Actions speak louder than AC adapters

OK so my title is a little off. I hope it will make sense to you as read on. I had an interesting interaction yesterday. To explain it I need to go back almost 1 year to Oct 31st 2008. My wife wanted to buy a laptop (the one she had needed to have its power coupling fixed for the second time in 2 years) and did not want to wait to have one sent to her. She decided to buy a Gateway at Best Buy.

Almost from the very beginning it had problems. Programs freezing, computer crashing, erratic performances (no blue screen of death since vista has its own way of handling problems), not all the time but enough to drive you batty. One day (after about 4 months) the computer just refused to load Vista.

She brought it back to Best Buy, where they said something to the effect of "we are very sorry for the problem and will do everything we can to resolve this to your satisfaction" (hmmmm sounds like customer service 101). They diagnosed the problem as a bad hard drive. They kept the computer for about a week and returned it with a new hard drive, but without an operating system (seems we were supposed to do the work of re-loading the OS and all the rest of the programs). While I thought this a bit odd, I kept my mouth shut and reloaded all the programs.

In August of this year (a month and a half before the warranty runs out) the battery on the computer will not charge, and worse yet, it will not run using the plugged in AC adapter. Another trip to Best Buy reveals "they are very sorry for the problem and will do everything they can to resolve this to our satisfaction" (sounds familiar) and the AC adapter has gone bad. Best Buy will not replace it because "Gateway prefers to handle Warranty work itself ".

A little miffed I get on-line with Gateway Tech Support and explain my problem. The Tech (from India of course) begins by saying "we are very sorry for the problem and is certain he can resolve this to my satisfaction" and asks me for the serial number on the back of the computer. There are three numbers. The one that looks most promising says "Serial No. followed by 11 digits". I enter the number and the tech says "sorry that number is invalid". The second number is a windows registration key, but the third number looks promising. 22 numbers and letters on a sticker attached to the back of the computer. The problem is the 3rd, 4th, and 5th characters are unreadable due to a scratch on the sticker. When I explain this to the tech, he ends our chat session with an abrupt "contact us again when you have the serial number" (as JarJar Binks would say "how wude"). So far this has not met with my satisfaction!

Where do I go from there? A call to Best Buy reveals that "they are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused me" but they do not keep track of the serial numbers, and if I take the computer back to the Best Buy where it was purchased, they may be able to help me determine the serial number (apparently the guys at Best Buy can recreate that which has been scratched off). Knowing that would be a wild goose chase, I tried Customer Service at Gateway one more time. This time I asked for a supervisor and was put in touch with someone who explained once again that although they wanted very much to "resolve this problem to my complete satisfaction", without a serial number they could do nothing to help me. I had a warranty, I had a receipt proving when I purchased the computer, I had a bad AC Adapter, and I had a whole bunch of people trained to say the right things while doing everything wrong.

To finish the story, I complained via the web, to the Attorney General of Iowa, and the very next day Gateway did the right thing and agreed to send me the AC adapter.

My point to this blog is not about complaints or Best Buy or Gateway (you can draw your own conclusions about them). My point is everyone was saying the right things (although it sounded like they had a canned approach to dealing with complaints) but not doing the right thing.

You have all heard the expression "Actions speak louder than words" or the biblical phrase "you shall be known by your deeds". You can say everything right, but if your actions don't support the words, it is the actions we believe. I don't believe anyone was trying to help me except the Lady that finally agreed to send me the adapter. Their actions spoke louder than their words.

I wonder how often I spoke the words, but my actions said something altogether different. I can think of more than a few times in my life when that was true.

I resolve to make my actions and my words say the same thing.