You know what really pisses me off today?

[ranting-asshole.livejournal.com]

Part of my job is to create shipments for clients who have hardware troubles with their laptops. After they call us up, usually the replacement laptop will ship out the following day for overnight delivery, and the client then has three days to get the old laptop sent back to us, and then to call us with the tracking number. After the three days has elapsed, we send a reminder voicemail. After a further three days, we send a slightly less friendly reminder voicemail to both them and their district manager. Two days after that, we send it up to Field Technical Services who harasses the everliving shit out of them with threats to notify their regional manager and charge the regional budget for the replacement cost of the hardware.

Of course, the way this usually works is that they get the new laptop, get everything up and running, and then just conveniently forget that they have an old laptop to return. To alleviate this problem we've taken to shipping prepaid, preaddressed Fedex labels with the new laptop. All they have to do is get the new laptop out of the box, put the old one in and tape it back up, put on the label that we provided, and then drop it off in a FedEx drop box. Since it's already prepaid and preaddressed, they don't need to fill out an airbill or even talk to a clerk... just drop it in the drop box. This is usually either about six inches inside the front door, or in some cases even outside. In crowded metro areas like New York City, you can even find FedEx and UPS drop boxes on the sidewalk like mailboxes.

Despite this, we still have people who refuse to return their damned equipment in anything remotely resembling a timely fashion.

A personal favourite of mine is when we make all our followup calls, send the case up to Field Technical Services, and then a week later notice a note in the case indicating the client called back. "My bad! I got the replacement laptop and then was on vacation."

What. The. Fucking. Hell.

What is this bullshit? You needed a functional laptop so you could go on vacation with it?!

God this shit pisses me the hell off.

x-posted to ranting_asshole

Comments

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

I hope they got lots of work done on that vacation. Of course, these are the same idiots that are likely to return from that vacation with a broken laptop that somehow got a combination of sand and the alcoholic beverage of choice dumped into it from when they were out on the beach and that cute cabana boy managed to tip the table over as well as the drinks he was delivering.

Yes, that story came into one of our reps one day. That's what a no questions asked accidental damage policy is good for. That and laptops that were taken out on a boat and managed to go overboard and had to be recovered by a diver from the bottom of a lake.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Oh HELL no. Where I work, we'd end up going ahead and replacing the equipment, and then some managers would be asking some very pointed questions.

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

I should clarify - this wasn't an internal IT department, this was support as a major OEM and these were customers calling in with these sorts of issues. If somebody with a fidicuary responsibility towards the business did that to their equipment, there should be some barbeque.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this isn't internal support either, but we do contract work for a specific client in conjunction with their own in-house helpdesks so it equates to roughly the same thing.

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

[...] a combination of sand and the alcoholic beverage of choice dumped into it [...]

Thats why I want an Itronix laptop.