Goodbye coffee machine, goodbye Gaggia rotten customer service

Posted on December 2009 in Articles

I know this isn’t any technical or a fab new website, but since a wonderful machine has now given up I feel it’s only fair to document it for all to read (although you may not want to).

Imagine starting the day with a coffee made from Italian beans simply by pressing a button. The sounds starts with gentle click to let you know it’ll be delivered to the cup shortly, the beans are ground and a two clicks are heard as the fresh powder is dispensed, than water heated to the exact temperature is poored through and into the cup, coffee perfection every morning…

… imagine if one morning you press the button and nothing, not a click, before you totally freak out thinking that instant coffee could be the only answer, you run through the usual routine of checking the ‘bits’, pulling drawers etc. but nothing seems wrong, a sad morning…

Whilst the pleasure of creating coffee from a bean right through to a cup is an expensive one it did come with a 2 year warranty, and yes it still within warranty just! With 6 weeks left the machine had failed within the time allowed!

“Gaggia customer service, how may I help you”

“I’ve got a very expensive, though fantasic coffee machine that’s broken down, and we’re very”

“Oh, never mind if it’s within warranty, we’ll send you the labels, pay the postage and fix it for you”

“That’s wonderful news, thank you”

The whole office sang and danced with joy!

Many weeks had passed and morale was getting low, the problem was obviously serious, time to find out… (the following has of course been edited, there where several phone calls inbetween)

“hello Gaggia customer services”

“hello there, we just wondered how you are getting on with our coffee machine”

“what coffee machine?”

“the one we sent you”

“oh, did you, what’s your name”

“Mr Carne”

“well Mr Carne, did you know that the machine is nearly out of warranty, so I’m not sure we can fix it”

“but the machine broke down within the warranty”

“yes but there is only one week left”

“there was more than one week left when we sent it to you, it’s because you haven’t done anything, and besides where are we going with this conversation, don’t you know the law”

“ok, well want’s wrong with it”

“you’re suppose to find that out and then fix it”

“ok, leave it with me and we’ll get back to you”

A week had passed, time to call…

“… customer services”

“how’s are coffee machine…”

“well it needed a new motor, you’re very lucky that we were able to order one, the machine will be back with in next week”

And sure enough, the machine was returned time to test it.

The days of listening to the nice gentle sound of coffee being prepared were at an end, the motor was obviously replaced with a lawn mower engine and probably from a 1970’s diesel engined lawn mower, once the noise stopped coffee spat into the cup, which I think was now mixed with diesel oil.

When you get such bad customer service, and waste so much time, no one wants to call up and start the process again. The machine was well over £300, but the customer service was worthless, useless and rude.

Goodbye Gaggia machine, goodbye Gaggia.

Dynamic Pages to Static URL ‘Search Engine Friendly’

Posted on December 2009 in Articles

Hi

Here’s something I just sent a friend who had rewritten a simple CMS system, with dynamic pages (index.php?Pageid=nn), in this case directory

es were also used, so all you need to do is create a .htaccess file and place it in to the relevant web directory, here’s an example of the contains of an .htaccess files…

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule about_us.htm$ index.php?Pageid=7
RewriteRule index.htm$ index.php?Pageid=7

Hope that helps, if not ask and I maybe able to help you further.

“Should I try Adwords?”

Posted on December 2009 in Articles

A question I’m often asked is “should I try Adwords?”, well the answers is always yes. It’s worth a try, as far as advertising goes it’s cheap and easy to control your spend, you can specify anything you want per day and adverts can cost as little as 0.4p per click (depends on competition), if you spend £30 a week and get one ’sale’ worth £500 it’s easy to work out your Return On Investment (ROI), you can normally work this out within a couple of weeks, so there isn’t any long-term costs, you can stop advertising (spending) instantly.

Flash _getURL and _self doesn’t work!

Posted on December 2009 in Articles

Well what an interesting afternoon. Although I don’t use Flash very often, I like to think I know what I’m doing. I had been given a Flash file from another company in order to integrate the file into the clients websites. The file needed some additions as in order to link up some buttons. This is normally very simple using the actionscript _getURL(URL,”_self”), however no ever told me that from Flash 8 security setting have changed, so after some painful hours of rewritting the actionscript and uploading etc etc. All you need to do is add the following to your html!

<param name=”swfversion” value=”6.0.65.0″ />
<param name=”expressinstall” value=”Scripts/expressInstall.swf” />
    <param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” />

If you can’t get _getURL “_self” to work I hope you find this post!