Calling Amazon

I'm sitting in a conference session about the multiple ways customers these days can contact to complain or ask questions. One of the examples given is how you can contact Amazon by live text, phone call, booking a call back to you etc. Well if I've noticed one thing about this trend is providing more channels doesn't necessarily provide better service, just more channels to not get an answer. For sure it means you get to choose a channel suitable to you and text chat is often an easier way to talk to people if you live at the bottom of the customer universe in New Zealand.

What I've noticed though is whatever channel you use they have answers to the type of questions they get all day every day. But ask something they don't have a quick answer for and it doesn't seem to matter what channel you use, none is any more effective than the other. In this case I'd changed the e mail I used for Amazon and could recover the password to the old e mail address as it no longer existed. User error admittedly, but you'd think there would be a way to recover passwords other than by email (e.g prove your identity to Amazon and have a new e mail substituted). 

So eventually an e mail, a text session, a phone call and a letter later, I managed to retrieve my password using the psychic remote viewing option. I understand they are working on a method where they can get aliens to telepathically change your password before your even forget it, this promises to have some teething problems I imagine and the calls to the alien planet are reported to be as steep as 99 cents per minute. But of course they'd know you were ringing before you thought about it, so ethically you'd hope they'd  answer before you rang.   

Video Game Stores

I buy the occasional video game, and like many areas there are now online and retail stores to buy from. You can buy physical DVD's from specialist game stores such as EB or generalist stores that have a game section lie The Warehouse or JB Hi-Fi. You can buy DVD's online through websites such as HDWow or Mighty Ape, or you can download them through sites like Steam or Origin. For consoles, you still mostly have to buy the physical disk.

Providing you've got the bandwidth, Steam seems to be the cheapest source of games although you only get to use them on your account and you can't ever transfer them to someone else. Buying physical media online also seems to be the cheapest way to go, you can often save significantly on walking into your local store and generally the games arrive within a couple of days.

So at the expensive end of the market oddly are the specialist retail stores, perhaps they don't have buying power or cost a lot to run. I notice my local EB Games runs sales about every other week, their usually very high prices are reduced to what I would say remains relatively high prices. Occasionally you might see a bargain on an old game, but overall EB Games stays at the high end of the market even when they have a sale on.

These stores rely I think on reselling games a number of times. In a sense they charge the full retail price as a sort of rental, once you are sock of the game you bring it back for a trade in. EB Games then buys it back from you at a heavily reduced price and then sell it again to someone else at a margin. Often this makes the secondhand game cost more than other outlets regular price. I've seen new games in the Warehouse far cheaper than the same game second-hand at EB Games. 

I've often wondered how any EB Games store survives, they never seem that busy but perhaps they have a very loyal following of customers. I once returned a new disk that was damaged and they were really reluctant to replace it, it was one of those situations where they accuse you of damaging the disk even though you never got to play the game. I'll continue to look for a bargain there from time to time, but high rices and poor service aren't a winning combination for me. .

Sanatarium Weetbix

I've probably had Weetbix for breakfast on over 99.9% of all breakfasts for the last 45 years or so. I guess that makes me a dedicated customer and in all that time I can't recall a single reason to complain. Sanatarium I understand is owned by the Seventh Day Adventist church and there is a little controversy there because the company doesn't have to pay tax. That said they evidently use their profits for charitable purposes and the tax exemption is open to everyone working in the charitable field. 

Now over the thousands of servings of Weetbix I've had I can't ever recall them being anything other than exactly the same as every other time I had them. I've worked for food companies and there is plenty that can go wrong, so you'd think sooner or later something would get in there that shouldn't have, or they'd make a batch that wasn't quite right. But that has not only never happened to me, I can't recall a newspaper story on it either. 

So as a Sanatarium customer I can say until now I never gave them a second thought, never thought to right to them to thank them for years of perfect Weetbix, nor do I have any idea how they deal with complaints given I haven't ever had any. It is often easy to remember the shoddy products and service you've had, but not always easy to recall that something see every day can be part of a great service that you didn't stop to think you were getting. 

Buying a Camera Part 2

I was initially predisposed to buy the camera from JB HiFi due to the $100 gift voucher, and I guess because is one of my favourite shops. If I'd just walked in without doing any research I'm sure I'd have walked out with a camera that would have done the job. But as a now informed customer I knew they all had image quality issues compared to the latest cameras. So I had to decide which features I wanted and how much I was prepared to pay.   

As far as the camera went the Canon IXX hit what I wanted at the right price point, albeit about hundred dollas more than I had originally intended. The Canon had a great zoom, had enough mega-pizels that for my purposes any more wouldn't matter anyway, and had wireless bult in. In addition it was also small and could easily fit in my pocket, some previous cameras didn't have this feature and it can be a real pain lugiing them around. It also did pretty much everything automatically, not much I could play with manaually, but in that was fine as I didn't want to become a professional photographer I just wanted to click and have it all done for me. 

A number of online retailers sold the camera, I wouldn't need to see one in a shop because I'd read a lot of reviews about the camera. Cheapest was an Auckland retailer I had no history with, but very competitive was Ascent Technology who I have purchased a lot from over time. The clincher for buying from Ascent was the price, good track record of being "liberal" with returns, and the three year extended warranty they offer on everything they sell.  

The camera it turns out is perfect for what I want, easy to use and to my eye takes good quality shots. So a happy customer buying a great product form a great suplier - everyone is a winner. 

Must End Tuesday

It isn't quite a long weekend here but many people including me have chosen to make a long weekend out of the Thursday Anzac holiday and have four days off. This has led to a flurry of advertising from retailers about weekend sales that must end Tuesday. Now I'm struggling to think of a reason why a sale must end Tuesday, other than the retailer is trying to create an urgency in the buyer to make a spur of the moment purchase.

Now these days with web sites like Pricespy, when I want to buy any reasonably large purchases I check the price history of the item I am buying. Generally item like laptops have a downward trend over time as new models replace the old ones and the price drops. Tere is a premium anyway for new things, they charge you a bit extra to have the latest and only start to discount things after the initial burst of earlier adopters has signed up.

But the beauty of Pricespy and similar sites is firstly that you can quickly scan all the prices retailers are offering for a given item, without leaving home (or these days without getting out of bed). You can compare the main retailers and the online retailers and decide whether you'll go to a bricks and mortar store or order it online. But you can also see the price history and know that in a sale three weeks ago they sold the item for three hundred dollars less. Some firms like JB Hi-FI will then let you use this information to ask for that price and this has saved me a significant amount of money on buying at the ticketed price.

So why should a sale end on Tuesday?. If you can sell the item for three humdred dollars off on a Monday then you can sell it for that on a Wednesday. I appreciate the retailer is trying to create urgency for the consumer to buy there and then, and I'm sure this works as many customers don't feel comfortable with asking for a cheaper price. Also some retailers don't allow there staff to barter, they have junior staff serving and give them no leeway to charge other than the ticketed price. These strooes usually seem to have a few bargains to entice you in, but overall you often won't get a good price at these stores.

There is no reason now to have a "must end Tuesday sale", it is almost certainly nothing more than a marketing gimmick to pressure a sales.