Customer Service FTW!

A person with a first and last name contacted me from Facebook. Not because I'm famous like Chris Pirillo (which I'm not, thank Buddha), but because their "help" on Facebook really sucks and their CEO probably puts a lot of stock in "making things right." Having once worked at a mail order biz, I completely understand this. You can make a reaaaaally crappy product, but you can mitigate the crap (to a point) by having superior customer service. Facebook's solution was wise, and I feel like a moron for not thinking of it: apply for an alumni email account. This won't let me join my film school network however, because they don't do alum email.

There are other problems with Facebook that I'll leave alone for now. I think they are experiencing some growing pains, but I hope they turn that ship around fast before people get tired of adding lolcat apps.

Another happy customer service story begins with a trip to my non-local magic supply store. A couple of weeks ago I got nostalgic and ordered up a DVD of Paul Harris, one of my favorite magicians ever. A week passed and no DVD, despite the "shipped" status of their page. Nothing irks me like a lying-ass web page! Those databases are the devil! So I called them up. Unfortunately, I got an omnious: "the number you are trying to reach is no longer in service"... Really bad! At this point I figure the place (in Vegas) has closed shop and is moving to Bermuda or something. Magicians are a slippery lot, after all. But that wasn't the case. After sending a rather inflammatory email threatening legal action (such a desperate, immature, silly ploy it shames me to admit it), I got an email from a person with a first and last name who apologized profusely, explaining the entire city of Nevada had suffered a phone outage. She apologized for the lying web page, and they immediately sent another copy to me, and gave me a free trick download for good measure. Smart idea-- in the mail order biz we liked to do that too, really calms the customer.

Now contrast this with Google, the company who supposedly does no evil. Well, they screwed C.K.'s domain reg, they refuse to add Download Squad in News, and it takes weeks for them to comprehend (never mind fix) the smallest of queries. Essentially they are dropping the ball on a small level because the can afford to... That's something that will eventually come back to bite them in the ass. In fact, there's a term for it. Karma. You'd think Dr. E and Sergei would know all about it...

Here's how Facebook sucks

OK, I while back I tried to get on the Facebook train. Really, I did. Unfortunately I had two problems:

1) Facebook assumes you have a university email at every school you've ever attended. Not so. My old film school, Watkins, I'm sure does have email now. However, back when I attended, bachelor accreditation was still pending, the school was in an old Woolworth's in downtown Nashville, etc. This was just before the first dotcom boom! Facebook, you're all "collegey" so don't say you never heard when you assume, you make an ass of u and me. That was lame, I know. But forcing me to use an email that never existed? Pretty lame.

2) OK, given this little "problem" when I signed up I was forced to use my ITT Tech email (where I worked as an instructor at the time). Well, now it looks like I actually graduated from ITT, and my "network" is one of our over 60 campuses, somewhere in Texas or something. WHA? That's just silly. So I'm going to change this, but it's a crappy way to start.

My final issue is still happening, and I've no idea how to fix it. My real alma mater is the University of Tennesee, right here in Knoxville. However, searching for any combination of UT, University of Tennesee, Knoxville, etc. yields NO results. Really? Gosh Facebook, hard to imagine that with 26,000 students flowing through the school multiplied by the number of years I was there, added to the number of years since THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN ANY UT GRADS SMART ENOUGH TO FIGURE OUT YOUR STUPID WEBSITE?

No, I know you can't find them. Your search sucks. Your feeble attempts at folksonomy suck. It's easier to find my friends on MySpace, and MySpace has all the graceful functionality of a Soviet-era milking machine. And when you give me the option to search within results when there were no results? That makes me think you hired a guy that couldn't cut it at Microsoft because MSN Search was just "too hard to make work."

So, you know where my school is? Under the Tennessee network! Of course, how stupid of me. Despite the fact that more and more non-college students are using Facebook, they still seem to think ONLY college kids are using the damn thing.

But the bottom line is, my alma mater, the school I got my fancy bachelor's at, I can't join the network. No Tennessee for me! No, because I haven't fired up a VAX system in over 10 years, nor have I checked my @utk.edu account in a decade, I will never be able to join... That's completely idiotic, and that's why you will rarely find me doing anything on Facebook. When you kill the primary use of your website and treat your users like interlopers, you pretty much suck from head to toe.

Searching for Moebius

I wound up finding some of my own content today. While searching for an app that'll take a 3d model (in 3ds max perhaps) and turn it into a folding paper toy, I wound up on my now-mothballed Animation Blog.

Granted, it was on page 3, but odd how it ranked higher than the original Download Squad story about the app itself.

Chris Pirillo's iPhone rant

Let me say first that Chris reminds me of me. A bit silly, a total nerd, happily married, terribly opinionated and a wee bit grumpy sometimes. We also overtalk-- that sort of abrasive, full-of-gestures and emphatic speech patterns jibber jabber that Mr. T would put a quick end to.

But Chris' rant, and I understand it was just that (meaning more emotional than cerebral), was way off base. I think it came off pretty juvenile, and Chris is above that. Even me, Apple Fanboy #1, was about tired of hearing the hype. But to dimiss the iPhone as a piece of crap is just pandering to the mouth-breathing WinNerds who simply hate anything with a piece of fruit on it.

Without going into excruciating detail, I'll just say that if I were teaching a class on logic and debate, I'd use this for students to count how many fallacies he creates.

With respect, Chris, you should really try one (on camera) before you go saying the same kinda virulent nonsense we heard when DOS faboys trashed the Mac interface.