posted on January 22, 2001 05:53:01 AM new
Last night as I watched reassurance after reassurance come down on these message boards about how everything was going to be addressed, etc., I had a flashback to my old corporate America days/daze.
Apparently online services/businesses have learned nothing from brick and mortar businesses except to keep up a happy front and hope the customers/users don't guess that the ship is sinking.
As I watched frantic poster after frantic poster get reassured, I calmly retrieved/cancelled any important auctions from my scheduled list in Auction Manager. I left a few low-end ones left to launch in the hopes that I would be wrong. I had already held out my biggy for the week based on the problems at this site in the last couple of days.
How did I know to do this? All you have to do is look at the announcement page from about 11am yesterday. I'm not quoting here, but it states something to the effect that apparently the problems that happened on Thursday/Friday were still happening but that some issues had been addressed and all was well.
Goddess bless the gentle souls that believed that.
And every day brings a new lesson or two:
As the tobacco companies testified for a decade, trying to get anyone to believe that tobacco was not addictive, so will online companies keep posting announcements that site "issues" have been addressed.
That if I take the amount of time I spent scheduling auctions on AW just to unlaunch them, so that I could directly launch them at the auction site, and I multiply that by the wage I could get for my lowest paid skill on the job market, it more than equals the money to buy the software I need to no longer be dependent on free services for scheduling my auctions.
I very much appreciate the freebies here at AW. (Heck, I even visit their advertisers occasionally just to show my appreciation.) I think the moderators and customer service people do a terrific job. I also know that these are not the policy people and that they often have to do what they are told to do.
IMHO, customer service, relations, and AW's credibility would have been better served if the announcement board yesterday had said, "Our issues are nowhere near resolved. We know it's Sunday which is a big night for auctions, so we would advise you to unschedule anything you absolutely have to have launched tonight and do it manually from the auction site. We apologize for the inconvenience."
posted on January 22, 2001 08:07:52 PM new
I know - it is not just the companies. Most of the individuals I have worked with never make any mistakes either. The part time job I am working right now the owner came out and looked at the bench full of parts I was working on and said "How is it going?" I told him "Well I'm having a little trouble making this one vent here, and 3 of these 60 are technically out of tolerance but they will work just fine."
He looked at me like I was from Mars. Seems nobody ever admits there is any problem with anything. The only way they know is if the customer ships it back.
Then when it came time to ship it he wanted me to sign an inspection sheet saying it was 100% within spec. I told him to sign it himself, and when he could not believe I was saying that I told him "What you have apparently never figured out is that if people will lie for you it is a hell of a lot
more certain that they will lie to you for themselves." He wrote a deviation report on the inspection sheet and now I do all the written inspections.
A customer was worried about sending some rather complex parts to Japan
I had machined without a seperate inspection, but they were pressed for time.
They came out and asked if they were 100%. I said yes every critical dimension is checked on every part. How confident are you he asked? I offered him my micrometer and said check any or all. If you find a bad one I will pay you $1,000.00. If you find them all good you owe me $500.00. Two to one odds I'll give you. He declined. They shipped.
posted on January 22, 2001 09:39:13 PM new
Quality truthfullness and reliablity are traits that have not arrived in any great measure in the .com world as of yet. Lets all hope they get here soon before the bean counters and lawyers run everything into the ground.
posted on January 23, 2001 12:33:30 AM new
I guess I was trying to say it comes from the top down usually in a company - bottom up is difficult so there are not that many sources for it. I got away with being honest because I didn't give a damn if they fired me. Sad but true. Sorry to say 40 years out in the working world says most owners are happy to cut corners on honesty until they have their hands slapped hard.
