Bad Guys/Products Good Guys/Good Stuff
Universal Ford Guyon Racing - coming
Shaw Communications Mopac Race Parts
Canadian Tire Auto Repair ING Bank
World of Wheels Royal Bank - with reservations
Future Shop Nucleus Information Services
Winks Memory Express - coming
Autotrax/Kovac Software
RED is BAD-STOP don't shop
GREEN is Good -
shop at these places
They just don't get it. All the establishments (red titles) listed in this blog gave me poor
service. I'm not a complainer, I'll eat the steak if it isn't done right,
without complaint. I'll remove the hair in the food and eat it. The food! I
won't complain when I get slow service at the burger bar or the customer service
at a store. But there are times when you just want justice when people fail to
deliver. To quote from the movie Network: "I've had enough and I'm not going to
take it anymore!"
I'm in customer service and answer the phone 24/7 for the products I do service
on. I give 120% to my customers and hang on or remain in the loop until they are
satisfied. The buck stops at Bob's phone. Consequently I expect similar service,
or at least an ATTEMPT from the people I spend money with, or write letters to.
For research done on this topic, read this article:
News iSpeak.mht
I was a big Norton fan from DOS days for Pete's sake! I loved Norton Integrator
and Norton Utilities and their disk doctor product where you could actually see
the File allocation table code and stuff. Cool! I thought Peter Norton was a
genius. Alas, I think he sold out to Symantec and things went downhill from
there. I use PC Anywhere, a reasonably good product that I've had no problems
with, but their Norton Antivirus is another matter. I was buying it every year
as a bonus that came with my QuickTax software. Sometimes it worked. Most of the
time it would crash or hang my XP computer and would bug the hell out of me when
it scanned a Word file I created, for many minutes before saying it was Okay. I
mean, I wrote the damn thing, but the AV would still take minutes to scan it.
Stupid thing. Norton didn't find a virus that another program (McAffee) did. It
was a big one too, and my AV was ALWAYS up-to-date because I had Auto-update on.
AVG found it and killed it. I emailed Symantec about this and THEY didn't
respond either. I didn't see the virus in their hit list and here I thought they
were the Kings of the AV world! They have become too big and too complacent. I
had about 9 months left on my AV subscription and I took Norton off and bought
AVG antivirus. Not ONE problem with the latter. No hangups. No long scans for
NOTHING. I love it. I hate Norton AV and will not recommend it to anyone. (And
I'm a consultant for these kinds of things).
I really liked Pizza Hut because they had different kinds of pizzas, including a pizza "desert" that no one else had. I visited Pizza Huts in Calgary, and in the United States and was disappointed with most of them. In one I was given sour chocolate milk, that was expired as shown on the date. I asked for a replacement and got another sour one. This one I hadn't opened because it had the same date as the previous one. At another place, my wife was given a salad with a moldy piece of lettuce. My friend and I went to a place in the USA and we waited an hour for a pizza that never came but was always promised. We left without eating. And another time, my wife found a hair in her food. I can see why the Pizza Hut in Calgary closed.
Universal Ford and Ford Motor
Company
I've been a Ford man for 45 years. Read this letter I sent to Universal Ford and FMC. Did I get a reply? No.
Dear Sir,
Read this if you care about why I, a former, loyal, customer did NOT buy a Ford..
I have been a Ford man all my life, starting with a 1953 Ford in 1965. With a few exceptions, every one of the 24 vehicles I've owned has been a Ford.
I bought two vehicles from Universal, a used Chev Sonoma in 1995, and a new 1997 Ford F150. For the last ten years I have had all my service and oil changes done at your shop. The truck was phenomenal, the best of the 24 vehicles I owned. I drove it relatively trouble-free for 10 years. At first I was a Gold Card holder, then a CFL.
Your service department, Chris Torok and Larry Madden especially have been very good to me and my truck. I never had an issue with any service you did, although one time Dag never contacted me when there was a $1000 hit on a service requirement.
Your body shop needs some work. I had to take my truck back 4 times to get my door fixed. There was a problem with wind noise they couldn't fix (hence 3 trips), and then a piece of plastic moulding they said they couldn't get anymore. In any case, were it not for the CFL card and the $500 credit I get with it, I would not have taken it back there the 3rd and 4 time. The eventual job they did was good, but I'll never take a vehicle there again, or recommend it to anyone.
Last year I wanted to buy a new car for my wife, something sporty, around $20,000. I went to Universal FIRST and was disappointed that the salesman could not show me anything. The only cars that were close were a couple Escapes but they were black, and very plain looking. I was not shown or given any brochures. I went back on two occasions, when I was there for maintenance on my truck, to try and buy a Ford. Nothing. So I went to every other car dealer/manufacturer in the area and settled on a 2005 Chevy Cobalt for about $19,000. A new car, in yellow (not offered on Escape), new engine, sporty, and a dealer who wanted to sell me a vehicle!
This year I went to the CMDA show because I wanted to buy a new truck. Ford had the nicest display, but the only small truck Ford had was a very boring Ranger, with no options. Plastic everywhere, nothing special. I saw the Mazdas and was very impressed with the B4000, like the beautiful demo they had at the show.
Regardless, I went back to Universal to buy a Ranger but once again was not shown anything of interest. You had no stock and what you did have was crap! I was shown a 2005 model that was nice, but I wanted a 2006. I asked for a brochure and was told there were none so I was given a photocopy, without pictures. Again I went back 3 times to buy a Ranger and could not even get to the point of sitting in an office to discuss options and price.
I went to the "Invitation Only Event" you had. Now that was a joke! I got a special invitation in the mail, then a follow-up phone call to see if I was going to attend. I thought I was going to have to rent a tuxedo! Wow! This was going to be something! I invited my wife there at lunch time, telling her about the big "shin-dig" you were having. When we arrived and handed in our invitation we were on our own. No one to greet us, no salesman to ask us why we were there (we were wondering ourselves), no big demonstrations or events of interest. No food! We were offered popcorn and a bottle of water! It is laughable that you would invite someone to such an "event". We expected hors oeuvres, we got popcorn! People really laugh when I tell them that story.
I found out the Customer for Life and Gold Card programs were changed so they were no longer as "sweet" as they were. This was the only reason I went to you guys for oil changes and service. (I can do these things myself). Not continuing with this incentive is a big mistake on your part.
Last week I sold my F150, so I needed a new vehicle. I didn't even stop at Universal. I went to Marlborough Ford and was ignored there as well (even after asking the receptionist to page someone to sell me a truck), so I went to Mazda, then Dodge and Toyota. What a difference! Here were people that wanted to sell me a vehicle! They answered all my questions, showed me all kinds of vehicles and I got to test drive one vehicle from each dealer.
When I first walked into Toyota, a girl greeted me and said it was her job to "make sure no one stands around waiting and to make sure a salesman was available." I was given all kinds of pricing options in clear language. I was told what kind of truck I could have – NOW ! I was offered a free coffee. The sales manager came in to introduce himself, and I hadn't even been that serious about buying at that point. They gave me two brochures, one 2006, the other 2007. I was told the bottom line that the 2006 was mine for 3.6% financing, the 2007 for 5.6% financing and they could "deal" on both.
I bought the 2007 Toyota, a Tacoma with all the bells and whistles for which I paid $40,000 cash. Toyota offered NO incentives on their vehicles (not the trucks anyway) but they had a winning attitude and were willing to accommodate and discuss the purchase with me. When I decided to buy, they were willing to deal and gave me $1000 in options. They even took $5000 on my Visa card.
I feel bad for Ford. In my business (computer control systems), when a long-time customer buys a competitors product this really tells about the organization, service, and salesmanship of the company.
Have I given up on Universal? Yes. On Ford? Yes.
I still have my Mustang and will defend IT'S honor, but no more than that. I'm a Toyota man now.
No wonder Ford is in trouble.
Former Customer for Life
coming soon
They don't know how to communicate...
My wife had an overheating and antifreeze-loss problem with her 4 liter Mustang so I told her to take it to Canadian Tire. After all, they are my favourite store for tools, parts, car stuff, hardware, you name it. First they replaced the thermostat and of course they never saved the antifreeze so they charged her for another gallon. The engine still overheated. Then they did a radiator/engine flush which they said they "had" to do. That didn't work either. Then they changed out the water pump. I knew now they were getting pretty ridiculous because, though a defective water pump could cause the engine to overheat, there was no evidence of this from other symptoms. For example, the water pump did not leak through the bleed hole, indicating the seal was shot. Also, there was no high pitch squeal from the water pump, typical of a failure. Finally, a visual inspection of the water pump showed no problems with worn or broken impeller blades. So why did they change it? Of course it didn't fix the problem and now the costs were over $100 for the pump replacement. I went to Canadian Tire and had a discussion with the service manager who found it difficult to talk his way out of this one, so he suggested we talk to the mechanic. I asked the same questions, "Why did you replace the water pump" and "If the first thing you "repaired" didn't work, why were we charged for it? To the latter, he responded "because the car needed it". Talk about ridiculous. I asked if they checked the thermostat they took out (by putting in hot water and measuring temperature of when it opened). They said no. So my question was, "if you didn't test it, how do you know it was needed...especially since it DIDN'T FIX THE PROBLEM!???" When I told him the symptoms of a bad water pump he asked me somewhat acidly, "So you're a mechanic now?" I said yes, and a "better one than you are". He got real testy and was ready to bop me one and I was ready to respond. In the end, my wife got all her money back and since it would cost more to take out the new water pump than it was worth, they let us keep it. Oh yeah, I took the "defective" pump to another company, Moores Engine service and they said there was nothing wrong with the pump! Of course there wasn't.
Moores, incidentally, found the problem by looking at the symptoms and saw that water was leaking into the crankcase. A further inspection showed that a head bolt had snapped on the aluminum engine allowing antifreeze to leak out. Leaking into the engine was a recent phenomena, earlier it was leaking down the side of the block where it was very difficult to see.
Addendum Dec 2007
A week before Christmas, I couldn't get my truck into the Toyota dealer for service because they were too full. Toyota said it was because so many people travel at Christmas they want to make sure their vehicle is in good working order. I walked by the Canadian Tire store I regularly shop at and noticed that EVERY one of their 10 stalls (each holding 3 vehicles) were empty. Not ONE vehicle in there and the floor was perfectly clean. It's good the mechanics found something they can actually do well...
I went back on Dec 27 (2007) to buy a sander that had been listed on sale a few days before Christmas. They would not give me the unit for the sale price stating that the rule is only one day grace is allowed. I asked them what the difference was (now it was 5-6 days) and they said "if we did this for every customer it would get out of hand". Well I was only the one customer with money to spend. The sander didn't cost them any more so they would make the same profit they would have had they sold it to me last week. The manager who had been called over to discuss my request had just been arguing vehemently with a Pakistani couple. Obviously Canadian Tire is more interested in making a couple bucks extra than having good customer relations. If my customer ever yelled at me, I'd be fired for not handling his requests effectively. I bought the sander somewhere else.
The organizers of this yearly February show could do a lot better and make the Calgary date the biggest in the ISCA (International Show Car Association) group. I was at the WoW in 2007 as a participant and found a bunch of issues that could have been handled better. An email I sent was replied to by an organizer who said he "acknowledged all the statements I made" but he didn't comment one way or the other on individual items so it's unlikely things will change. The WoW gets about 300 cars every year for the indoor show. The Three Hills Car Show, outside on main street gets over 1000 every year.
These are the complaints about the 2007 WoW:
Addendum:
I volunteered to help for WoW 2008 but my request was not acknowledged. I figure you shouldn't complain if you can't come up with solutions, so I volunteered to take pictures of every participant and arrange to have the pictures shown in the theatre when they won their prize, kinda like the Oscars. I had seen this done at an International Mustang event and it was very, very effective. No answer to my email.
Channel 13, Access TV Calgary
What boneheads. We were watching a movie (The Phone Booth) and with 5-10 minutes
remaining, they cut the movie off at precisely 11:00 PM. They then ran the
stupid program regularly scheduled for that time slot. We continued to watch,
thinking it was just an internal commercial, but no, the program never returned.
When I complained via their web site, they never responded. I complained to the
CRTC who said there was nothing they could do about TV programming! What the
hell is the CRTC for, then, anyway?
Then I watched Monk and the entire program was skewed with no sound sometimes,
no video, then distorted video and sound - for the entire hour. Next week the
SAME THING! Are they idiots or what? I complained again, but in true arrogance,
they did not reply.
A month later, we were watching another movie and the stupid people did the SAME
THING! At precisely 11:00 PM, they cut the end of the movie by 5-10 minutes. I
complained again, and got a form letter from them. I complained to CRTC and got
nothing.
My response: we don't watch that channel AT ALL anymore! The other day the best
movie of the night was on channel 13, but we elected to do something else
instead of getting abused again. (We only have 4 free channels).
coming soon
coming soon
coming soon
Dell, Microsoft, HP (yeah I know
it's hard to believe...)
coming soon. Actually, I've lost all faith in Microsoft and Dell and will be putting these guys on the Boycott side. HP isn't too bad, although their print and scan drivers are the worst in history.
These guys are great. They have an easy-to-maneuver web-site, they have the best interest rate on savings, GICs and RRSPs in the industry and they answer their emails!!! They don't have branches but are just an Internet Bank. They also have contests and promotions where you can win or earn money. If I could make my bill payments through them and have a good way to deposit cheques and stuff, I'd use them exclusively.
Okay, I hate ALL banks. They nit pick and nickle and dime everyone to death, yet they post profits in the billions of dollars. In my mutual funds, the best investments are the banks. They charge me $1.50 to send money by email, $1.50 if I get money from a bank machine that isn't owned by them. They charge me to see a photocopy of my cheques! Man, that infuriates me to no end! The interest they give (except for ING which I don't consider in this group at all) is pathetically low, and emails get responded to by a form letter. I recently sent the bank an email stating that the fact I was charged $1.50 for a bank machine transaction pissed me off so much, I took $20,000 out of savings there and put it in the ING. Did they care? No. They sent me a form letter explaining that transactions from a non-Royal Bank machine have the $1.50 surcharge. Duh! That's why I was complaining in the first place!
So why is this complaint on the GREEN side?
Well, they had a guy at my local branch that handled my investment needs and he was really good. Not only good, but cheap, not charging anything for his services. For ONCE, there is something free from the bank, even though the idea is to keep your investments there and not with some other institution. Bob would gently remind me by emails that we had an appointment looming and would even set his schedule so that I could come in. Once he worked on a Saturday when the bank was closed so that I could meet him. Now that's service. That isn't Royal Bank though, that's Bob S. Unfortunately he moved to the coast and someone else took his job. Stay tuned...
Update: The new guy is Nick Gill and he is every bit as good as Bob S. was. I highly recommend him. He even laughs alot at my jokes which is a bonus. So I've kept my money in RBC, all my investments are there, I've even got a couple loans from them. I trust them because I trust Nicky.
Mopac has everything you need for car racing. They have a great stock, a good catalog and will get you whatever you want from their other warehouses or locations at no extra cost. They gave me good deals. There are a couple cranky guys there who whine if you bring something back, but the two guys I deal with are super customer reps.
I finally gave up on ink jet printers and decided to upgrade to a color laser printer. Looking on the web, I found a real nice one at Tiger Direct for about $500, but the shipping from "wherever" (USA probably) was over $200. I found out that Staples sold Brother printers so I went to their on-line store and found the model I wanted for about $600 with delivery FREE! So I bought it and 3 days later it was delivered to my door. Now how is that for service?
Another time I had a coupon for $25 from previous purchases made. I had been carrying it around for months, and on the day I used it I was informed it had become expired by almost a couple MONTHS! The girl at Customer Service told me, "let me call the manager, maybe we can do something". She did and without blinking an eye, the manager, said, "Yeah, no problem. Honor it for full value". How is THAT for service?
It doesn't stop there. I had purchased a bunch of ink jet ink for my now dead ink printer (see paragraph above) and wanted to return it. I had bought the ink in March, and here it was November so I was dubious about getting a refund. The pleasant lady at Customer Service told me it was quite a while since I bought the ink but she would refund me the amount anyway. Now that's service.
A&W has a great, cheap breakfast and you get free refills on coffee. Tim Horton's you gotta pay extra for refills. MacDonalds is good too, on the refill side of things and also they have good coffee, but A&W has FRENCH TOAST and they make it better than 90% of the restaurants that serve this. I know, because I have made it my mission to find the best French Toast, which I have sampled in about 6 provinces, and 3 countries. The absolute BEST in the WORLD is at the Travelodge in Regina, Saskatchewan and I even wrote them an email to tell them so. But, getting back to A&W, I get a great French Toast for $3.99, consistently at any of their restaurants in Canada.
-Ahh, what can I say about Future Shop that is good? Nothing. Not
after they destroyed my car putting a stereo, keeping it 3x longer than they
promised, then charging the hell out of me. I expected quality work but
these guys were amateurs installing my stereo. I mean , what professional
electronics guy would twist wires together to make a "permanent" connection?
Here's a list of the wrongs they did:
They put in a big red 1/0 cable (big like your thumb) on the passenger side, then ran it across the firewall to the driver's side where the battery was. Isn't that stupid? This was a show car with lots of chrome under the hood and they made the whole thing ugly by running the cable across the firewall. This is the first thing I fixed.
Solder is the most reliable connection, followed by a well-made crimped connector. FSI (Future Shop Idiots) twisted the wires together then taped it with black tape. I would excuse my 10 year old of doing this, but not people I'm paying $6000 to.
They obviously expected me to accept the crap wiring and so didn't put in any quick connects. Wires were run in one run from head unit to amps in the back seat.
They didn't cover the engine as I asked. The engine is chrome and got all dusty, making me work a lot to get it clean again.
I told them to keep the bar installed so the car wouldn't get stolen. True, there were times it had to be off to do the work, but the car was there for many months with nothing being done on the car.
The car's a convertible show car. I told them to keep it inside. More than once I went past the shop to see the car outside and another vehicle in my former parking spot. This really got me fuming.
Compensation:
The windshield was compensated for by taking off $500 from the main bill for
the glass and my time and trouble to get it installed. (Paradoxically, my
total bill went up too...)
Some advertising was applied inside the car and I was not compensated for it.
I wanted $500 but it was refused.
I was given $300 Future Shop credit. This covers the insurance I had to pay,
but there was no compensation for the paint scratches and smudges. Also,
despite techs cleaning the engine, it's impossible to get all the dust out
that came from the shop.
I also spent much time going back and forth to the shop to make sure work was
being done and being done correctly. I should be compensated for that too.
2 years later as I'm trying to make modifications to the alarm system, I'm
having difficulty resolving the differences in the alarm module wiring with
the wiring in the manual I received from them. The manual was from a Viper
791XV. When I took out the module in the car, it was a 690XV! My bill said I
was sold a 690XV, so I wasn't too hot under the collar. However, I wanted the
latest and greatest when I bought the alarm system and if there was a 791XV
manual, there MUST have been a 791XV system available. So they sold me old
crap stock.
Update: It's been about 5 years now and I haven't bought one single thing at Future Shop, and realize I'm a gizmo guy that always wants the latest and the best hi-tech appliance available. I estimate they lost about $20,000 from me...because of a couple hundred bucks they refused to COMPENSATE me for and their crappy customer service.
They lied to me about the buyout price of the alarm after my 5 year contract,
charging me a lot of money for what they said would be "free" after the 5 year
contract. That's why I got the contract in the first place. Unfortunately the
contract DID NOT say that, it was a verbal thing from the sales person. Three
or four times there were phony alarms, requiring my neighbour to call the
police and then monitor the house. ADT replaced a sensor and it was okay. No
cops ever showed up, yet ADT was supposed to phone them. (my neighbour was
phoned by ADT, did the inspection, called back, but ADT did not call the
police).
After 5 years I cancelled the contract. It was about $30/month for piss-poor
service, as noted above. I paid the big price to keep the unit because at
least it had the horn that could scare away thieves. When my front door was
replaced and I needed a sensor, the jerks did not even respond (twice) to my
request for prices to replace it. I can replace it with a Radio Shack part,
but I wanted the exact part that ADT used just to make life simple. They
didn't cooperate so the hell with them. Boycott. Ask me what alarm system to
use and I'll say Alarm Force, not ADT.
Update: I replaced the sensor with one I had in my electronic stock. It came from Radio Shack and I only paid about $4.00 for it.
They changed the name from Macs and they changed owners too. Previously there
was always coffee available in the morning and it had a respectable price,
like Esso or 7-Eleven. After the change, I was in there twice and both times
the coffee pot was empty. When I did get a cup, it was priced way, way to high
compared to the others. Another time I went there at 7:30 AM and they weren't
open! Result? I don't go there. Do you think I want to take
the time to park, get out of my truck, go in, only to find that there's no
coffee? I don't need the stress.
Update: About 1
year later and I haven't even stopped there for emergency milk or bread. I
take the long way and get it at Coop, Sobey's or Safeway.
Okay, I don't boycott Tim Hortons (do you think I'm nuts?) but I'm pissed at them for the way they take
advantage of us consumers. Did you ever have their yogurt? It's expensive. Not
only that, check the cup they put it in. They don't fill the top 1" of the
cup, the volume of which is quite significant because the diameter is greatest
at that point. When I complained to them in an email, they responded that they
did that so that the product wouldn't expand and leak out of the cup. Oh yeah?
Get a yogurt at MacDonalds. It's cheaper to start with and they fill the cup
to the max. Their product doesn't expand I guess. Tim Horton's thinks we are
all fools.
I switched from BOM about 15 years ago because their MBanx internet banking
service was real crap. I had made a mistake with my accounts, making one of
them overdraft. I noticed the mistake right away and made the correction,
because I had lots of money in the bank. They charged me an overdraft anyway.
Despite my insistence that the time between the mistake and the recovery was
only minutes, they insisted on "following the rules". Instead of using common-sense, they went with
what the computerized system was programmed to do. I fought with them tooth
and nail. It was about principle, not the paltry $20 I was charged for the
overdraft. They refused to comply, so I took all my money out of there. I had
savings, checking, deposit box, cheques, credit card, and lots of investments.
I threatened, they didn't listen. It was not an easy task changing banks: new
cheques, new people to talk to, different techniques, etc. I took everything
out except a few term investments.
When I went to discuss my investment alternatives at the BOM, the advisor
was a complete idiot. She didn't know her ass from a hole-in-the-ground, so
last year, I started chipping away at the RRSPs and when they came
due, I put them into my new bank: the Royal Bank.
And another thing...I like to do my income early and file with Netfile.
I find that this gets me my refund back much earlier. In 2006, I had all
my documents (so I thought) and filed my income tax around March timeframe.
A month later we (wife and I) get a statement from BOM showing some interest we
had to include on our income tax. This was very inconvenient, having to
re-file because it's a different process than filing the first time. Every
other bank had sent me the proper documents (T3, T5) early, as expected.
I bought an ASUS motherboard and a fast AMD processor for my video computer. In
seemed to be working fine but I was getting weird errors from either Adobe
Premiere or the Matrox NLE card I was using. The system was not happy and
everything pointed to the processor as the culprit. This was my first AMD
processor. I had bought another ASUS board for a different computer and since it
was capable of taking a fast Intel processor, I used that mobo instead, with the
Intel chip. Problem solved. No more issues.
I then sold the ASUS and AMD together to a colleague. He called me later to say
that the system did not work and when they brought it to a store to troubleshoot
it, the store guys told them the MPU was cooked! How the hell did that happen? I
used it for 2 months and it was fine when I took the system out of service. I
was careful installing it in the case so I doubt I damaged it. (I'm
confident my colleague didn't damage it either.)
I got on the web to ASUS and AMD to get warranty. ASUS responded right away,
gave me a RMA, and a number of weeks later, they told me there was nothing wrong
with my board and sent it back to me.
AMD on the other hand pretty well ignored my requests, not only through the
self-help warranty request process, but also directly by email. I finally got
some form letter response from the jerks who told me that since it was not
purchased installed on a mobo, that there was no warranty. (Forget the fact that
a) I'm a certified Dell tech, b) been in electronics business for 30 years, even
teaching it, c)I built more than one computer myself at the chip and PC board
level, and d) the computer ran for 2 months with my installation.) Tiger Direct
ignored me as well, even more so, not responding to one email. Tiger is where I
bought the system.
So the idiots at AMD lost out on any potential future sales from me. ASUS? I
have 3 mobos from them and I will buy the next one from them. AMD? Never. I
often consult on computers and when asked my opinion I spit it out: Don't buy
AMD. Buy Intel. Buy ASUS.
These guys have the greatest selection and the best prices but if there is a
problem with anything you buy there, don't ask Tiger for help. I had issues with
rebates that the rebate issuer was not handling properly. It got so bad that I
had to contact the BBB in Florida to get involved. Tiger said "we are not
responsible", despite advertising big time that there is a rebate available for
products they sell. When I had the AMD problem, they didn't even respond to my
many emails. Result? I don't buy anything from them anymore. I took them off my
mailing and favourite lists. Sure, they'll make money off some other sucker, but
they won't off me and my friends who I will not recommend them to! I'm a gizmo
guy making good money and I spend it foolishly on toys like those sold by Tiger
Direct. No more. I shop at Best Buy and Staples now.
Update: I've
gone back. You just can't beat their prices. But watch about
warranty.
It's hard to believe that some of these places refused to honor some commitment,
say to refund $20 on an item found elsewhere for $20 less. This is when they
advertise they will beat any competitors price and have this "price guarantee".
What they did was piss me off and I made a note to myself not to shop there
anymore. Result? Maybe $5000 not spent there! This is the story about Visions. I
bought a radar detector there for X dollars and found the same one advertised by
someone else for $20 less. I went to Visions and pointed out their price guarantee.
They pulled out a list of qualifications/rules that seemed to fill a complete
page. I met all the main qualifications: had to be advertised, had to be within
a certain date, could only make the claim at a certain time, and of course, had
to be the identical model. I don't recall what it was they called me on, but I
was so livid and shocked I asked to speak to the manager. He upheld the ruling!
I was aghast! It was a little thing, like I bought the kit and the one
advertised was OEM or something. For a lousy $20 difference they lost all my
business. I never bought anything there since, although I did go into the store
to look around. I would have needed something REALLY bad or the price was REALLY
good before I bought there again. I didn't. I wrote a letter to the Better
Business Bureau, the federal competition bureau and of course to Visions.
Nothing came of it. They ignored the BBB.
When they first opened up on our corner, we went there on weekends for coffee
and a donut and I would pick up a dozen donuts whenever I visited a customer
site. They made huge, good donuts. This is when two white women ran the show.
The quality was great, the shop was always very clean. Then they sold out to
Pakistanis and the quality started to suffer. The place became a pig pen. We
stopped going there on Saturday but I continued to buy donuts. One day I bought
a dozen and when they were being packed I smelled something funny. Definitely
not the smell of fresh donuts. When I was waiting in the truck for a colleague,
I opened the box and bit into one. Yuck! These were stale from the weekend. They
sold me shit! I threw the box out into the parking lot for the birds, then went
to Tim Hortons. I predicted this place wouldn't last and within 6 months the
place was closed. They made the best cinnamon buns in Calgary. Too bad.
Walmart is great for good prices on virtually anything. Can you imagine buying a
pair of prescription sunglasses, with lenses and frame for $83? Anywhere else,
they would be $300! So what's my complaint? Well it's not with glasses. It's
with batteries.
I went to Walmart to buy an Optima car battery, the best battery to buy for car
stereo systems. I get there when an Optima rep was helping put up a display for
batteries. This was next to a sign that said,"No refunds, no substitutions,
no..." What the hell is that about? Apparently they are worried that people who
pick their own battery may not get the "proper" one for their application (this
was for all their batteries, not just the Optima) and somehow screw things up. No
refunds. Tough shit! I discussed this with the Optima guy who said there was a
good warranty on his battery. I asked, "yeah, but Walmart won't take it back, so
what's the point?" He told me I could go and rattle the store manager to get
what I want! What a stupid thing to say. So I didn't buy a battery there. I went
to the Battery Shop who gave me all the information I wanted, the warranties,
the straight goods. Walmart: Take down your sign or stop selling batteries".
Update:
In Dec 2008, I bought a 5 KW generator from them, on sale at $450. Sears
had the same unit in their catalog for about $1200!!! So yeah, Walmart can
be silly sometimes, but their prices are hard to beat.
What crappy service! And I was a shareholder too!
First of all they were slow out the gate to give us high speed ADSL internet. I
would have gone with them but Nucleus was advertising and they were eager for my
business. It's ironic that Nucleus had to use the Telus lines and go back to a
Telus interchange to do all this! I have been with Nucleus ever since, almost 10
years despite the attempts of Telus to get my business.
Then Telus came out with that ridiculous small yellow pages phone book for "our
area" whatever the hell that was, I think it was NE part of Calgary. Why would I
keep two Yellow Pages around, this dumb little one and a big one for ALL of
Calgary? Did they really think that we are that withdrawn that we (the
customers) would only shop our little area? Dumb dumb dumb. I sent them a
letter. They didn't respond.
When the media reported that Telus had the worst service of any provider and
crappy phone service (this after they laid off hundreds of service personnel to
cut costs), the president came on TV promising things would be fixed. I do
believe he included his email address to show how resolved he was in his
statements. So I sent him an email. Got no response. I indicated that a response
to my email would show he was being honest. He didn't reply so he wasn't. Okay,
so maybe he got 1000 emails. So what? Even sending a form letter to me (and the
other 999) would have appeased me. At least they READ it! Well, they didn't do
that so Telus is off my good guys list.
I've since sent emails asking for quotes for Internet Service and ADSL (just to
see where they come in) and they don't respond to that either! What is wrong
with these people? (See SHAW - they are no better). I sent them some other
emails telling them how they can improve their service, with a cell phone
directory (instead of just the white pages), and how they can get the ADSL
market back by offering sweet deals. They don't do either and haven't answered
any email I have ever sent.
I figured if these dumb people were running Telus, then it would be stupid for
me to invest with them, so I sold my Telus shares.
Update: I recently had issues with my ADSL connection and called Telus. They came out 3 times when things still didn't work, even replacing an ADSL modem that my Internet Service Provider had put in. The tech did this on two Saturdays in a row and I think a Wednesday. Very responsive. The problem was NOT a Telus issue in the end but rather with the ADSL modem!! Telus did not charge me. So, on the service side, they are really good. I take back a lot of what I said above.
Like Visions, don't expect warranty from these guys.
I bought a remote car starter that was installed by Best Buy. I bought the good
one too, with feedback so I knew when the engine started. Shortly thereafter, I
noticed a crack in the LCD display that now no longer worked.
I took it back to Best Buy who asked if I had the extended warranty on the item.
When I said no, they replied that if I had the extended warranty they could
replace the unit right away. Otherwise I'd have to send the unit back to
manufacturer. Say what? What kind of crap is that?
The back of the install sheet said the unit was warrantied for 1 year and Best
Buy should have taken care of it. They should replace the unit with a new one
that THEY obtain from manufacturer. If I had known this was how they were going
to handle warranty, I would have bought the unit off the Internet for 1/2 the
price! What's the advantage of paying more to a vendor when he doesn't even
handle warranty for you?
The replacement cost, if I wanted to buy a new one, was $150. Yeah, for just the
remote!
It's important to note that Best Buy didn't REJECT my claim because I was
somehow responsible for breaking the unit. They didn't even CONSIDER my claim!
Okay it was summer now, I didn't need it, but when winter reared it's ugly head
and my remote didn't work, I went back to Best Buy. Same story. I contacted the
manufacturer who said they wouldn't warranty it because it had been a year since
I bought it. They were a little concerned Best Buy would pull the old extended
warranty crap on me, but they still refused to help me out. At one point they
offered me a new remote for $49.00, but by then, I had opened the remote up,
removed the LCD, so that now the unit would work without eating batteries. No
display, but the vehicle starts. Why should I pay ANYTHING? What does "1 year
warranty mean anyway?"
I sent a complaint to the Better Business Bureau. Best Buy head office responded
to me by saying they needed more information and a copy of my contract. What
contract? The extended warranty? What idiots! This wasn't about Best Buy not
honoring THEIR extended warranty, but about them not honoring the manufacturers
warranty! Plus, there was no email address and no 1-800 number. Is that customer
service, forcing your customers to spend MORE money to get warranty they should
have got hassle-free in the first place? I said the hell with it. I'd
rather buy a new remote from another manufacturer and/or dealer. Hey, I know,
I'll shop on the Internet and buy one from the USA for 1/2 the price!
No wonder Best Buy is empty of customers most of the time I go there.
I don't know why these batteries are rated so high, because they are absolute crap. I've had 3 of them starting with a Blue Top I bought at a performance auto shop. It didn't work from the git-go and wouldn't take a charge. I returned it and was told to get a Yellow Top, which they had to order in for me. This one lasted just a little over two years, past the crappy warranty period, and I had to buy another one. I waited awhile, then just before a car show I was taking my car too I bought another, at a battery store that sold, well, just batteries. This one lasted about a year and then would not take a charge. It charged enough to start the car, let me take the car to work, then failed when I was leaving work, much to my embarrassment! I had to get a boost! Yeah, my fancy show-off car and I had to boost it.
I tried to charge it on a trickle charger and couldn't get the voltage over 11 volts. I took it back to the battery shop and he said he couldn't get Optimas any more but he would honor the warranty and BOUGHT the battery back. This was Battery World. Highly recommended.
In the meantime I put in the battery I bought at Canadian Tire about 6-7 years ago for my race car. It was stored and trickle charged occasionally throughout the winter like the Optima was, but this one still performs flawlessly. Oh, I bought another battery (since the first was a little too tall) - it has a 6 year warranty. The lead-acid in my F150 truck is still going after 13 years!
I sent an email to Optima describing the events and asked for a response. They did not respond. Piss on them then. They get a bad rap and suffer my wrath by being listed on this web-site. Don't buy their crap, it doesn't work and they don't have tech support that cares.
This store, unlike the useless Winks, does everything right! First of all they have 2 or 3 people in the store for security and assistance at the till when required. They have a post office, which is my main reason for going there, but they also have fresh pasteries, takeout lunches with fruit and they have about 10 pots of coffee, different types and multiples of the most common Colombian coffee. Their prices for a good cup of coffee is about 1/2 that of Tim Horton's. The staff is always helpful and courteous. The parking sucks because they are in a strip mall with a gas station and restaurant and a few other places. I often walk to 7-11 for a coffee, even though it's about 3-4 blocks further than that stupid Winks store.
I often see one of the workers continuously clean up and make more coffee in the morning during the rush. They have never run out of coffee.
Oh yeah, 7-11 even has a self-serve 649 ticket checker.
Microsoft
Well now, I officially hate Microsoft. For years
I defended the company because it is really due to them, ie Bill Gates, for this
computer revolution we are in. Sure he made lots of money along the way,
but he deserved every cent of it. I recall when I first started making a
web page and was getting assistance from a guy in our car club. When I
mentioned I wanted to use Microsoft Front Page for the editor, this guy went
ballistic. He said if I used that product, I could expect no more help
from him. I did use Front Page because it was very easy to use, it worked
superbly and I could create pages very rapidly with it's WYSIWYG interface.
Very intuitive. (The guy never spoke to me again, and I could never figure
out what his problem was.)
When I had problems with my XP upgrades (from ME), Microsoft helped a lot by staying in email contact with me, trying to solve the issues. Eventually they sent me a CD of XP that wasn't an upgrade so I could make it work. They did the same when I upgraded to XP2. For some reason their web downloads didn't work. So I got three CDs from them with XP-SP2 on it, for free.
They didn't help when my Media Player didn't work and I gave up after awhile because the answers I was getting were not advancing my cause. So I bought Media Monkey and AVS Media to do the work. Note that previous versions of MP worked for me, it was only when I upgraded to 9.0 and 10.0 that things failed. Besides MP wasn't playing mpegs at the time, and I don't think it could convert audio files to mp3, although it did play them.
I used Internet Explorer exclusively since day 1 and couldn't understand why everyone wanted to use something else, like Mozilla Firefox. Now I know, and I hate Microsoft.
I purchased Microsoft Expressions because my old Front Page wouldn't work anymore with my new Vista 64 O/S. It was 2002 version anyway and to upgrade to 2003 was a only a little less than the cost of Expressions Web. There were a few issues with it, for example, when browsing for photos within the Expressions application, the only view I could get was textual, no thumbnails. Yet, in Windows Explorer, it worked fine. Okay, so that was a workaround. Here's where I started to lose faith in Microsoft. When I asked them this simple question why it didn't work, they said in order to answer the question I would have to give them my Visa number. If the question was "valid", whatever the hell that means, they would not charge my Visa the $100/hour it would take to answer the question, supposedly. If it was "valid", they wouldn't charge. Now isn't that the most ridiculous way to do tech support that you ever heard of? It's totally at their discretion whether it's a plausible question or not. I sent many emails back and forth to tech support because they kept insisting that this was the mechanism. MS tech support by the way referred me to the Expressions Web team who was doing the charging. MS tech support said they couldn't help me, it was the Expressions guys that had to provide the answer. Dumb!!! I even emailed the manager of the group but he gave me the same form-letter answer.
I downloaded IE8 for my new Vista. While browsing, the app will pop up a message saying there was an issue and it has to close. It does this about 5-6 times/hour and it really pissed me off, but I tolerated it - for awhile. Finally, I gave up and tried Google Chrome since it somehow got downloaded without my knowledge to my computer. It sucked even if it didn't crash. After a couple days, I looked into Mozilla Firefox. Cool. Lots of features, more add-ons than IE and guess what? Not one crash. Ever. I didn't even contact Microsoft about their crappy IE8 because I figured I'd get nowhere.
The complaints go on. When I looked at my web pages with Firefox, something I've never done because I assumed all browsers were equal (or worse, not up to IE standards), my page looked like crap! On the Mozilla forum a guy told me it was because I built the page with Front Page which favoured IE and other Microsoft products! Ahh...now I understood the big hoopla against Microsoft. When I ran the page through the W3 consortium web validator, it came up with 352 errors, errors that made it non-compatible with all browsers. The pages looked fine with Internet Explorer, including IE 8 which some thought would show the incompatibilities, but NOT SO. It looks fine in IE8.
I hate Microsoft now, thanks to their piss-poor tech support as detailed above and making products that exclude others from working. Okay, Word is pretty good, Excel is the best, Outlook hasn't crashed and doesn't bug me like Yahoo and Google mail.
Cascade Vans Polar Start
Read the Best Buy story because that's where it starts. This is the same
remote car starter. I wrote to the manufacturer and explained the problems with Best Buy.
They said it wasn't "right" that Best Buy would deny service because I didn't
have a service plan or extended warranty. Okay, I was getting somewhere,
so I thought. This device is made in Quebec by Polar Start and their
attitude as well was that they would not warranty it either (because by now it
was beyond warranty) but they would bend over backwards and offer me a new
remote for something like $70. I had to send the old one in first though,
in winter. I asked why they needed the old one but they never did mention
it could be to code the old one. Instead the broad at the other end of the
line just said they wanted it back. I wasn't about to let it go in the
winter so I declined. I cut the LCD graphic out and the unit worked fine
for another year or two. Just lately the battery connector broke and my
attempts to fix it proved fruitless. My fix sorta worked, but was
unreliable. So I wrote back to them and asked them for a replacement.
No reply. Good customer service, yes? So they get be on the red list. I'll have to remove the $300 truck unit
and get another one to replace it. It won't be made by these jerks. Autotrax/Kovac Software I purchased Autotrax PDA which is a program to draw schematic drawings, among
other things. It has so many features that I can't even begin to know what
many of them are. It supports PCB layouts, net-lists, auto-routing, plus a
hundred other things. Unfortunately it does not work for the reason I
bought the program: drawing schematics. At first it was going pretty good but
then whenever I added a line (and I had about 50 short line connections to make)
the program would jump to the PCB layout. No matter what I did to try to
disable this, it did not work. Also, the PCB layout would display error
pop-ups stating some of the components had incorrect pin numbers. The pin
numbers were created by Autotrax - why is this MY problem? Consequently
for each little connection wire I put in, I had to dismiss about 6 errors then
close the PCB window. Then repeat 50 times. I sent 18 emails to
Elija Kovac, the developer. He didn't acknowledge any of my errors.
I sent him the drawings twice because he lost the first one. He offered no
solutions and only replied 2-3 times to my 18 emails. I complained to
Paypal since I paid through them, but they offered conflicting advice.
They said I couldn't dispute the "usability" of the program, yet in their own
policies they state I have a case if the "product does not work" Well it
doesn't work, boneheads! Then to add incredulity to the issue, Kovacs
emails me to say that he "tried to help me" but I refused! What a crock of
shit! Since then Kovacs has not responded and my f'n program still doesn't work.
Don't waste your money. Looks like a great product, but customer support
is the worst of any company I have dealt with, including all the other assholes on
this web page. X10 I purchased many X10 components. These are the guys that
offer home control of appliances and devices like lamps from a computer, through
the power line system in a house. The signals to turn on equipment is
embedded in the power line current. This part of their system works well.
However, their security cameras are absolute crap. The best you can get
are low resolution, difficult to focus wireless cameras that only work well if
in the same room with the video receiver. They operate at 2.4 GHz, which
interferes with almost everything, most notably wireless routers. Okay,
they have a little switch to move the 2.4 GHz around in megahertz increments to
try and alleviate that problem. Despite this, the antennae on the cameras
have to be pointed at the receiver, an impossible task if the receiver is in the
middle of the cameras location. The ideal receiver antenna orientation is
also pointing (flat panel) to the camera, which of course is not possible if the
cameras are scattered around. The problem is worse when using the pan and
tilt device because it causes the camera to change orientation and the signal
that may have been good is now compromised. Stupid system. Another
complaint is that they have so many different products that aren't compatible
with all software, eg the USB video converter. One is V11a, the other
updated one is V12A. The former works on XP the latter on Vista.
They are the same hardware, why couldn't an upgraded driver make it consistent?
They have different software that seems to do the same thing: Sentinel,
Vanguard, Active Home. Their website doesn't differentiate amongst them
and it's very hard to find the answers. The website is an atrocity as
well, with a super long page that scrolls forever, bright colors that serve no
purpose other than to irritate their customers, and links that take you
everywhere to get you really bogged down on the site. It is so complex
that one time I chose a particular sales "kit" that even the tech support people
at X10 were not aware was available! When you confuse your own people, how
do you expect customers to fare better? I talked to one of their tech
support people, a girl, who had no patience and was very ambiguous in her
descriptions. With my system I have to turn on cameras remotely using the
home control part and then communicate to the cameras with the video receiver.
She was saying things like "plug the receiver (didn't say which one), and tell
me what you see". What receiver? She was talking about the home
control one and sometimes referred to it by product name. She should have
described the parts ahead of time, then go into her spiel. The home
control receiver is a white box that plugs into the wall and has a chrome
antenna on it. The video receiver looks like a big mouse and has a flat
movable antenna. Oh yeah, there's a THIRD receiver for multi-camera view
control. It looks very much like a mouse and has a small wire antenna. It
communicates to the white box to control one camera at a time.
Arrrggghhhh! I figured all that out on my own by turning one thing on and
off and seeing what happened on screen. Finally, I got onto their
newsletter somehow and despite my continuous requests to REMOVE me, they
continue to send me spam about twice a day about another one of their stupid
deals. The deals are actually "good" deals but their camera stuff is shit.
I bought 5 Ninja pan and tilt devices which include power supplies and remote
controls for $16 each, regular about $40 each.