Let Me Teach You
Want to learn how to build a web site? Don’t know how to register a domain name? Confused as to how it all works? Never fear! You can just attend my workshop at St. Vincent College this Tuesday morning.
I’ll be teaching 3 different workshops in the next few months through my partnership with the Small Business Development Center on campus. They are a wonderful group of people that want to help the businesses of Westmoreland and Fayette counties and I’m glad that I’ve had 5 great years (and counting) of friendship and partnership with them.
No More Pandora? WTF?
I read this article after seeing it listed on TechCrunch and it made me sick to think that Pandora might go away as a result of the fees that they have to pay to stream each song that they play via their web site. The part that sucks (and that I didn’t know before I read the article) is that the fees for playing each song vary between terrestrial (the AM/FM that most people don’t even use any more), satellite (those of us with Sirius or XM) and web radio stations (like Pandora).
What the hell is up with that? Why aren’t they all paying the same fees? Why are great web sites like Pandora doomed to failure because of the inequities in the fee structure? I sure as hell hope that there is some way for Pandora to survive. Kudos to Rep. Howard Berman for trying to broker a deal to get the rates reduced.
Pittsburgh: The Turkish Television Series
I’ve been following a web site called Tunesmith and Anthony for a little over a year now. Anthony is the main force behind the site and — like PittGirl from The Burgh Blog — he also writes anonymously. I wish I knew who the hell this dude is because I’d love to buy him some beers one night to thank him for all of the funny stuff he’s posted to his site over the years.
His most recent masterpiece has been “Pittsburgh: The Turkish Television Series”. He’s taken some obscure Turkish television show and put subtitles along the bottom to make it look like the episodes are dealing with present day issues in Pittsburgh. It’s some of the funniest stuff I’ve watched on the web in a long time (although it won’t be funny to people outside of Pittsburgh) and I keep looking forward to new episodes. You can watch the first episode below and then make sure to check out Part 2 and Part 3.
Customer Service: Garmin
This is the first of (I assume) many postings about customer service experiences that I’ve had. I want to share them with you, the readers of my blog, in the hopes that you are able to learn about the good or bad things that a company has done and either make sure to patronize a company in the future because they did a really nice job or that you stay the heck away from them because of their shoddy customer service.
I received a Garmin nuvi 350 GPS from my parents 1 1/2 years ago for Christmas. They wanted me to have one since they knew that I traveled all over the place for my job (12 counties in southwestern PA). For 18 months, the GPS was working great but then all of a sudden, it stopped working — meaning that it wasn’t able to acquire the GPS satellites and find my location — rendering the unit useless.
I went onto Garmin’s web site to see if I could fix it and learned that I could do a master reset — which actually did fix it the first time. Unfortunately, a few weeks later the same problem occurred and the master reset didn’t do anything to fix it this time — so I called Garmin support and spoke with one of their customer service folks.
I identified myself and explained when I bought the unit and what was wrong. The gentleman told me that in order for it “to be looked at and repaired” it would cost $200. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I told the man, “Um..sir….that’s half the price of the unit NEW”. He said “I understand but that’s our policy.” I told him that that price was unacceptable and that I would rather by a new GPS from another company with that $200. He paused for a second and then stated “Well…the best that I can do for the repair is $100. I sat there and said to myself “Damn….I would’ve had to pay $200 if I hadn’t complained about that price!”
After hearing about the super-quick 50% discount on the repair, I told the customer service rep that I wouldn’t even spend that much for a repair because I still thought it was too high. He paused for a second and said “Let me check out something. I’ll be right back”. He returned to the phone about 2 minutes later and stated that “because it was only 1 1/2 years old”, they would send me a “new” (refurbished) unit free of charge once they had received my old one back.
I received the new unit about 10 days later and it’s been working just fine. I’m happy that Garmin replaced the unit for me, but I’m definitely disappointed that I had to complain heavily about their customer service/support policies in order to get the free replacement that I did.
Stay Retired Brett
Would someone please tell me why athletes decide that they want to retire…make a big freaking deal about it….the networks show their highlight reels….and then talk about the gaping hole in their respective sport because they are no longer playing…..and then all of a sudden decide that THEY WANT TO PLAY AGAIN?!?!?
Brett Favre is a great football player, but for Pete’s sake…why the hell did you retire in the first place if you were going to come right back? I’m so sick and tired of hearing about him coming back. I hope he ends up playing for a team that the Steelers play for so that we can sack his indecisive ass!
How PennTAP Came To The Rescue
Penn State just published a great article about the organization that I work for and our results for 2007. I really enjoy my job and the clients that I get to work with, so it’s great to see our results year after year. I just can’t believe that in 5 years I’ve worked with over 200 businesses!