Life Musings

Toshiba's customer support was less than helpful. I called to complain about how nobody informed me that the power adapter I needed was out of stock, and how nobody bothered to contact me about the delay. My intention was to provide feedback, so that they could avoid such problems in the future.

Instead of being suitably apologetic, the lady that I spoke to was all defensive. "Our system does let us determine if a part is out of stock!" she explained. So I said, "Well then, you should have said that right from the start. You should have said that you first need to determine if the part is available, so that your customers don't have false expectations." "But I'm not a fortune teller!" she exclaimed. "I can't predict the future! I can't determine if a part will be available or not!"

"All the more reason to emphasize this to your customers!" I tried to explain. "If your business doesn't have an up-to-date inventory tracking system, then you need to phrase your replies very carefully."

Sadly, she still didn't get my point. She continued to spout excuses such as "We had to tell you something! We had to give you some sort of timeline!" or "Well, you had a case number, didn't you? You could have always called up if you wanted to!"

I shook my head in frustration. Did she really think that this was an excuse for giving the customer inaccurate information? Or for failing to notify the customer of an egregious delay in shipment? If I had been notifed sooner, I could have made alternate arrangements, but due to their lack of responsiveness, I was left high and dry.