

Read Other ARS Rescue Rooter Complaints

A knock on the door revealed another ARS Rescue Rooter technician, who was asked by the original tech to come and install the motor. This is when the situation turned bad. The new technician was a very nice and courteous person and dealt with the whole encounter with respect and dignity. My grievance is really with the original tech, who is a lying and unscrupulous dirt bag. The new tech said hello and then asked what the issue was with the system. I explained it to him and he then asked for the invoice, which was odd. He took one look at it and laughed. He flat out told me that it was way too high for the services that were supposed to be rendered. I mean, a service tech from the same company realized that this service call was way too high. This is when I started to get angry.

The new tech came in the house and worked on diagnosing the system himself to make sure that a motor was really necessary. As he did so, I go the model number of the motor that was supposed to be installed. After about a minute of searching online, I realized that the motor was only about $600 at most places. I even was able to get a quote from ARS Rescue Rooter’s distributor that provides them with the motors. They were going to sell the motor to me for only $575. After this, I got even more steamed. Why would ARS Rescue Rooter allow such a ridiculous profit margin on a part, when they should be making their money on time. I can understand a small margin on the part, but not around $400. I explained my findings to the new tech that was up in the attic and he started laughing. I told him that I got the price directly from their distributor and this prompted him to call his manager.

He did this with no excuses and honesty. He told his manager what the issue was and requested that the issue be resolved. I had already made the decision that I was not going to go through with the fix because once you try to screw me over, you can consider it done. After speaking with the new tech and getting the run down on what the real issue was with the system, I did realize that is was a broken motor. This is something that I had expected anyway because I did some testing before ARS was even called out.

My issue with ARS Rescue Rooter is how the original technician handled himself with the job. He came in quickly and didn’t even get the part to install, which coincidentally was in stock right down the street at their distributor, but he didn’t want to deal with the install on a Friday afternoon. This just showed a lack of morals and professionalism. If you don’t want to provide a service, then get another job. The price gouging is another big issue for me. I think ARS Rescue Rooter forgets that we do have the internet and the ability to do research for prices on items. If you are going to, in good conscience, quote someone way more than what should be allowed, then you should be put out of business. I have done some research about other ARS Rescue Rooter Complaints that show the ARS management encourages a 60% profit margin on everything they do. This is just unacceptable.

Just know, ARS Rescue Rooter, that I will never use your service again and I will also tell everyone about my horrible experience with your company. You appear to think that everyone is uneducated and stupid when it comes to repairs and that is why they use a service like yours. Have you ever thought that maybe we use a service like yours because we don’t have to time to complete a repair or just don’t want to deal with it. One thing that owning a business taught me was that customer service is always #1, but you show that it is a forgotten thought in your mission statement. You are all about money and getting it in any way possible. Don’t forget that word of mouth is the strongest form of marketing. If you cannot treat your customers with respect, then you should never be in business. Remember that a few bad employees and ruin a reputation. Take the time to train your employees properly and you won’t have as many complaints.

ARS Rescue Rooter, you are what I like to call a Failure! Good riddance to bad companies.

Note….I was able to get the whole service done for around $700 with a local company, so for half the price. Look at this number ARS Rescue Rooter, this is why you lose customers.

A Brutally Honest Blog Post Comment

February 28, 2011 1 Comment

As a blogger, I am aware that I will subjected to the onslaught of comment spam. This is something that I deal with each and everyday, no matter the frequency of posts. I am learned to accept it and embrace it. Though I embrace it, I still hate it beyond all measure. People that spam blog comment sections are, for the lack of a better term, dumbasses! Do you really think that I am going to approve your comment when all it has is links to porn sites and illegal drug sites? Give me a break you slackers. Most of you use automated systems to push out your crappy links to every blog in the blogosphere, but there are a few of you spammers that try to leave related comments. While your comments are still considered spam, I will sometimes give you approval if your comment is actually related and you just place one link in the comment that makes sense. This is few and far between though as most people are just looking for quick links to their crappy sites from blogs that auto-approve comments.

This past weekend I was going through my spam comments making sure that the spam catching software was not getting legitimate comments flagged. I came to the end of about 400 that came in over the weekend, and I found one that caught my attention. As stated, the spam comments on my blog are just crap that don’t even relate to the post or even the blog itself. This one comment is definitely spam, but I like how the poster did it. This comment was brutally honest about how he was trying to rank for a certain keyword and asked for approval. While I enjoy this person’s honesty, I wouldn’t approve a comment unless it related to the article. I just thought I would share the comment, as it made me laugh and think a little bit about spam. If every spammer was honest about their attempt to screw over Google, maybe we wouldn’t look down on them as much. Don’t get me wrong, I would still delete all spam comments as they don’t provide anything extra to the article, but I would enjoy the enthusiasm. Good luck to the poster that left the below comment on ranking for the keyword “kokomo dentist.”

Hey, I am having bad luck attempting to rank well for the keyword “kokomo dentist”… Pls approve my comment!!

The Majon International Inbox War

January 21, 2011 2 Comments

When I first started on the internet, I was all about free services such as directory submissions or website submissions (which are completely unnecessary). I was unaware of the repercussions of providing my email address to these services as it would end up in an onslaught of emails that I don’t want. The fist time I learned this was years ago, when I submitted my website and email address for a simple search engine submission. Boy, what that a big mistake.

Mistake number one was not knowing that website submissions are worthless and the service is usually around just to harvest email addresses. I figured out quickly to not use these services any longer and have never used one since. I even go out of my way to make sure clients are not using them. Once these services get your email address, they provide it to other companies or sell them to email marketers for some good cash. Think how much a email list of 500,000 qualified leads is worth??

Mistake number two was not realizing that I should have setup a dummy or spam email address for such website and directory submission services. When I first had a website, I didn’t have unlimited email accounts, nor did I want to deal with that many. Well, now I do and I am happy that I have so many. It is easier to setup filters on spam email accounts to push all of the crap out and just leave the good emails for my eyes. If you plan on doing a lot of directory submissions or other website marketing, I would advise that you setup an email address that can handle the amount of spam and emails. You don’t have to look at each and every email, so make sure to setup appropriate filters with your webhost to handle the amount you could possibly receive.

One of the main culprits of the email “spam” as I refer to it is Majon International. This company provides many services to online websites and businesses. These services include:

Blog Marketing & Promotion
Web Directory Submissions
Shopping Website Links
Social Bookmarking
Article Marketing Services
Targeted Email Marketing
Safe Email Advertising
Social Advertising
Redirect / Popunder Traffic
Keyword Targeted Traffic
Press Release Services
Banner Advertising

While they provide services that many websites would like to have, they get most of their business from email marketing. I am not knocking legitimate email marketing companies who get their lists the real way, but I do hate companies that purchase lists from all around the web. These companies, like Majon, just send email after email in order to get you enticed to purchase their services. I have never and will never purchase their services due to the way that they collect emails. It doesn’t seem to matter what email address that I use, they always get other ones that I have and start sending emails to those as well. This is extremely frustrating and it has caused me to declare WAR on Majon and companies the like spam emails.

From the first time that I received emails from Majon, I have never liked the company. Some may enjoy their services, while others don’t. I would never try any of their services as I know how to do all of them already by myself. The issue that I take is with the amount of emails that I receive from them with articles, product promotion, and service promotion lingo. I have taken my email account of the list, but for some reason, they either continue to send me emails, or other emails of mine start getting hit. While spamming others may work, this approach does not work for me Majon, do you get my drift?

Netflix Changing the Way You Add DVD’s to Queue

January 19, 2011 3 Comments

Netflix, the movie media giant that has taken the world by storm, has decided to change the way that customers can add DVD’s to their queue. You used to be able to add DVD’s to your queue on your streaming device, like an iPhone, but according to the blog post on Netflix dated January 17th, customers will no longer have that option. I think we all know why Netflix is doing this, but did they really think about how customers will respond? According the the over 2800 comments and counting, I don’t think they did.

Most of the comments are geared toward how Netflix is messing up a good thing and how if they start doing away with DVD’s then customers will start leaving. Netflix wants to move everything to instant stream as over the long haul it will be more cost effective than having to send out DVD’s to customers. The main issue that I see with it is that the US internet infrastructure cannot handle the data being sent for instant streaming. We just don’t have the network capability along with the fact that not everyone has internet, or even internet fast enough to stream movies properly. This is why the DVD option is so popular and how Netflix grew into a mega company.

Customers enjoyed the simplicity of Netflix because they could get a DVD in the mail within a couple of days or have the option to stream a movie instantly. Most new movies cannot be streamed instantly on Netflix, so customers would have to get the DVD, but if they plan on slowly taking that option away, what will Netflix be good for? Do they plan on getting the rights to stream new releases and forgot to tell their customers? I am not sure what Netflix has planned, but according to the angry customer comments, they better think of something.

I feel maybe Netflix has gotten too big, too fast and forgot how they got to this point. The only way to grow and to continue to grow is by making people happy, your customers happy. Without customers, Netflix doesn’t have a service and quickly loses market share to companies like Redbox. While I understand the intentions of Netflix’s change, I don’t understand why they didn’t survey their customers first to find out what they feel about it. My word of advice to Netflix is don’t forget where you came from and remember that happy customers can be your best marketing advantage. Lose happy customers, and lose your business. Does Blockbuster ring a bell?

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