I just wanted to share a couple of positive stories, since all we ever hear about is trouble.
Story #1: Canon technical support. What can you say about people who pick up the phone when you call them around 8 PM with obscure questions about a printer? Good stuff, mostly. The rep I got was knowledgeable, and when I did manage to stump him, he went and got my answer right away. The printer itself is worthy of mention. I got a Canon i9100. This is a truly amazing printer. I’ve seen widely varied reviews of it. After playing around a bit, I’m pretty sure this comes down to how willing you are to read the manual carefully and experiment with the settings provided in the printer driver. I am stunned by the quality of the output. I am also very happy with the “six separate cannisters of ink” design, which means that I don’t have to replace $72 worth of ink every time I use up $12 worth of ink. Even apart from the cost to me, consider the environmental cost.
Story #2: Nikon technical support. I bought a camera. I got an open box/demo unit. It was missing a cable, they said, but they’d bundle a card reader. Well, I actually sort of wanted the cable. Furthermore, it turned out to be missing another cable (the almost-never-used “video output” cable), the original lens cap, and one of the two CDs it was supposed to ship with. I contacted Nikon, and got quick responses. I started Friday afternoon, and by Monday afternoon, I had confirmation that they were shipping all of the parts… But that they were out of stock of one part, so it’d ship separately. Tuesday, I got three of the four parts. Wednesday, I got notification that lens caps were in stock again; Thursday, I got my lens cap. Two separate overnight deliveries… I feel appreciated, certainly. It’s also a very nice camera, although - being more complicated than my old one - it’s a little confusing.
Still, I’m quite happy. Nice to know that not all customer service is awful.
Coming up soon: More junk fax hilarity, including probably the funniest use of the word “honorable” I’ve ever seen.