Very touching IKEA holiday commercial.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens?
Not too sure how I feel about this. I suppose it could be a worse title, right? I'm hoping that when the movie comes out that the only thing we needed to worry about is the title.
Mia Jumping
Mia having fun during Susana's birthday celebration. We were upstairs just finishing watching Susana opening her presents, when Mia decided to leap from a chair to a few pillows. This was captured with an iPhone 5S. Sure wish I had an iPhone 6, which can do 240fps vs the 120fps a iPhone 5S can do.
In The City Once Again
Mia and Graecyn at the Palace of Fine Arts. Photo taken by Farrah using the iPhone 5S
The girls are in the City once again. Farrah sent me the above photo from the Palace of Fine Arts. I wish I could be up there with them enjoying the day.
Comcast Does Not Listen
I had a similar conversation with Comcast when I was simply trying to find out how many Filipino stations they offered. DirecTV offers eleven Filipino stations. Comcast only offers five. I simply asked if they would be offering more, but the representative avoided the question and started talking about their other channels and how much better they are then DirecTV.
The one-sided conversation took off from there. The Comcast person started talking about pricing, channels, and other features that I was not interested in. When I pushed back he would ask, “Why?” “Why aren’t you interested in this great deal?” “Why do you need more Filipino channels?” Perhaps because those channels are being watched by someone in my house?!?!?
It took some time with me becoming more agitated to be able to pry myself off the phone. I think I finally hung up on them as I simply said, “You are not listening to what I am wanting and asking about, so this conversation is over.”
I understand the person was trying to make a sale, and I was the one who called Comcast. But to turnaround and try to thrust their services on my was very off-putting.
Listen to the below call. But be warned: you might get a little agitated after listening to it all.
@SearsAuto My Experience Sucked
This is a simple story of a bad customer experience turning into a worse one by the day.
My truck battery was on its last legs. I managed to get it charged so I drove it to the closest Sears Auto in Cupertino. I was able to be checked in fairly quickly about 11 am, and told my car would be done a little after noon – or within the hour. This sounded great.
The mall in Cupertino isn’t that great, so I called Farrah who, with the kids, picked me up at Sears. We decided to have lunch at the local park and let the kids play. This provided a couple of hours of fun, more than enough time to get the battery changed in the truck. It was strange, though, no one called from Sears Auto during the time we were at the park. As we started driving back I began to wonder if they even started work on my truck.
It was a little after 1:30 when I got back to Sears Auto. I saw my truck in the same spot which concerned me a little. But then I thought, well all they need to do is pop the hood, disconnect the old battery and put in the new one. They shouldn’t need to move it far. In any event, I stood in line to talk to one of the customer representatives. I stood in line for about 30 minutes, a line only 3 people deep, before I got to talk to what apparently was the one working representative. This was strange because earlier in the day, just a few hours ago, there were at least three representatives working. The representative told me that they hadn’t gotten to my truck just yet but it should be done soon. He would make sure.
I was a bit peeved but was able to occupy my time with Farrah and the kids by going across the street to do some grocery shopping. This ate about an hour of time. I asked Farrah to drop me off and just head home with the kids, thinking the truck would be done. Boy was I wrong.
All I could do vent through Twitter:
then
then
Unfortunately, according to Sears I was sending my tweets to the wrong account. Instead of @Sears I should be sending tweets to @SearsAuto. Silly me. I thought that a service with the name Sears would be concerned about the bad customer experience several people were experiencing.
Hoping to get some resolution, I sent tweets to @SearsAuto. They responded the next day:
But they have been silent ever since.
I don’t believe I will be hearing from them. Even if I did I suppose I would only get some half-hearted apology with no rational explanation for the problems experienced by the many people that day.
Thinking back on what could have been done differently by anyone at Sears Auto that day I could only come to this conclusion: they should have set expectations appropriately. If they couldn’t do the work in a timely manner, then they shouldn’t have promised it could be done. They should have stopped taking new work in. Continually building up the workload for a number of workers they had only frustrated the customers.
I am guessing this trend will continue at Sears, uh I mean, Sears Auto. In any event, Sears, as a whole entity has lost me as a customer.
Tracking
The KizON wearable also features a ‘One Step Direct Call’ button, which lets parents contact their children easily. If the kid fails to answer a call from any pre-set phone numbers within 10 seconds, KizON will automatically connect the call so the parent can listen through the built-in microphone. Kids can also dial a pre-configured phone number in case they need to speak to an adult.
Good idea, but the device is too big. I don’t think it will fit on my kids’ arms. I don’t think I can convince them to wear this either.
Empty Chair
A very effective commercial for a very good beer. Damn advertising!
Parenthood – Apple Ad
Damn these Apple commercials keep getting better all the time. They are very smart now, showing what apps are highlighted in the commercial. They are making it easy to spend your money.
#LikeAGirl
I always knew I would have girls, just a feeling growing up with two sisters. I know they’ll have problems like any other kids. I hope they will know that being a girl is a good thing.
